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The Sea Set on Fire

By Dr.
Zaghlool El-Naggar, Ph.D.

01/08/2002

Geysers are a post-eruptive
phenomenon.

The Glorious Qur'an reads:

"والبحر المسجور" (الطور: 6)

"And by the sea that is set on fire" (At-Tur: 6)

This Qur'anic verse comes in the context of an
oath to emphasize the special significance of the subject matter by
which the oath is given, as Allah (all glory be to Him) is
definitely above the need to give such an oath.

Searching for Meanings

Now, what is the special significance of the sea
that is set on fire? Both water and fire are incompatible, as water
quenches fire, and fire sets water to boiling and evaporation. How
then can an ocean full of water be set on fire? Such incompatibility
has driven early commentators on the Holy Qur'an to suggest that
this could only happen on the Last Day, depending on another
Qur'anic verse where such an event is explicitly described (LXXXI:
6). Nevertheless, the context in which the oath "by the sea set on
fire " and 5 preceding verses describe realities that are all
currently existing in our present day work, and hence another
linguistic meaning for the adjective "al-masjour" other than "set on
fire" was earnestly searched for.

Among the linguistic meanings derived from such
an adjective is: "full of water and restrained from further
encroachment over the nearby continental masses". This is correct,
because the largest quantity of fresh water today (77% of all water
on land) is entrapped in the form of very thick ice sheets in the
two Polar Regions as well as in the form of ice caps to highly
elevated mountains. For such a great mass of ice to melt, an
increase of only 4° - 5° C in the temperature of the lower
atmosphere above the average summer temperatures is needed. In such
a case, this melt can raise the water level in present day seas and
oceans by more than 100m, which is enough to drown most of the
present day plains where the majority of human settlements exist.
Nevertheless, Earth scientists have recently discovered that all of
the present day oceans and some seas (such as the red Sea and the
Arabian Sea) are physically set on fire, while others (such as the
Mediterranean, the Black and the Caspian Seas) are not.

The Phenomenon of Mid-oceanic
Volcanism

Move mouse over image to
understand sea-floor spreading

As mentioned
previously, more than 64,000 km
of mid-ocean ridges have - so far - been mapped around mid-ocean
rift valleys. These oceanic ridges are basically composed of
volcanic basaltic rocks that have been spouting out from the oceanic
rift zones (at temperatures of about 1000° C or even more). Such
intensive oceanic volcanicity builds up the mid-oceanic ridges and
spreads them out laterally, by the phenomenon known as sea-floor
spreading. As they are constantly fed by fresh basaltic flows, new
slabs of the oceanic crust are built on both sides of the rift
zones. Mid-oceanic volcanism evolves from fissure volcanism that
emanates from the mid-oceanic rift systems where the oceanic crust
is rifted and the opposite sides of the rift zone are pushed aside
by the emanating magma. Basaltic flows and eruptions, fed from
elongated secondary magma chambers below the center of the
mid-oceanic ridge, pour out along the ridge axis. Sea-floor basalt
from the surface of the oceanic crust, (which is about 7km thick on
the average) normally consists of:

0-1 km of sediments (top)
1 km of pillow lava
basalts
5 km of gabbro sills fed by dikes (bottom)

Post-eruptive phenomena that can result from
interaction of phreatic waters with buried hot rocks include the
following (cf. Emiliani, C., 1992, p 203):

Hot springs, which are formed when phreatic
water is heated and mineralized in contact with hot rocks.

Geysers, which are periodic eruptions of
boiling hot water (200°C or even more) due to circulation with
superheated waters at depth, which are in direct or indirect
contact with hot rocks  (1000°C or even more).

Fumaroles, which are gaseous exhalations of
water vapor enriched with SO², H²S, HCI, and HF (in order of
abundance).

Solfataras, which are fumaroles rich in sulfur
compounds.

Most of the current volcanic activity at the
bottoms of seas and oceans has been going on for the past 20-30
million years, although some have persisted in their activity for
100 million years or even more (e.g. the Canary Islands). During
such long periods of activity, the formed volcanic cones were
gradually carried away for several hundreds of kilometers from the
constantly renewed plate edge. Consequently, such drifting volcanic
cones became out of reach of the magma body that used to feed them
and hence, faded out and died. The current floor of the Pacific
Ocean contains a great number of submerged, subdued volcanic craters
(guyots), besides a large number of violently active volcanoes (e.g.
the ring of fire).

Form the above mentioned discussion it is
obvious that all seas and oceans that are currently experiencing
sea-floor spreading are physically set on fire, while closing seas
are not. Such fire on the seabed is in the form of very hot basaltic
flows and other magmatic extrusions pouring out from the rift valley
systems that rupture the Earth's lithosphere. Such rifts run for
terms of thousands of kilometers across the globe, in all
directions, to a depth of 65-150 km where it connects the seabed
with the extremely hot plastic, semi - molten (asthenosphere) and
hence cause such seas to be physically set on fire.

This most striking fact of our planet was not
known until the very late sixties and early seventies of this
century. The explicit Qur'anic precedence with such a very striking,
but deeply hidden fact of our seas and oceans is a clear testimony
that this Glorious Book is the word of The Creator, in its Divine
Purity.

Read also:

Scientific Facts Revealed
in the Glorious Quran

The Faulted
Earth

Dr. Zaghlool El-Naggar is
a Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences. Member of the
Geological Society of London, the Geological Society of Egypt and
the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum, London. Prof. Naggar is the
author/co-author of many books and more than 40 research papers in
the field of Islamic Thought, Geology, General Science and
Education. He was awarded by the Ministry of Education in Egypt the
top “Secondary Education Award” as well as the seventh Arab
Petroleum Congress Best Papers Award in 1970. Elected a member of
the IAS Council (1994 and 1999), Prof. Naggar is currently working
at the Arab Development Institute.

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