God in the Quran invites us to consider, think, examine, reflect, ponder on various verses of the Quran. In the early centuries of Islam, the Muslims in their effort to understand the Quran made significant leaps in science, democracy, freedoms etc. However today, we have the hadiths, tafsirs etc that do the thinking for us. There is no need to ponder on these verses since the hadiths have fully explained them. For example 55:33 is explained as “if you, mankind and the Jinns, try to escape on the Day of Resurrection, then the angels, including those among them who guard Hellfire, will bring you back by directing smoke of fire and molten brass on you.”
Well, putting that aside, I feel the verse is talking about a possibility for us to traverse the entire cosmic space of the heavens. This penetration may not be a physical penetration, but one of knowledge....such as mapping the entire cosmic space. We have only managed to map a very small portion of the Universe and as of recently, we have only managed to send something beyond our solar system. By mapping the entire space, we would be able to know where the boundaries of existence are and whatever lies beyond. Now this would be a great scientific achievement for mankind. Am no physicist or anything but I think I see an award right there!