e pur si muove

“According to Islam, traveling to space is encouraged.” - A Guide of Performing Ibadah at the International Space Station (ISS) [pdf]

Picture copyright by AP, 2007

As many readers probably will have heard by now, Malaysia can now proudly claim to have at least one of its citizens make it into orbit around earth. Malaysia’s first astronaut, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, blasted from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday and is now in orbit around the world.

Malaysia’s first astronaut, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, is also a devout Muslim. Which is not a problem per se, except when it comes to the execution of the rites of ibadah (loosely translated as prayer). How is the good doctor supposed to pray in space? What does it mean to face Mecca when orbiting in space above the Earth at the rate of 15 revolutions per day? Which time zone(s) should he use to determine prayer times? Does it matter if he cannot truly kneel in zero gravity? When does he get to break fast, considering that there are still a few more days to go in Ramadan?

All these questions, and more, were addressed in a report entitled “A Guide of Performing Ibadah at the International Space Station (ISS)” [pdf], the result of several years of Muslim scholarship performed at the request of the Malaysian space agency Angkasa.

With special regard to the issue of direction, the report is surprisingly terse:

3.3 Determining the Direction of Qibla
Qibla direction is based on what is possible, prioritizing as below:
i. The Ka’aba¹
ii. The projection of Ka’aba
iii. The Earth
iv. Wherever

What the report didn’t answer, surprisingly, was precise directions on how one was to determine the direction to face the Ka’aba. Is it sufficient to maintain a Euclidean straight-line orientation toward Mecca from a 3D plane-geometric perspective, as suggested in (i)? And in (ii), how exactly does one determine which projection to choose? (On a spherical surface, there are multiple ways to define “direction” and relative orientation between any two points.)

Wired magazine elaborates on this (as yet unresolved) point in considerable detail:

Read the rest of this entry »

Footnotes

1. The Ka’aba is the primary shrine of Islam.↩

From my class on scientific visualization, on a presentation of various optical illusions¹:

“You should let me know if you don’t see the optical illusion. I’m not going to diagnose any illnesses, like you have a brain embolism or something, but not everyone realizes they are seeing one.”

Personally, I have the hardest time seeing random dot stereograms. I still can’t make them out.

1. Optical illusions may arise in poorly executed visualization designs. 99% of the time this is an extremely bad idea.↩