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My question relates to this verse:

And the Horn will be blown, and whoever is in the heavens and whoever is on the earth will fall dead except whom Allah wills. Then it will be blown again, and at once they will be standing, looking on. -- Qur'an 39:68

I've read that the horn (or "trumpet") will be blown by the angel Israfil; Wikipedia (linking to Encyclopedia Britannica) writes:

Israfil will blow the trumpet from a holy rock in Jerusalem to announce the Day of Resurrection. The trumpet is constantly poised at his lips, ready to be blown when God so orders.

People live all over the world, so I'm wondering how people would hear this trumpet (if they do). Maybe it's incredibly loud that the entire world would hear it, but a literal point-source sound that loud would have major physical ramifications.

Question: Can the whole world hear Israfil's trumpet?

Rebecca J. Stones
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Whether or not it will be a point-source sound as you mention or else that the sound may reach people through other means has not been specified. As this is a point of 'Ghaib' we do not know how this sound will occur, purely that we are to believe in it.

Even if it is a literal point-source sound, which, as you say, would have physical ramifications, the trumpet being blow is the signal for the destruction of life as we know it and the beginning of the Day of Judgement, so there is no issue.

Muhammad Mulla
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The Prophet (SAWS) said in Sahih Muslim 2940: [1]

عن عبد الله بن عمرو رضي الله عنه قال : قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم : " .. ثم ينفخ في الصور فلا يسمعه أحد إلا أصغى ليتا ورفع ليتا قال :وأول من يسمعه رجل يلوط حوض إبله قال فيصعق ويصعق الناس ثم يرسل الله أو قال ينزل الله مطرا كأنه الطل أو الظل ( شك الراوي ) فتنبت منه أجساد الناس ثم ينفخ فيه أخرى فإذا هم قيام ينظرون "

It is narrated that ‘Abd-Allaah ibn ‘Amr (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “… then the Trumpet will be blown and no one will hear it but he will bend his neck to one side and raise it from the other side. The first one who will hear it will be a man who is busy in setting right the cistern meant for supplying water to the camels. He will swoon and the other people will also swoon. Then Allah will send or He will send down rain which will be like dew and there will grow out of it the bodies of people. Then the trumpet will be blown again, and they will stand up and begin to look around.”

'The first one who will hear it' suggests that everyone in the world will hear it and they will then swoon. The hearing of the trumpet will make the first one who hears it swoon and thus when it says 'other people will also swoon', it indicates that they will have to have heard it in order to swoon.

What you must understand is that the trumpet won't be like any on Earth. The trumpet may even be bigger than the whole planet, we don't know. It might be very loud and cause us to 'swoon', we do not know. It might be quiet enough to hear. We cannot explain how the trumpet can do this. It's all part of the Unseen. We don't have the capability to understand it.

[1]- Note that the hadith above is only part of a big hadith so it is not the full hadith, only part of it.

UmH
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Muslim_1234
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The sound produced by the trumpet will be heard by all who are in the heavens and the Earth. This indicates that the noise of the trumpet will not need any medium to travel as it will be heard across the vacuum of space. So the sound is not ordinary sound produced by some terrestrial event, rather it is a different type of sound produced by some cosmic event.

Sound is not only produced by compression waves in some medium, there is another type of wave which can produce sound, which is independent of any medium. It is the sound of gravity waves. These are produced in cosmic level events like when two black holes collide. These are basically ripples in space due to variation in gravitational field. Theoretically there is no upper limit for volume of such a sound as it does not require any medium to propagate. We can detect these waves using special interferometer equipment. (For further details see LIGO and VIRGO).

Collapse of the Universe onto itself is the biggest possible gravitational event which will produce sound of such high intensity that it cannot even be imagined by anyone, and it will be heard equally by everyone in the Heavens and the Earth. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20160211v2

And Allah knows best

Also see this for more details: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Al-Quran-explain-the-creation-of-the-universe/answer/Syed-Hasan-Shirazi?ch=10&oid=118378137&share=efd8744d&srid=3dQk2&target_type=answer

Syed Hasan Shirazi
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"And the Horn will be blown, and whoever is in the heavens and whoever is on the earth will fall dead except whom Allah wills. Then it will be blown again, and at once they will be standing, looking on."

39:68 Surah Zumar

https://quran.com/39:68

So everyone in the heavens will die except whom Allah wills