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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Goings On |
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Time and Space |
Mecca Time vs Greenwich Time
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Published :1 September 2010 |
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| By the time you read this, Mecca Time might already be a reality, with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims paying attention to it rather than to Greenwich Mean Time. The religious justification, passed unanimously at a conference in Doha in 2008, is that Mecca is “scientifically” the centre of the world. The Royal Clock is 50 metres from the Grand Mosque in Mecca, sits at a height of 380 metres—which makes it the tallest clock tower in the world—and has four dials 39 metres in diameter. Big Ben’s are only seven metres. A built in lunar observatory will sight the moon during the holy months, and 16 bands of vertical lights will shoot some 10 kilometres up into the sky. The first problem for some Muslims is that the clock’s design has been outsourced—to a German-owned company; and, second, it looks like a wannabe Very, Very Big Ben.
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