Water, under ordinary conditions, is transparent and life-giving. Yet when subjected to immense pressures and temperatures (such as the hellfire as this quranic verse is eluding too), it transforms into something radically different: superionic ice. In this state, oxygen atoms lock into a crystalline lattice while hydrogen ions flow freely, creating a substance that is simultaneously solid and liquid. Most astonishingly, this phase is black in color, absorbing light rather than reflecting it.

Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) using giant lasers have recreated this phenomenon on Earth. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, scientists blasted water with shockwaves, compressing it to millions of atmospheres and thousands of degrees –  In mere billionths of a second, the water crystallized into superionic ice, its atomic structure captured for the first time.

Scientists have also noted that the interiors of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune each contain about 50,000 times the amount of water in Earth’s oceans, and are mostly in the superionic water state – believed to be stable at depths greater than approximately one-third of the radius of these ice giants. Under the pressures and temperatures found in ice-giant planets, most of this water was predicted by First-Principles Molecular Dynamics (FPMD) simulations to be in a superionic phase.

The Quran, in Surah Al-Kahf (18:29), warns of a punishment where the wrongdoers who are in the fire of hell, crying for relief, are given māʾan kal-muhl—“water like molten tar” that sears the face. The Arabic word muhl carries connotations of black, dark, viscous liquid, often interpreted as molten metal, pitch, or tar (I shared a screenshot from Gemini below). This imagery of a dark, burning fluid parallels the scientific description of superionic water: black, hot, and destructive under extreme conditions. What was once a metaphor of divine warning now finds a curious echo in the physics of planetary interiors. The Quran’s use of muhl—a word evoking both blackness and unbearable heat—aligns uncannily with the properties of superionic ice, discovered only in recent decades.

Thus, the transformation of water into superionic blackness becomes not only a marvel of physics but also a poetic echo of revelation—where the cosmos and the Quran converge in imagery of liquid fire. Simply a phenomenon that was impossible for any human to imagine nearly 1400 years ago – now confirmed as the prevailing thought process by modern physicists and astronomers. 

In Surah Fussilat (Quran 41:53) – Allah (swt) says: We will show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this ˹Quran˺ is the truth. Is it not enough that your Lord is a Witness over all things?