Is it a miracle?
hello
It's said that a roof of a minaret magically flew to be put on its normal place:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x85hbm_miracle-le-minaret-qui-vole-et-se-p_webcam
I'm not naive but too much open-minded; Is this a miracle or are there rational explanations for this video?
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Why does it look like it's wiggling back and forth? That suggests to me that there's actually something holding it, like a rope or something, and it's not entirely stable.
When I was at Disneyland, I saw Tinkerbell fly through the air too.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
It would be an helicopter, but why were people around it shouting "we testify Allah existence!" ?
Why not?
Just getting excited about an important symbolic stage of construction of the mosque would seem to be adequate reason to me.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yeah, that seems to be likely.
After all, even if you were wrong, other religions reported miracles, so they would all be equally true...
First thing is the camera never shows more than about 30-40ft above the floating structure, about as long as you would expect the 1/4 inch air craft cables holding it to the helicopter above would be. Like it has been pointed out it wobless back and forth just as you would expect it would being suspended 40ft under a helicopter constantly adjusting it's speed and trejectory. If god was controlling the structure, it shouldn't bobble back and forth, it would move earily perfect. So i'll have to go with bob here, it's just contsruction at work.
Any techies here? How easy would it be anyways to just get rid of the helicopter and lines if they were visible in the shot?
It actually looks like it's just made of canvas. I'd say chopper except I wonder if countries like this one have choppers. What about a big crane?
Lol - actually this just reminded me of a dream I had last night in which I lay on the ground and watch 2 UFOs dog fighting. They were awesome silver Millenium Falcon things.
Thanks muslims. You have a use after all. But work on your singing. More lyrics, for fuck's sake.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It would be so trivial a job that you don't even have to be familiar with the software to do that.
Digital cameras (both still and video) are subject to random background influences. In an audio signal, it would be the hiss that you can hear even on a fresh blank tape if you amplify the signal sufficiently. In video, the same thing appears as random pixels in the image.
Now for your vacation pics or your wedding videos, this is normally so slight that it is not really relevant. However, for situations where really exact images are important, such as even amateur astronomy, you need to do what you can to further reduce this.
Enter image stacking. Basically, you take several images and layer them together. Then you subtract what pixels are only present in a single layer. What you have left is what should really be there. Now I have never heard of anyone doing it with video. However, the tower, the minaret and the clouds are really there, so they should all show up in the final work. Eve the apparent wobble is not a huge problem. That can be dealt with by setting the variables in the software to let a bit more stuff through.
And that is only one way to do it. You can get free open source software that will do that from a number of different astronomy websites. Were I disposed to waste more time on this, I am sure that I could come up with a few more ways to get essentially the same thing.
Also, before anyone says it, let me also say that the tree in the foreground is not a problem. It could be filmed separately and added in in post production. Or it could have been modeled in Blender (which BTW is the software used to make the “Doctor Octopus” character in Spiderman 2). It is also a free download with a decently large community online dedicated to how to use it to best effect.
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Actually I kept looking at those lines going up from the ground to the top of the tower from the right.
They remind me a bit of the jib of a large crane, which could be holding it up, with the frame of the jib erased from the picture to the left of the of the minaret.
I couldn't see them move, but when they were clearly in the picture, the cap wasn't moving much itself.
Not sure it works, but just thought I'd mention it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
OK, bob, I am not seeing that. However, on looking at it again, I am seeing that the minaret is showing a sort of “boiling” effect as it wobbles which the background does not show.
Without attempting to recreate the scene, I would have no problem with the idea that it could be a video artifacting from image stacking.
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If they rented a helicopter or crane, apparently they didn't have enough money left for a decent camera.
yes, but why does that TV NEWS usesamateur video? it could have come with all its professionnal camera
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that professional news crews are not really all that common. Sure, every large TV station probably has, I don't know, a dozen or more vans driving around the host city on the “just in case” basis. However, having one actually on site to document a “miracle” actually seems somewhat improbable.
Compare that to the general prevalence of the $100 pocket cameras today that can make short videos on flash memory cards.
Also, since I don't speak arabic, I can't even tell if that is a news story about what we are being told it is or just a real story where someone happened to be near a construction site with a pocket camera and they just got a neat video. I do know that TV stations that broadcast in English often keep numerous short clips in the can for use as filler.
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I think the most convincing part of the video is the fact that people were hooting and hollering. About what, I neither know nor care, really. But it would lead the sort of person who believes in miracles to think that something crazy is going on there.
Look at how the thing moves: it moves pretty quickly up to the building, then slows way, way down. Personally I think that's consistent with a helicopter, it seems to jitter after it gets to a certain point. I guess we're just supposed to assume that Allah was being careful, lol.
I saw this thread again and thought I'd investigate further, since the supposedly miraculous interests me greatly.
The video provided by the OP is not the best video, and you'll know why once you see this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n10kMtKuGjI
Basically, if you pause it a few seconds in you can see the wires. I retract my previous statement, they're guiding it up to the top using wires, not a helicopter. It's like a cable car, per se.
If it were a miracle they wouldn't stop showing it on the news.
You cannot be serious about this?
I've also seen video of Indian kids climbing up a stiff rope and disappear. And that scam was around in the early days of film. It was simply a matter of rolling the film backwards and editing.
There is also the trick the Swami does in "levitating" which one can see in real life. He merely braces himself on a hidden post under his robe.
The con artist doesn't want you to know their illusion they are creating, and quite often the crowd supports them without question because they like the message, even if they know they are fooling people.
I can go to a Pen and Teller show and enjoy it WITHOUT literally believing they caught a bullet in their mouth or sawed a woman in half or make an elephant disappear.
David Copperfield once preformed an illusion of making a jet disappear.
In this video, If you look closely there is a man in the tower guiding the Minaret once it was over the top of the tower. Like Bob mentioned, it was a crowd happy about the construction of the Mosque and someone who got hold of the video manipulated it. Computers can manipulate video.
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Well of course computers can edit video. I could have sworn that I already said one way that it could be done. I even mentioned a program that would help the project by name. Honestly, this is not a big deal though.
The more interesting bit to me is that it is not a big deal. If you think about, the concept that proof of the existence of god is available on youtube and the whole damn world is not going nuts over it kind of says something here.
Granted, a flying roof does not establish any major doctrinal point. However, if this really did prove that a magical invisible man in the sky was real, don't you think that all the major world religions would be doing the happy dance over the matter? At least until someone who knows Arabic watches the video and provides a transcript.
Somehow I have a feeling that if we knew what the crowd was chanting, it would turn out to be something really mundane.
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If you watch the first 15 seconds over and over, you will see that the tree's branches are moving in an up and down motion, not to the east or south, suggesting that the wind source is coming from above.
Also, the movement of the minaret has a swivel point on the top of it suggesting a cable connection in a spot where one might put a connection when moving it to the top of the construction spot.
The camera operator purposely doesn't show anything above the minaret. Why?
An addition to, and the finishing of the spire is good reason to rejoice.
It's a construction site and a topping off ceremony. Sorry, move along, nothing to see here.