Monday, April 6, 2009

Crustal Movement and Religion




Crustal Movements Shake Up Mecca



Credit: NASA/JPL

GPS data represented by arrows showing present crustal movement directions and relative magnitudes.



The moral of this story must be: know your geodesy before you build a Mosque!

The crust of the Earth is exposed to all sorts of movements displacing points relative to each other. Tectonic plates move round and about, as we all know, right?, and therefore what used to be aligned may in the course of some years no longer be that.

If I was a muslim about to build a mosque, I would certainly study the crustal movements of my potential mosque spot relative to that of Mecca, before building. And then I would keep a continuous GPS eye on both my mosque - and Mecca!

You wouldn't want to disturb the prayers of millions of people just because the Earth moved now, would you?




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