God has said in the Quran:
“Or (the unbelievers’ state) is like the darkness in a deep
sea. It is covered by waves, above which are waves, above which are
clouds. Darknesses, one above another. If a man stretches out his
hand, he cannot see it....” (Quran 24:40)
This verse mentions the darkness found in deep seas and
oceans, where if a man stretches out his hand, he cannot see it. The
darkness in deep seas and oceans is found around a depth of 200 meters and
below. At this depth, there is almost no light (see figure 1).
Below a depth of 1000 meters there is no light at all.[1] Human beings are not able to
dive more than forty meters without the aid of submarines or special
equipment. Human beings cannot survive unaided in the deep dark part of
the oceans, such as at a depth of 200 meters.
Figure 1: Between 3 and 30 percent of the sunlight is
reflected at the sea surface. Then almost all of the seven colors of the
light spectrum are absorbed one after another in the first 200 meters, except
the blue light. (Oceans, Elder and Pernetta, p. 27.)
Scientists have recently discovered this darkness by means
of special equipment and submarines that have enabled them to dive into the
depths of the oceans.
We can also understand from the following sentences in the
previous verse,“...in a deep sea. It is covered by waves, above which are
waves, above which are clouds....”, that the deep waters of seas and oceans are
covered by waves, and above these waves are other waves. It is clear that
the second set of waves are the surface waves that we see, because the verse
mentions that above the second waves there are clouds. But what about the
first waves? Scientists have recently discovered that there are internal
waves which “occur on density interfaces between layers of different
densities.”[2] (see figure 2).
Figure 2: Internal waves at interface between two layers of
water of different densities. One is dense (the lower one), the other one
is less dense (the upper one). (Oceanography, Gross, p. 204.)
The internal waves cover the deep waters of seas and oceans
because the deep waters have a higher density than the waters above them.
Internal waves act like surface waves. They can also break, just like
surface waves. Internal waves cannot be seen by the human eye, but they
can be detected by studying temperature or salinity changes at a given
location.[3]
Footnotes:
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