Over 5,000 Planets of Allah Discovered

All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. Now a new study suggests that this organism likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after Planet Earth's formation.

Further analysis also shows that this life form likely had an early immune system, which means it was probably fighting off viruses. While LUCA is the oldest common ancestor we know of, scientists still do not understand how life evolved from its very first origins to the early communities of which LUCA was a part. And why life occurred so quickly (in less than 400 million years)?

Both the Torah and the Qur'an teach that the One God created the whole universe to be conducive to the universal evolution of life. Recent astrophysical studies discover ever more evidence of the truth of this Torah and Qur'an view.

Space may be vast, but it isn't lonely. New astrophysics research indicates the Milky Way is teeming with billions of planets like ours, circling stars just like our sun. It's been only 20 years since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet around a star.

Since then, we have learned that most stars have planets of some size orbiting them, and that Earth-size planets are relatively common in close-in orbits that are too hot for life. But even if only one in a thousand earth size planets are in the habitable zone just right for life to develop, there would be millions of them in our galaxy alone. Over 5,000 total planet have been found to date,

The Zabur of David says, "Your kingdom is a kingdom of all worlds; and Your dominion is for all generations." (Zabur-Psalms 145:13); and the Qur'an says, "We have not sent you but as a blessing for all the worlds." (Al-Anbiya 107). Muslim commentators say this refers to the 18.000 inhabitable worlds created by Allah. Our world is but one of them. (Mir'at-e-Kainat, vol.1, p.77)

Jewish scholars would add that the term "18.000 inhabitable worlds" created by Allah, reflects the fact that the number 18 in Hebrew is equal numerically to the word life, i.e. worlds with intelligent life; because unintelligent un-self-conscious life forms do not need, or receive, God's prophets.

"If the stars in the Kepler field are representative of stars in the solar neighborhood, ... then the nearest (Earth-size) planet is expected to orbit a star that is less than 12 light-years from Earth" the researchers wrote in their paper. Now we can use the population of known planets to determine the far larger number of actual planets. For every [planet] we can see, we know that there are 100 or 200 others out there in the galaxy that we didn't see.

Among the newly confirmed group, close to 550 are no more than twice the size of Earth -small enough that they're probably rocky bodies like our planet. Nine of these reside in the habitable zone, that ring-shaped region around a star where the temperature is just right for liquid water to remain stable. (In our solar system, that region is roughly bounded by the orbits of Venus and Mars.)

Now the tally of such ideally sized and positioned planets that could support life as we know it; is 21.

Each new discovery in astronomy yields new evidence of Allah's wisdom and power. As the Qur'an says, "Verily in the heavens and on the earth are signs for those who believe." (45:3) And Prophet David says, "The heavens declare the glory of God. The universe proclaims God's handiwork." (Zabur-Psalms 19:2)

Perhaps this why Jews and Muslims are so open to learning about new scientific discoveries. During Medieval times Christian theologians accepted the Ptolemaic earth centered Greek view of the universe as an absolute universal truth. The Catholic Inquisition even punished those who dared to voice other ideas.

Many fundamentalist Protestant Christians still oppose a great deal of scientific thought, such as evolution by natural selection, and very long term geological change, and a few even think that human beings must be located at the literal center of God's creation.

Thus, even in America today, many Christians avoid learning about new scientific discoveries. According to a February 2015 study "Religious Understandings of Science", among members of non-Christian religions; 42 percent of Jews, and 52 percent of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus (taken as a group) are twice as interested in new scientific discoveries compared to only 22 percent of Protestant evangelicals.