Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Soulveda | January 25, 2017
Astronomers in California have spent the past decade designing a revolutionary 10-metre telescope with four times the ‘seeing power’ of any functional scope on earth. They have now received the money–70 million dollars needed to make the project a reality. It will be called the Keck Observatory, after the W M Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, who supplied the money. It should be completed by 1993 and will be set up on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.
The telescope, designed by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, will be so powerful that, according to Howard B Keck, chairman of the foundation, “It will permit one to see the light of a single candle from the distance of the moon.” The Keck telescope will enable astronomers to see objects 12 billion light years away. They will be able to investigate the nature of quasars and explore how galaxies and stars formed. Marvin L Goldberger president of Caltech says, “It should provide answers to the most challenging and basic questions of the universe.” (Newsweek, January 14, 1985).
God has created an incredibly vast universe. He has also given man the power and technology to behold the vastness of His creation. This is so that man may see the universe in all its greatness, and wonder at the greatness of the One who created it so that he may be able to actually see things happening millions of miles away and thousands of years ago, and be so dazed by the expanse of his vision that he is moved to cry out, “Lord, you have given light to the world. How infinitely more radiant you must be. Lord, you have given man sight. How infinitely more penetrating your vision must be.”
Man’s vision itself is proof of the all-reaching vision of God. His own existence is proof of the existence of God. The vastness of the universe is proof of the infinite vastness of God. God has created the world, and man, in His own image. He wants man to be able to look at himself and the world around him, and see there a reflection of the face of his Lord. He wants man, not only to find answers to questions relating to creation, he wants him to get to know his Creator as well.