The sun radiates an enormous amount of energy-at a rate of 3.9×1026 Joule per second. This is roughly equivalent to the energy of a 10 billion megaton TNT bomb every second. This huge amount of energy has been maintained for several billion years and will continue for several more. The fusion reaction of the Sun is a process in which hydrogen burns, transforming into helium, which is then followed by thermonuclear explosions. Isotopes of hydrogen, such as deuterium and tritium, are fused to form heavier helium. During this process the released energy can be as high as 17.6 MeV. The energy released from a 17 lbs deuterium fusion is equal to 1,000 kilotons of TNT. Every second the Sun fuses 675,000,000 tons of hydrogen into 653,000,000 tons of helium.

Scientists have attempted to make fusion work on the earth to make larger amounts of energy, thus solving our energy problems for the future. The first nuclear fusion trials were carried out for nuclear weapons. The released energy from the fusion trials was 500 times higher than that from the fission reactions of nuclear weapons¹. The energy released was equal to that of approximately 12 million tons of TNT. The civilian applications for energy production began in the early 1950s, and we are still trying to solve how to control this amount of energy in reactors.

In nuclear fusion, the negative and positive ions of hydrogen, called plasma, reach temperatures of 100 million degrees. To achieve the plasma parameters of the Sun, for example, the same temperature and density, the plasma must be heated to 100 million degrees Celsius and be kept dense and confined for at least 1 second.

Plasmas are mostly heated by Ohmic (resistive) heating, beam injection, or radio frequency heating. Ohmic heating is the result of an induced current being passed through the plasmas. This mechanism is also used to make electric bulbs and heaters work. Ohmic heating cannot attain plasma temperatures; such heating does not rise above 20-30 million degrees Celsius. When the temperature increases, the resistivity of the plasma decreases. Natural beam injection is one of the mechanisms used to obtain higher energy temperatures. Injecting a high-energy beam of neutral atoms into the plasma causes more collisions and increases the plasma temperature by transferring the atoms’ energy to the plasma. Radio frequency heating is another collision mechanism that increases the plasma temperature. Radio waves generated by oscillators transfer their energy at appropriate frequencies to ions or electrons, thus increasing the plasma temperature. Scientists have managed to get to high enough temperatures; however, these plasmas cannot be contained by the reactor walls easily and the reactions cannot be sustained. To prevent a loss of reaction control and to make the plasmas denser, magnetic confinement mechanisms have been developed such as TOKAMAK, Z-PINCH and ICF.

The TOKAMAK (Toroidal Chamber) device was invented in the late 1950s by the Russian physicists Igor Tam and Andrei Sakharov. In this system, mixtures of deuterium and tritium plasmas, confined by doughnut-shaped magnetic fields, are produced by the toroidal coils, which are then heated to very high temperatures. The temperature achieved by the Princeton Labs is 510 million degrees-almost 30 times greater than the temperature of the Sun. One of the major problems in TOKAMAK is that superconducting magnetic coils are needed for the electricity demand, but the superconducting magnets only operate at cold temperatures. So, a space between the plasma and coils must be maintained to avoid the plasma reaching the coils and damaging them. This mechanism is still assumed to be the best for the confinement of plasmas².

Another confinement system is the Z-pinch (Zeta-Pinch) pulse power device. The current flow of experimental devices is in the Z-axis, so the device was called the Z-pinch by the British scientists in the late 1950s. In this mechanism, very tiny wires, thinner than a human hair, are positioned in different configurations, such as cylindrical or nested geometries, and are then placed in an anode cathode gap.

Applying high voltage on the system causes the energetic plasmas to compress and heat the deuterium or tritium fuel in small pellets. The current flows through these wires axially, generating magnetic fields that confine the plasma. The temperature achieved is about 1.6 billion degrees; this result, reported by the Sandia National Labs, is almost 250 times higher than the interior of the Sun. Z-pinches produce the most powerful plasmas, but the generated plasmas are very unstable³.

Lasers were invented in 1962, and have been applied in many areas. Lasers were used in infusion research to confine the plasma in the late 1960s by scientists at Lawrence Livermore. This laser-based process is called ICF (Inertial Confinement Fusion). In this mechanism, laser light is used to compress and heat the pellet. The temperature achieved is about 100 million degrees Celsius and the plasma is compressed almost 1,000 times its liquid density. However, this confinement occurs in less than in a microsecond, which is not enough time to allow the ions to build on the energy of their own inertia.

Today, many countries have invested millions of dollars in confinement and ignition systems to create fusion power. ITER is an International TOKAMAK fusion project that will be built in France (for more information: http://www.iter.org/). Its participants have agreed to provide funding of $13.1 billion. When it is completed, the ITER will be one of the most expensive scientific projects in the world. However, despite the high cost, there are good reasons why scientists insist on the use of fusion. One of these is that no CO2 is produced during the process. Everyone is aware that CO2 has negative effects; for example, it leads to increased pollution and global warming. Another reason is the abundance of hydrogen available for fusion in seawater and on the earth’s crust. Another important reason is that fusion is safer than fission or other energy sources: There are no nuclear accidents, and in case of malfunction, the plasma is absorbed and cooled by the reactor walls. Also, the generated amount of radioactive particles is fewer than those generated by fission.

If everything goes well, scientists expect that fusion will be used as a source of energy in a couple of decades. If fusion is successful, it can provide clean, safe, reliable, sustainable, and widely applicable energy.

M. Fatih Yilmaz is a graduate researcher at Physics Department, University of Nevada.

Notes

1. Frisch O. R.: “The Discovery of Fission – How It All Began.” Physics Today 20 (1967), 11, pp. 43-48; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission.

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak; http://www.ppdl.gov.

3. James Glanz, Science 18 July 1997:Vol. 277. no. 5324, p. 306 DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5324.306.

…And We sent down Iron, in which is great might, as well as many benefits for mankind… (Hadid 57:25)

The above verse in the holy Qur’an uses the Arabic expression “anzalna”which means “sent down” for iron. But why? Early commentators understood this as having a metaphorical meaning to explain that iron has been sent to benefit people. But after understanding the nature of one of the most powerful explosions in the universe, you realize that the direct meaning “being physically sent down from the sky” miraculously points out to a very important scientific fact that was discovered only very recently. To understand and appreciate this miracle of the Qur’an, we will first talk about the life and death of stars and then come back to this verse to describe its relevance in detail.

Just like human beings, stars are also born, live, and die. One big difference is that they can live billions of years compared to the less than 100 years of human life. Also, for us, there is no way of knowing how long we will live or how we will die. But for a star, given its mass, you can predict its lifetime and the way it will die. Stars about the size of our sun live for a long time (a couple of billion years) and die gradually. Whereas massive stars with a mass of about 8 times the mass of our sun or more have short lifetimes (tens of million years) and die in a quick and incredibly violent explosion known as a supernova.

Supernova explosions are one of the most spectacular astronomical events observable by human beings. Normally, in a typical galaxy there are about 10 billion stars. A supernova happens to be one of these ordinary stars until it explodes. During the explosion, the amount of energy released by the supernova can exceed the energy of all the other stars combined in its galaxy! The power of this explosion is far too big even to imagine. The energy released is even greater than the total energy our sun will put out during its 10 billion year life!

The brightest supernova of modern times was an extragalactic supernova recorded in 1987. Since it was the first supernova in 1987, it was labeled as “1987A.” This is by far the best studied supernova of all times. In Fig. 1, the left panel shows the region of the sky two weeks after the supernova exploded. The supernova is still very bright. The right panel shows the same region before the explosion, with the arrow indicating the star undergoing the supernova explosion. This particular supernova was 160,000 light years away from us. This means that the actual explosion happened 160,000 years ago, but because it was so far from us, it took 160,000 years for the light rays from the explosion to reach us.

Fig 1. After and before images of the 1987A supernova. The left panel shows the region of the sky two weeks after the 1987A supernova exploded. The supernova is still very bright. The right panel shows the same region before the explosion and the arrow indicates the star undergoing the supernova explosion.

Since the supernova becomes extremely bright, it is even sometimes possible to see it with the naked eye in daytime. In fact, there are historical reports from ancient times concerning supernova explosions. On July 4th, 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers noticed a “guest star,” which was visible in daylight to the naked eye for 23 days. Its remnant was discovered by the British amateur astronomer John Bevis in 1731. We now know that this bright “guest star” was a supernova. Its remnants, known as the Crab Nebula, are shown in the left panel of Fig. 2. This supernova is one of the very few that have been observed in our Milky Way galaxy. The last supernova to explode in our galaxy was in 1607 (see Fig. 2 right panel).

Supernova explosions are one of the most violent events that happen in the universe. They release an unbelievable amount of energy. But why would a star explode anyway? If it has so much energy still, why does it not remain shining peacefully as it does for most of its lifetime? To answer these questions, we need to remember how stars work.

Figure 2 Supernovae remnants. The left panel shows remnant of the supernova that exploded in 1054. It is about 6,500 light years from earth. It consists of diffuse interstellar gas and dust (nebula) spread in a circular region of a diameter of 6 light years.(Image Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT, ESO ). The right panel shows remnants of the last supernova, which exploded in our galaxy in 1604. This combined image — from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and e Chandra X-ray Observatory — unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second). It is about 20,000 light years away from us.(Image and caption credit: NASA )/

Let us start by answering a more basic question: What is the energy source of stars? Stars produce their energy through a process called nuclear fusion. The idea is very simple; you fuse together light nuclei, like hydrogen, to produce heavier nuclei, like helium. In this process, the combined mass of low-mass nuclei is more than the resulting fused massive nucleus. This difference in the masses is converted to energy through the Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation, where E is the energy released, m is the mass difference that is released in the reaction, and c is the speed of light.

But since the nuclei are positively charged, they repel each other, so there must be extremely high densities and temperatures to overcome this barrier. The most common form of fusion that takes place in stars is the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei to produce one helium nucleus. The temperature needs to be about 8 million C0 for this reaction to occur. It requires higher temperatures to fuse nuclei that are heavier than hydrogen. For example, fusing helium requires temperatures higher than 100 million C0.

During most of their lifetime, stars produce energy by fusing hydrogen into helium. After they run out of hydrogen, if the temperatures in their cores are high enough, they start to fuse helium nuclei into carbon and oxygen. And when they run out of helium, they then start to fuse carbon and oxygen. As mentioned above, fusing heavier elements requires extremely high temperatures and high pressures, so it can only happen for massive stars in the late stages of their lives where such conditions are met. For lighter stars like our sun, temperatures are not enough for this.

Even for the massive stars, fusion reactions cannot continue forever. The game of building heavier and heavier elements stops when iron is produced in the core. Iron is a very special element. It has the highest binding energy per nucleon. This makes it the most stable element. You actually lose energy when you fuse iron nuclei together rather than gain energy, so elements heavier than iron cannot be made during these cycles. At this stage of its life, the star looks like an onion, in the sense that it has a layered structure. At the core there is iron, surrounding this core there are layers of lighter elements in the order of their atomic weights, with hydrogen being at the outermost layer (see Fig. 3).

At this point in time, a very delicate balance that holds the star steady becomes unstable. Normally, the gravitational attraction tries to compress everything together. Therefore, the star has a tendency to collapse onto itself due to gravity. This is balanced by the outward radiation and thermal pressure that are generated by intense fusion reactions that are occurring in the core. But when the core turns into iron, fusion can no longer take place. That means there is no longer a supporting outward force that prevents the star from collapsing.

Figure 3 The onion skin model of a supernova. As it gets close to its death, a pre-supernova star has a layered structure that resembles an onion. Heavy elements produced by nuclear fusion inside the star are concentrated toward the center of the star. Iron, being the most stable element, sits at the core.

After the iron core gets to a certain size, this iron core suddenly collapses onto itself. This collapse happens so fast that it takes only a fraction of a second for the initially earth-sized core to shrink to a radius of 60 km. As the core collapses, the outer layers of the star start to collapse and rush in to fill the gap created by the collapsing core. At this point, another drastic event occurs. The iron core cannot compress forever. When the density in the core reaches the nuclear density, it rebounds. This time the core starts to move outward. But wait, the outer layers are still collapsing! When the collapsing envelope of the star meets with the rebounding core, one of the most powerful explosions in the universe occurs. This is known as a supernova explosion, which can be seen millions of light years away!

This gigantic collision ejects the outer layers of the star into the interstellar medium. As a result of the extreme conditions generated by this, the fusion of heavier elements (heavier even than iron) occurs. As the material from the exploding star collides with the interstellar gas and dust, a whole range of light emissions (from visible to X-ray) occurs. Colorful nebulae (as seen in Fig 2.) that will glow for thousands of years are thus generated.

One of the most important outcomes of supernova explosions is that heavy elements, including iron, are ejected into the interstellar medium. In fact, the only source of heavy elements is such events. All the heavy elements that are found in our solar system are made in one of these violent explosions. They cannot be made in our solar system, as they require extremely high temperatures. That means, the carbon that makes our cells, the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in our blood, and basically almost everything in our body are all made of elements produced in these explosions. We are, in the most literate sense, stardust. It is estimated that on average each carbon atom in our body went through four of these cycles in the past.

It is very clear that these explosions are important for the existence of life on earth. But, understanding the mechanism of these events was only possible in recent years.

It is extremely surprising to hear that iron and almost every other element in our body were made during one of these explosions. Even more astonishing is when we look at what the Holy Qur’an says about iron.

In the Holy Qur’an, there is a special chapter about iron, known as “Hadid” or “Iron”. The first thing that surprises you about this chapter is its chapter number: 57. The interesting thing about this is that it matches the atomic weight of one of the isotopes of iron. Iron can have stable isotopes with atomic weights of 54, 56, 57, and 58. The most common form of iron is the one with atomic weight 56 (56Fe).

The reason why this chapter is called “Iron” is the fact that in one verse of this chapter, the Holy Qur’an talks about iron. The second thing that is surprising is the verse number of this particular verse: 25 (or if you count the basmala, it becomes 26). This number (26) is the number of protons in an iron nucleus. And the third numerical code is the total number of verses in this chapter and that is equal to 30. This is equal to the number of neutrons in the most common form of iron nuclei (56Fe). Additional numerical codes can be found through a more detailed inspection of this Qur’anic chapter. No one knew anything about the iron nuclei in the 7th century when the Qur’an was revealed in its present form. And the chance of these numbers being purely coincidental is less than one in a thousand.

After studying these numerical codes, the content of the verse is even more interesting and closely related to our topic. In this verse, the Almighty says: …And We sent down Iron, in which is great might, as well as many benefits for mankind … (57:25). The expression “sent down” used for iron in this verse is the English translation of the Arabic word “anzalna”. This can either be understood as having a metaphorical meaning to explain that iron was given for the benefit of people. But, if the literal meaning, “being physically sent down from the sky,” is considered, we realize that this verse miraculously indicates the scientific fact that all the iron in our solar system came from the sky from supernova explosions.

Another interesting aspect is the fact that the verse says “…in which is great might …” The Arabic word “shaded” used to describe this can also be translated as “in which is great power” or as “in which is great violence”. If you assume this phrase is referring to iron, you can understand it to mean that iron has a great strength. Or a deeper meaning would be to consider the fact that iron nuclei is the most stable nuclei, i.e. the fact that it has the highest binding energy per nucleon. If you consider this phrase as referring to the act of sending down, in that case it reminds you of the great violence in supernova explosions.

In summary, supernova explosions are the violent deaths of massive stars. The course of events that leads to these gigantic explosions, as well as their far reaching consequences, is very interesting. They are the only source of iron and other heavy metals found in our solar system. They show the mercy of God, as life on earth without them would not be possible. At the same time, they can be thought of as an incredible show of divine power. As the Holy Qur’an says at the end of the verse that mentions iron:

Surely God is the All-Strong, the All-Glorious with irresistible might. (Hadid 57:25)

The Anglo-Australian Observatory (http://www.aao.gov.au/)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030914.html

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_219.html

For more detailed discussion, see for example: Adam Burrows, Nature 403 (6771), 727 (2000).

http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/superPre.html

For example, according to numerological (abjad) calculations, the abjad of the word “Al-Hadeed” in Arabic, when the numerological values of its letters are added up is also 57 and numerological value of the word “Hadid” alone is 26. ( http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_30.html )

Most Christian faith groups teach that Jesus was conceived by his mother Mary while she was still a virgin. This is believed to have been accomplished without an act of sexual intercourse. This doctrine is usually called the “virgin birth,” although the term “virgin conception” would be much more accurate. Biblical references commonly cited about the virgin birth are Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23. Various polls have found that about 80% of American adults believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. This exceeds the total number of American adults who identify themselves as Christian or Muslim. The Qur’an, the direct words of God, dictated by an angel to Prophet Muhammad, has two main references to Mary’s virginal status at the conception of Jesus: 19:16 to 22 contains a birth narrative, while 21:91 confirms her virginity. Almost 100% of Muslim adults in the world believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.

The question that frequently comes up in the minds of many is the same: How did Mary conceive? There have been different ways of explaining this. For some people, the natural phenomenon of parthenogenesis provides such an explanation. Some animal species can reproduce from an unfertilized oocyte, in a process called parthenogenesis. Although this phenomenon is quite common in plants and insects, it does not appear in any creature above the level of the amphibians. No verified case of parthenogenesis has occurred in humans, and it is considered impossible for species as complex as the higher apes or humans³ An additional complexity would be that Jesus would have been female after the parthenogenetic division of an XX oocyte, since he would have lacked the Y chromosome normally contributed by a human father. Parthenogenesis is not, therefore, a logical explanation to account for the virgin birth of Jesus.

The birth of Jesus without a biological father, in fact, should be viewed as a supernatural event-a miracle, to be more accurate. It would be useful to define here what we mean by miracle. Although a miracle is a supernatural phenomenon, there is a minimal natural cause for the miracle, which is then caused to happen by God, as appropriate. Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, touched a small portion of food with his blessed hands; and this food became sufficient for an entire army. Likewise, he poured water from a flask onto his hands, and the water was made enough to satisfy hundreds of people. Even though God Almighty assigns a duty to natural causes-even if the influence of the natural cause is not more than 1-3%-we should accept that in miracles it may not always be possible to have a materialistic interpretation for everything. By definition, miracles are extraordinary events that God Almighty grants to His messengers to prove their prophethood and strengthen the believers’ faith. To insist on their essential rationality is to deny their existence as miracles, and hence an objection to the revelation at some level. The universe operates according to God’s fixed laws, which allow us to discover the divine laws of nature and make scientific progress. However, God has determined these laws and therefore He is not bound by them. He may sometimes annul a law or change the ordinary flow of events to allow a Prophet to perform what we call a miracle⁴

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi comments on the miracles in his magnum opus, The Words, as follows:

By relating the prophets’ spiritual and moral perfections, the Qur’an encourages people to benefit from them. By presenting their miracles, the Qur’an urges people to achieve something similar through science. It may even be said that, like spiritual and moral attainments, material attainments and wonders were first given to humanity as gifts through prophetic miracles. . . . [Miracles] comprise numerous indications of guidance. By relating these miracles, the Qur’an shows the ultimate goal of scientific and technological developments, and specifies their final aims, toward which it urges humanity⁵

So what else can we learn from the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus? Does it indicate any specific scientific discovery? In this respect, we may refer to at least one other explanation by which a virgin conception could have been occurred, turning again to the Qur’an for an answer, as there is no contradiction between the Qur’an, the Word of God, and laws of nature, which have been designed by God. In verse 3:37 “… her Lord accepted her with gracious favor and enabled to her a good growth” the word nabat is used to describe Mary’s growth, literally meaning “plant” in Arabic. Alongside the miracle of Mary’s sustenance, could this verse be encouraging us to study the plant world to observe how plants reproduce?

Many flowering plants can reproduce by self-fertilization because a single flower produces both eggs and sperm cells. Flowers contain two sets of structures that are important for fertilization. The first is an organ that contains pollen grains, each of which contains two male sperm cells. The second is an organ that contains one or more ovaries, each of which contains egg cells (oocytes) (Fig.1). At fertilization, the pollen delivers two sperm cells to the ovary, where one sperm cell fuses with the egg cell, and the fertilized egg grows to form an embryo⁶ A question naturally arises at this point. Could a human being have two different reproductive cell types (both oocyte and sperm) at the same time? The simple answer is “yes.”

In some persons, both ovarian and testicular tissues are present, either in the same or in opposite gonads⁷ About 13% of these persons are derived from more than one zygote and are known as chimeras (chi 46,XX/46,XY)⁸ Cases with normal male and normal female phenotypes have been ascertained as an incidental finding⁹ Chimeras are the result of the fusion of two zygotes to form a single embryo and they contain cells from two separate zygotes in a single organism¹⁰ The fusion of two zygotes may occur soon after fertilization, producing an individual with genetically different kinds of tissue. If the fused zygotes are of different sexes, then the individual develops both ovarian and testicular tissues¹¹ The majority of these people are best reared as females and many pregnancies with living offspring have been reported in persons reared as females;¹² in contrast, only one person has apparently fathered a child¹³ The wisdom of the Qur’an is no doubt beyond the current level of scientific development and the human mind, and what we may deduce from verse 3:37 and scientific research, in fact, is little more than mere speculation. We certainly do not mean to suggest that Mary was a hermaphrodite; the Qur’an clearly states that she was a woman (5:75). Rather, it may be possible that she could have been a woman who had been derived from the fusion of two different embryos; i.e. a chimera.

The statement in the Qur’an (3:37) may demonstrate that Mary could have been a chimera of XX/XY type, and she might have been created by the fusion of two embryos to become one. Of course, God Almighty knows best. And whatever our limited explanation may be, it is clear that Mary co-operated in the formation of Jesus’ body just as every other mother co-operates in the formation of the body of her child. In the end, whether one looks to science or not for an understanding of the deeper mysteries of life, there is consensus among the great majority of Christians and Muslims that Jesus came to earth by means of a virgin birth. And the virgin birth of Jesus was a miracle.

Notes

1. Moore KL, Persaud TVN, The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed. Saunders, Philadelphia, 2003, p. 16.
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. M.Fethullah Gulen, The Essentials of the Islamic Faith, The Light, Inc., NJ:2005, pp. 193-4.
5. Said Nursi, The Words, The Twentieth Word, The Light, Inc. NJ: 2005, p. 267.
6. Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P. Molecular Biology of the Cell, ed Gibbs S. 4th ed. New York: Taylor & Francis Group; 2002, pp. 1243-1246.
7. Behrman RE, Kliegman RM, Jenson HB. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics 17th ed. Saunders, Philadelphia, 2004, p. 1945.
8. ibid.
9. Tanaka Y, Fujiwara K, Yamauchi H, Mikami Y, Kohno I. Pregnancy in a woman with a Y chromosome after removal of an ovarian dysgerminoma. Gynecol Oncol. 2000; 79: 519-521.
10. Strachan T, Read AP. Human Molecular Genetics. 3rd ed. New York: Taylor & Francis Group; 2004, p. 110.
11. ibid.
12. Haqq CM, Donahoe PK. Regulation of sexual dimorphism in mammals. Physiol Rev. 1998; 78: 1-33.
13. Krob G, Braun A, Kuhnle U. True hermaphroditism: geographical distribution, clinical findings, chromosomes and gonadal histology. Eur J Pediatr. 1994; 153: 2-10.