I had the dubious “honour” of coming across this video on YouTube today, watch it and keep your scientific wits about you. Actually, the slightest shred of common sense will suffice;

Let me spare you the torturous, septic YouTube comments that resulted and tackle a few points about this video (most comments were anti-muslim, or racist or outrageously retarded regarding the age of some of the commenters).

Firstly, as should be blindingly obvious, this guy doesn’t have a clue about science. There’s no magnetic “zero” zone on earth, because the Earth’s magnetic field flows in a single vector around the planet. Here’s a brief run-down on the magnetosphere from the American Geophysical Union. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, your compass needle still points to the north. The only time it’ll point to the south is during geomagnetic reversal, in which case everyone’s compasses point to the geographic south (which becomes the polar north).
Secondly, the basalts around Mecca are not the oldest rocks in the world, that honour is awarded to zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Australia. Mecca sits on the Arabian Shield which formed during the late Archean, at ~2500 Ma (at least according to the Saudi Geological Survey). The Jack Hills zircons are ~4100 Ma, so maybe Australia should be Islam’s most holy site? I didn’t think so

The rocks from the temples around Mecca are not made from pre-solar material. The chances that the only major, preserved pre-solar material fall in the world being the material those temples are made from is, excuse the pun, astronomical. Even if it were pre-solar material, there’d be a huge amount of pre-solar material elsewhere on Earth, and I’d probably be studying it.

There is no “infinite” radiation being emitted from Mecca. Infinity doesn’t exist for one thing. Secondly, if this is radiation pointing to heaven, then heaven changes its position every second of every day of every year. We live in a heliocentric solar system, not a geocentric universe.

I have an equally low respect for Islam as I do for all other religions. But I have an even lower respect for people pretending to be scientists (I’ll be taking to Neal in a later post) and others believing the bullshit they spin.

I’m out.