In the ancient times, people thought that the earth was stationary and that the sun and other planets circled it. This view changed with great thinkers like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. They said that the earth orbits around the stationary sun. This was a major discovery in science, but scientists back then didn’t know that the sun also had its own orbit – a fact mentioned in the Quran.
Moving around the Milky Way
The sun’s orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy lies at about 255 km/s. If we were to watch from afar, we would observe the sun and solar system moving in a roughly circular orbit about the center of our galaxy with a radius of roughly 25,000 light years, once every 250 million years.
Some scientific facts:
The solar system moves relative to nearby stars with a speed known as the “local standard of rest“, or LSR. The LSR is defined as the average motion of nearby stars relative to the sun. It is determined by averaging over many nearby stars that are not strongly affected by galactic rotation. The LSR is itself moving in an orbit about the center of our galaxy at about 240 km/s.
The Milky Way also moves
Finally, there is another contribution to our motion caused by our motion around the gravitational center of the Local Group (the cluster of galaxies containing our own). Our own galaxy and its satellite galaxies are also moving objects that move through intergalactic space.
Qur'an about the Orbit of the Sun
And He is the One Who created the day and the night, the sun and the moon—each travelling in an orbit.
The sun travels for its fixed term. That is the design of the Almighty, All-Knowing.
It is not for the sun to catch up with the moon, nor does the night outrun the day. Each is travelling in an orbit of their own.
Does the Qur'an teach science?
Obviously, neither Muslims nor anyone else look to the Quran to learn science. Therefore, the Qur’an is not regarded as a book of science but a book of signs. All we can do is to look at the signs that the Quran has given us and think about it (as the Quran has commanded us to do).
Think about this for a moment. Why should the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) make these claims and cast doubt on his own truthfulness by opposing the people of that century, when almost all the information about the sky is superstitious and wrong, and there is no such subject on the people’s agenda? Even just a few decades ago, the Qur’an would have been considered wrong by most astronomers. But we now know that the Quran’s accounts of the Sun’s motion are consistent with modern astronomy.
The reality is that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) could not make these claims about astronomy unless they came from the Creator Himself. The Creator of the earths and skies.
