Is the lowest heaven not our atmosphere?

Question

Salam,

I have a question about the the 7 samaawat. So we know that the word "earth" in the Qur'an only refers to the ground and sea. It doesn't include the clouds, atmosphere etc. Since Arabs then called everything above the earth samaa.

Now in Surah 41:11, it says that Allah talked to the heaven, which was smoke AND to the earth. So it means He talked to the mass of land and water that is the earth, and to everything that's above it (excluding the Arsh and Kursi obv).

In Verse 12 He then says that He made the heaven into 7 heavens, and adorned the lowest heaven with stars.

People now say that this is the universe, but i feel like that's an eisegesis of the text. When reading without a bias, the Qur'an seems to say that the atmosphere is adorned with the stars.

Further reference of the Qur'an treating the earth and atmosphere as separate things are Surah 79:27-30, and Surah 40:64

I'd love an answer akhis, am really confused

Answer 1

You are assuming there is any distinction between the atmosphere and the rest of the universe.

We only make a distinction today because we divide it based on the gravity of earth and based on its composition of air.

So, where does the assumption that there is this distinction in the Quran between atmosphere and the rest of the universe come from? Nowhere does Allah imply that stars are within air or that they are within the gravity of earth.

When Allah says the lowest heavens, that includes everything above the land including the rest of the universe.

Answer 2

First sky starts from earth atmosphere and includes anything we have reached to day in universe and is so vast where we have yet not reached. It was just a cloud of some type that contracted and gave birth to burning bodies, died bodies and vacuum.

Answer 3

The nearest sky "Sama2 al-Dunya" is anything that is affected by gravity by the Earth Mass. That will place the Moon in the lower sky. If we are considering the Einstein theory of space-time continuum, the depression created by the Earth Mass in this space-time continuum is the limit of the lower sky.