The minaret shape appearing inside this bottle is no miracle; it's just basic science - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 5, 2023
A video of a minaret shape appearing inside a cold drink bottle is widely shared on social media. The post which shares this video claims that it is the minaret of ‘Mecca Madina.’ Some other videos (here and here) on YouTube are being shared with a similar claim that the shape of a Minaret appears inside the bottle when placed against the Sun; some even say that it is a miracle (here). Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The minaret of Mecca appears in a water bottle (Mountain Dew Bottle) in Uttar Pradesh; it’s a miracle.
Fact: We filled up a similar-sized Mountain Dew bottle with water and projected light on it, and found that the same shape appeared inside the bottle. This is no miracle. The rationale is that it is just the reflection of the outer surface of the bottle projected inside the bottle filled with water. Hence the claim made in the post is Misleading.
We searched the internet to see if any crystal replicas were being used to trick us into believing that the Minaret of Mecca of Kaba was inside a bottle. Still, we could not find any information related to it.
We then decided to check the veracity of the claim ourselves. Firstly, we filled up a similar-sized bottle of Mountain Dew with water. Then we used our phone flash as the light source and projected the light from the back of the bottle. A shape similar to the one in the viral videos appeared. You can see the pictures of the shape that we took here.
It does look like a tower or a minaret, but this is simply a reflection of the outer surface of the bottle projected into the water and not an inexplicable miracle.
To sum up, the shape reflected in a bottle filled with water looks like that of a minaret, and this could differ from bottle to bottle based on its characteristics like shape, colour, opacity and size.