Primary sponsorship of the Remote Sensing Tutorial underwent a change on February 1, 2002. Up to January 2006, the server was operated by the RSEOL, Remote Sensing Education and Outreach Laboratory, which is part of CARSTAD, the Center for Airborne Remote Sensing and Technology and Applications Development at Goddard Space Flight Center, Mr. John Bolton, Director. This is part of the EOS (Earth Observations System) program at Goddard. However, all formal funding for the RST has ceased by January 2002. Continued work on the Tutorial is being down in "bootleg" fashion, by voluntary efforts from Nicholas M. Short and John Bolton. However, in December 2005 EOS sponsorship ceased and the Tutorial was removed because it failed to meet current NASA website standards.
A little more about the site:
Source: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Front/whatsnew.html
It looks like Mr. Short is doing the site on his own. I am not certain how he manages to keep the .gov URL
He does post his email link on the bottom of his RST home page. It seems he is the one to contact about his errors.
It's not really NASA, it's only anti-Islamic site to make people think it's from NASA and to not see the truth, or . . to not see the lie written by them.
It's neither a 'hate blog' nor an 'anti-Islamic' site. I very much doubt Dr Short paid the $125 - you will see that the website is hosted by the Goddard space laboratory if you take the trouble to look. A cursory search reveals Dr Short to be a NASA employee, and hence perfectly entitled to the .gov address. He is a specialist in 'remote sensing' - which according to him is "THE BACKBONE OF THE SPACE PROGRAM", a tutorial on which is the purpose of the website. I'm guessing the 'standards' it fails to meet to get on the NASA site proper have far more to do with a lack of snazzy multi-media flashiness than any factual errors about Islam (*).
However, it is clear Dr Short knows far less about Islam than remote sensing! It is equally clear he is not an 'idiot' - unless, of course, you are all 'idiots' for knowing more about Islam than remote sensing. Amazingly enough, a lot of non-muslims are ignorant regarding some aspects of Islam. In other words Dr Short is an enthusiast about his own field and knows little about a totally unrelated one. Put the paranoia aside and give him a break, at least until evil intent can be proven. If you are happy to see a legion of bureaucrats employed to do nothing read every page of every website even with a 'legitimate' .gov (.gov.uk in my case) address to vet them for Islamic (and Christian, and Jewish, and Hindu, and..... ) correctness, rather your taxes than mine.
(*) Actually, it's almost certainly because it's been around a while and hasn't been changed from 800 x 600, which is what Dr Short suggests it is viewed at. See HERE
It's not been chemically examined, but there is evidence of the rock being a meteorite:whatever it just shows how stupid nasa is! they should continue being sad and flyin to the moon and come back and spend like a year away from the world, what a life![]()
and we know for a fact that the black stone has come from heaven, and also the scientists have not examined so to arrive at this conclusion just shows there lies
another cheap attack, which has been refuted . . . NEXT![]()
Nothing conclusive, of course.The physical properties of the Black Stone were first described in the 19th and early 20th centuries by European travellers in Arabia who visited the Kaaba in the guise of pilgrims. The Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who visited Mecca around 1815 in the guise of a pilgrim, provided a detailed description in his 1829 book Travels in Arabia:
It is an irregular oval, about seven inches in diameter, with an undulating surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes, well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly well smoothed; it looks as if the whole had been broken into as many pieces by a violent blow, and then united again. It is very difficult to determine accurately the quality of this stone, which has been worn to its present surface by the millions of touches and kisses it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellow substance. Its colour is now a deep reddish brown approaching to black. It is surrounded on all sides by a border composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and gravel of a similar, but not quite the same, brownish colour. This border serves to support its detached pieces; it is two or three inches in breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone. Both the border and the stone itself are encircled by a silver band, broader below than above, and on the two sides, with a considerable swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hidden under it. The lower part of the border is studded with silver nails.
Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Sir Richard Francis Burton noted that
The colour appeared to me black and metallic, and the centre of the stone was sunk about two inches below the metallic circle. Round the sides was a reddish brown cement, almost level with the metal, and sloping down to the middle of the stone. The band is now a massive arch of gold or silver gilt. I found the aperture in which the stone is, one span and three fingers broad. [11]
The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or — most popularly — a stony meteorite. It is evidently a hard rock, having survived so much handling. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the stone's recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice.[12]
It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub' al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as "Iram of the Pillars") was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed.
One way of ending the "confusion", would be muslins scientists do some analysis on the "black stone" and see where it came from. Is anywhere written that this is forbidden?
its a meteorite from heavan...
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