Our universe is staggeringly vast—both at the microscopic scale of atoms and at the cosmic scale of galaxies. Within each atom, most of the space is empty, and between distant galaxies, unimaginable voids extend for millions of light-years. It can feel like we are in a “dark room,” probing the unknown. Each new discovery illuminates only a corner, reminding us how much remains hidden.

II. Darkness and the Vastness of Space

1. Layers of Darkness

Exile From God: Total Darkness
[24:40] Another allegory is that of being in total darkness in the midst of a violent ocean, with waves upon waves, in addition to thick fog. Darkness upon darkness—if he looked at his own hand, he could barely see it. Whomever GOD deprives of light, will have no light.

2. Immeasurable Heavens

[55:33] “O you jinns and humans, if you can penetrate the outer limits of the heavens and the earth, go ahead and penetrate. You cannot penetrate without authorization.”

3. One Solid Mass

[21:30] “Do the unbelievers not realize that the heavens and the earth used to be one solid mass that We exploded into existence? And from water We made all living things. Would they believe?”

4. Seven Universes

[67:3] “He created seven universes in layers. You do not see any imperfection in the creation by the Most Gracious. Keep looking; do you see any flaw?

[67:4] Keep looking again and again; your eyes will come back stumped and conquered.”

5. Source of Light

[24:35] GOD is the light of the heavens and the earth. The allegory of His light is that of a concave mirror behind a lamp that is placed inside a glass container. The glass container is like a bright, pearl-like star. The fuel thereof is supplied from a blessed oil-producing tree, that is neither eastern, nor western. Its oil is almost self-radiating; needs no fire to ignite it. Light upon light. GOD guides to His light whomever He wills. GOD thus cites the parables for the people. GOD is fully aware of all things.

6. Night and Day Cycle

[39:5] “He created the heavens and the earth truthfully. He rolls the night over the day, and rolls the day over the night. He committed the sun and the moon; each running for a predetermined period…”

These verses emphasize both physical and metaphorical darkness. They highlight how much remains unseen or uncomprehended—a theme that resonates with our modern scientific view of a mostly empty, unexplored universe.

III. The Disparity Between Matter and Empty Space

A. Atomic Scale

• A hydrogen atom’s radius is approximately 0.5 x 10^-10 meters, while its nucleus (a single proton) is around 8.7 x 10^-16 meters in radius.

• The atom is thus over 500,000 times wider than its nucleus. In terms of volume, more than 99.999999999999999% of an atom is empty space.

B. Interplanetary Scale

• Earth’s diameter (~12,742 km) is minuscule compared to its distance from the Sun (~150 million km).

• The Sun holds more than 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system, yet almost all of the solar system’s volume is effectively vacuum.

C. Interstellar Scale

• Stars in our galaxy are separated by light-years. Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our Sun, is about 4.37 light-years away.

• Meanwhile, each star’s diameter is only on the order of a million kilometers. The ratio of actual star “width” to the distance between them is so tiny that well over 99.999999% of the interstellar space is empty.

D. Intergalactic Scale

• Galaxies are separated by millions of light-years, with great cosmic voids in between.

• The cosmic web forms filaments of clustered galaxies, while vast empty areas remain largely free of visible matter. Dark matter and dark energy add to the mystery, as they don’t behave like ordinary matter but dominate the universe’s mass-energy budget.

IV. The “Dark Room” Analogy in Science

1. Feeling Our Way in the Dark

• Scientists probe unknown domains—like someone moving in a pitch-black room. Each experiment is a tentative handhold, gradually mapping parts of reality.

2. Trial and Error

• In a dark room, you learn by bumping into walls or objects. Likewise, scientific progress often involves failed hypotheses that get refined or replaced.

3. Infinite Horizons

• Even if we fully explored our local environment on Earth, the scale of the universe suggests we have only illuminated a tiny fraction. New corners remain dark, beckoning further exploration.

4. Unknown Unknowns

• The biggest leaps happen when we stumble upon phenomena we didn’t even suspect (e.g., quantum entanglement or cosmic expansion), akin to discovering a hidden door in the dark.

Divine Revelation: The Source of All Knowledge

[17:85] They ask you about the revelation. Say, “The revelation comes from my Lord. The knowledge given to you is minute.”

V. Fundamental Limits to Knowledge

Just as the “dark room” suggests perpetual mysteries, certain pivotal ideas in physics, math, and computer science confirm that some corners remain forever dim—or at least extremely challenging to illuminate.

[16:70] GOD created you, then He terminates your lives. He lets some of you live to the oldest age, only to find out that there is a limit to the knowledge they can acquire. GOD is Omniscient, Omnipotent.

A. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

• Quantum Indeterminacy: You can’t simultaneously know a particle’s exact position and momentum. The more you focus on one, the blurrier the other becomes.

• Relevance to the Dark Room: No matter how bright your flashlight (measurement tools), quantum reality has a built-in “fuzziness.” Some aspects of nature are fundamentally unmeasurable to absolute precision.

B. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

• True but Unprovable Statements: In any sufficiently complex formal system (e.g., arithmetic), there are statements that are true yet cannot be proven within that system.

• Relevance to the Dark Room: Even the most rigorous logical frameworks have blind spots. Some “corners” of truth remain unreachable by the axioms we have—mirroring the dark room scenario where part of the room can’t be illuminated by any light we carry.

C. The P vs. NP Problem

• Computational Intractability: P vs. NP asks whether every problem whose solution is quickly checkable (NP) can also be solved quickly (P).

• If P = NP: Many seemingly impossible tasks become efficiently solvable—revolutionizing technology, cryptography, and more.

• If P ≠ NP: Then certain problems remain inherently “hard,” even if verifying a guessed solution is easy.

• Relevance to the Dark Room: Finding something in the darkness might be vastly more difficult than confirming it once you stumble upon it. We don’t know if a “shortcut” to discovering everything in the room exists—a profound open question.

VI. Conclusion

From the cosmic voids to the subatomic nucleus, the universe is primarily emptiness. God allude to darkness and hidden layers, echoing the modern scientific realization that most of reality remains unseen or unknown. While our tools—experiments, mathematics, and technology—shine an expanding beam of light, concepts such as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, and P vs. NP each reveal fundamental barriers to complete knowledge.

In essence, we are explorers in a dark room. Every hypothesis tested and every new discovery illuminates another patch of floor or wall. Yet with each corner uncovered, it becomes clear how much larger the room is than we ever imagined. Far from despairing us, this boundless mystery fuels our drive to learn, to search, and to remain humble in the face of creation’s vast expanse.