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Chapter Eleven
A BARRIER BETWEEN
THE TWO SEAS
A PARTITION THAT IS NOT TO BE
PASSED...
The science
of oceanography is a recent development. In the middle of 1980's the United
States Navy began the extensive study of ocean currents, the mineral contents
of various currents. In 1854, an American naval officer Matthew Fontaine
Maury published the first maps of ocean current below the depth of 7,300
meters. In the following year, Maury published the first book on this subject.
It was entitled 'Physical Geography of the Sea'.
Below are the excerpts
from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia Deluxe, 1998 edition:
Occasionally, water becomes very heavy
due to its high salinity. An example of this is the Mediterranean Sea.
The water flowing outward through the Strait of Gibraltar has greater salinity
than the adjacent water of the Atlantic Ocean, and because it is heavier,
it sinks. This Mediterranean flow can be tracked as a tongue of high-salinity
water most of the way across the Atlantic Ocean.
Note: This
last sentence tells us that the incoming flow of sea water from the Mediterranean
Sea does not admix or combine with the sea water of the Atlantic Ocean.
The incoming flow does not loose its identity after traveling a short distance.
Surprisingly, the flow from the Mediterranean Sea keeps on traveling "most
of the way across the Atlantic Ocean".
Since the area of the Atlantic Ocean is about
31,831,000 square miles, it is a very vast distance covered by this flow.
The map charted by the oceanographers show that this High Density water
is like a protruding "tongue" surrounded by the Low Density water. There
is an invisible Barrier that keeps these two waters apart.
Here is the verse of Qur'an that speak of
this invisible Barrier:
He hath
let loose the two seas which meet each other:
Yet between them
is a bariier which they overpass not;
Translation by Reverend J. M. Rodwell
He let forth the
two seas that meet together, between them a barrier they do not over pass.
Translation by Arthur J. Arberry
He has let free
the two bodies of flowing water meeting together: Between them is a Barrier
which they do not transgress:
Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Transliteration:
maraja al- bah.rain yaltaqiyaan
bayna -humaa barzakh laa yabghiyaan
(Qur'an 55: 19/20)
Please click Chapter-12 to
continue...
INDEX
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