Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

There were very few seventh century Arabs, who could read and write. And even those who could read had no concern for scientific questions in biology or physics, yet the holy Quran, while struggling to establish its narratives, talks about pairs in biology and every known and unknown thing that the first addressee could not conceive, because it was a scripture for our times as well. The Quran says:

Glory be to Him who created all the pairs of things that the earth produces, as well as themselves and other things they do not know about. (Al Quran 36:36)

And:

We built the heavens with Our power and are expanding it, We spread out the earth – how well We smoothed it out – and We created pairs of all things so that you might reflect and ponder over it. (Al Quran 51:47-49)

Pairing in Quantum physics can be described at several levels, like matter versus antimatter and energy versus dark energy. Matter and antimatter particles are always produced as a pair and, if they come in contact, annihilate one another, leaving behind pure energy. But, today I want to focus on only one such pair in Quantum physics, electron and positron.

Electron was discovered in 1897. JJ Thomson discovered the electron and then went on to propose a model for the structure of the atom. 

Paul Dirac was considered by Dr. Abdus Salam to be the smartest Physicist of all times. In a 1926 letter to Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein wrote of a Dirac paper, “I am toiling over Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful.” In another letter concerning the Compton effect he wrote, “I don’t understand the details of Dirac at all.”^[12]

In 1928, Dirac proposed the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wave function of the electron.^[69]

In 1931, he admitted that his theory, about electrons, if true, implied the existence of, “A new kind of particle, unknown to experimental physics, having the same mass and opposite charge to an electron.” One year later, to the astonishment of physicists, this particle – the antielectron, or positron – was accidentally discovered in cosmic rays by Carl Anderson of the United States.

No wonder, in 1933 Dirac received Nobel Prize in Physics.

And the Muslims saw another amazing fulfilment, of the two profound verses of the Quran, quoted above, which had been revealed almost 1300 years before.

The Holy Quran pitches its truth on the fact that its writer is All Knowing and knows every secret of the heavens and the earth. It states:

The disbelievers say: This Quran is naught but a lie that Muhammad has fabricated, and other people have helped him with it. They have, thereby, perpetrated an injustice and an untruth. They also say: These are fables of the ancients which he has got someone to write down for him and they are recited to him morning and evening. Say to them: The Quran has been revealed by Him Who knows every secret that is in the heavens and the earth. Indeed, He is Most Forgiving, Ever Merciful. (Al Quran 25:5-7)

The smartest mind in physics, Paul Dirac, who had little or no interest in religion, unintentionally became a tool, for a commentary of the holy Quran for 20th and 21st century.

I want to keep this article simple and short. I will end here today and return some day with some other pairs in Quantum physics.

Additional reading

Everything is a Miracle According to the Holy Quran and Albert Einstein