According
to the scientists today:
"Water vaporizes from the
oceans and rivers forming tiny clouds. The small clouds join
together and the updrafts within the larger cloud increase.
The updrafts closer to the center are stronger, because they
are protected from the cooling effects by the outer portion
of the cloud.
These updrafts cause the cloud body to grow vertically, so the
could is stacked up. This vertical growth causes the cloud body
to stretch into cooler regions of the atmosphere where drops
of water and hail formulate and begin to grow larger and larger.
When these drops of water and hail become too heavy for the
updrafts to support them, they begin to fall from the cloud
as rain, hail, etc." (from "The Atmosphere" p.
269 and "Elements of Meteorology" pp. 141-142)
- Now just for the sake of argument,
let us see what the "Muslim scientists" used to formulate
their understandings centuries ago based on the revelation of
the Qur'an (revealed 1400 years ago):
{"Have you not seen how God makes the clouds move gently,
then joins them together, then makes them into a stack, and
then you
see the rain come out of it..."} (Qur'an
24:43)
Meteorologists have only
recently come to know these details of cloud formation, structure,
and function by using advanced equipment like planes, satellites,
computers, balloons, and other equipment to study wind and its
direction, to measure humidity and its variations, and to determine
the levels and variations of atmospheric pressure.
The
preceding verse, after mentioning clouds and rain, Qur'an speaks
about hail and lightning:
{"... And He sends down hail from
mountains (clouds) in the sky, and He strikes with it whomever
He wills, and turns it from whomever He wills. The vivid flash
of its lightning nearly
blinds the sight."}
(Qur'an 24:43)
Meteorologists
have found that these cumlonimbus clouds, that shower hail,
reach a height of 25,000 to 30,000 ft. (4.7 to 5.7 miles) like
mountains, as the Qur'an says;
{"...And
He sends down hail from mountains (clouds) in the sky..."}
Now
this verse may raise the question: "Why does the verse
say "its lightning" while referring to hail? This
seems to indicate that hail is a major factor in producing lightning.
Looking to a book on the subject (Meteorology Today) we find
that it says:
"Clouds
become electrified as hail falls through a region in the cloud
of super cooled droplets and ice crystals. As liquid droplets
collide with the hail they freeze on contact and release latent
heat. This keeps the surface of the hail warmer than that of
the surrounding ice crystals. When the hail comes in contact
with an ice crystal, an important phenomenon occurs: electrons
flow from the colder object toward the warmer object. So, the
hail becomes negatively charged. The same effect occurs when
super cooled droplets come in contact with a piece of hail and
tiny splinters of positively charged ice break off. These lighter,
positively charged particles are then carried to the upper part
of the cloud by updrafts. The hail, left with a negative charge,
falls toward the bottom of the cloud, so the lower part of the
cloud becomes negatively charged. These negative charges are
then discharged to the ground as lightning. (Meteorology Today
p. 437)
This
information on lightning was discovered recently. Until 1,600
A.D., Aristotle's ideas on meteorology were dominant in the
non-Muslim countries. For example, he said that the atmosphere
contains two kinds of exhalation, moist and dry. He also said
that thunder is the sound of the collision of the dry exhalation
with the neighboring clouds, and lightning is the inflaming
and burning of the dry exhalation with a thin and faint fire.
(Works of Aristotle Translated into English pp. 369 a&b)
These
are some of the ideas on meteorology that were dominant at the
time of the Qur'an's revelation, fourteen hundred years ago.
