Assalamualykum.
Brother Osama I really liked this article of yours:
http://www.answering-christianity.com/shooting_stars_miracle.htm
Just one question you said Arabic word ''نحاس'' can mean copper and all other metals. Brother please can you demonstrate this from any Arabic dictionary? And brother asteroids may also contain metals which are totally different from copper.
[055:035] There shall be sent against you a flame of fire, and molten copper; and you shall not be able to help yourselves.
And brother, in the above verse Allah could have directly mentioned rocks instead of mentioning ''molten copper''. When we will be in space we will be pelted by space rocks. Why Allah used ''molten copper"?
Lastly thanks for writing such an informative article. Your articles are indeed a resource. 
:D
Wa Alaikum As'salam dear brother Farhan,
Thank you for the kind words, dear brother. May Allah Almighty continue to strengthen your Faith in Islam. Ameen.
As to your questions, here are my answers:
1- As to copper, I've provided 16 pictures of sixteen metals (including copper), and have shown how similar they look to each others, dear brother. A lot of the metal names that we have today are modern ones, and not ancient ones. The ancient names for metals were limited. You had only:
(a)- Iron
(b)- Copper
(c)- Gold
(d)- Silver
(e)- And a few others.
When people unearthed metals, they gave their best estimates on what these metals were akhi.
Copper consisted of a family of metals, and not just the single copper metal that we know today:
"Copper was the predominant early metal, especially after the technique of smelting it from its ores and trade made it widely available. It is still the third most important industrial metal, after iron and aluminium. Our word "copper" comes from the Plattdeutsch coper or koper, still used in Dutch. In Latin, it was known as cyprium aes, "brass from Cyprus" or "brass of Venus." Aes was the Latin for all coppery-bronzy-brassy alloys, which I have translated as "brass," though what we call brass was a later development, but still Classical. Copper in particular was also called adhenus, as was a copper pot. However, the Venusian name stuck in the West, and gave us cobre in Spanish, cuivre in French and Kupfer in German. In Welsh it is copr, which suggests that this word comes from old Celtic, and is unassociated with Venus. In Russian, copper is med', a quite different word, whose etymology might give us valuable information.
............
The fact that pure copper and its alloys were not distinguished in ancient words shows that a fundamental difference was not appreciated. Our recognition of chemical elements is recent, and quite foreign to earlier thought. Most ancient "copper" is indeed bronze, containing tin but also lead and zinc. The alloys have a somewhat lower melting point than pure copper, and so would be easier to work, besides being much harder and more usable as tools and weapons. Zippe concludes from the various names of copper and its alloys used by different peoples the probable multiple discovery of its smelting. He also remarks, quite to the point, that it is just as possible that a source of a metal was named after the metal as that the metal was named after a place." (
Source)
2- As to your question:
And brother, in the above verse Allah could have directly mentioned rocks instead of mentioning ''molten copper''. When we will be in space we will be pelted by space rocks. Why Allah used ''molten copper"?
شواظ من نار (flame of fire). This is actually a weak translation. Shawaath
شواظ means pieces of fire:
قِطْعة من نار. If you go to
www.baheth.info, and type in شواظ, you'll see the following explanation of Noble Verse 55:35:
الشُّواظ قِطْعة من نار ليس فيها نُحاس means Shawaath is pieces of fire that have no copper in them. They said that pieces of fire that have no copper. But the second part here ("have no copper in them") is an opinion, and not a definition. In fact, I disagree with them, because the Noble Verse here is speaking about:
1- Objects of fire with copper.
2- Objects of fire possibly without copper.
Both exist and both are possible.
شواظ simply means molten objects of fire. This is also where catapults, for example,
throw شواظ of fire across the enemy's fortresses. And the Noble Verse 55:35 further proves this with Its simple text that shawaath of fire and copper shall be sent against us.
So the molten rocks and metals that you talked about are in this part of the Noble Verse. Copper was emphasized in the second part of the Noble Verse for a Divine Purpose. But we know well that copper is out there in space. And as I explained above, copper here consists of a family of metals, and not just a single metal.
Take care,
Osama Abdallah
