Black Hole Seen

In 2005, I had a great interaction with legendary Sahibzada Yaqub Khan (Allah may bless his soul). He asked me about my areas of interest to start a convo. I replied, ‘it was human brain and cosmology’. Then what followed impressed me how great he was. Black holes fascinated me in my college days. As FSC student, I once asked my Physics teacher about Black Holes and he was pleasantly surprised. On the subject, first book I read was, History of Time by Stephen Hawking; another legend (God bless his soul). He was an undisputed authority on the subject. I also benefitted from his books Universe in Nutshell and Grand Design. Scientists once thought the sum total of mass available in universe is not zero which is essential for prevailing equilibrium. Later they discovered there is anti-mass too and these Black Holes are anti-mass.

Couple of weeks ago there were news that NASA is going to release first ever images of a Black Hole on 10 Apr 19. Of course my inquisitiveness multiplied and I was anxiously looking up to the Big Day. Lo and behold it appeared in media on 11 Apr. The information merely signifies immense vastness of universe and correspondingly immense inadequacy of what all science has so far discovered. I have no word to adequately describe smallness of our galaxy, our planet; Earth and Homo-sapiens in this scheme of things. A pygmy black hole located within our Milky-way Galaxy some 27000 light years from Earth is several Million times the mass of the mighty Sun. Another located in Messier 87 Galaxy (55 Million light years from Earth) is 6.5 Billion times the mass of Sun. Isn’t it mind boggling and let me say, so far science only knows a fraction of expanse of the universe. I am reminded of Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space….’ That’s truest description of all the mighty homo-sapien. This should bring us to extreme humbleness keeping in view our true value and worth in Allah’s boundless universe. All praises be to the Great Creator.