ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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John Logie Baird (born Aug. 13, 1888, Helensburgh, Dunbarton, Scot.—died June 14, 1946, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, Eng.) was a Scottish engineer, the first man to televise pictures of objects in motion. Born in Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland, John was the fourth and youngest child of the Rev John and Jessie Baird. He showed early signs of ingenuity by setting up a telephone exchange to connect his house to those of his friends nearby. His first interest in television came in 1903 after he read a German book on the photoelectric properties of selenium.
Work in wartime
Baird graduated from the Royal Technical College in Glasgow – now Strathclyde University – soon after the outbreak of the First World War. Because of chronic ill-health, which was to plague him throughout his life, he was not accepted for military service. For a short time he worked for the Clyde Valley Electrical Power Company, before starting a small business manufacturing and marketing a water-absorbent sock. He then decided to move abroad.
Experimentation with television
Baird returned to Britain in September 1920, and after a brief spell in business in London, he started to experiment with television. In Hastings in 1924 he transmitted the image of a Maltese cross over the distance of 10 feet. Baird's first public demonstration of television was in 1925, in Selfridge's shop in London. The breakthrough came in October 1925 when Baird achieved television pictures with light and shade (half-tones), making them much clearer. He demonstrated these to invited members of the Royal Institution in January 1926. The pictures measured only 3.5 x 2 inches.
television (TV), a form of mass media based on the electronic delivery of moving images and sound from a source to a receiver. By extending the senses of vision and hearing beyond the limits of physical distance, television has had a considerable influence on society. Conceived in the early 20th century as a possible medium for education and interpersonal communication, it became by mid-century a vibrant broadcast medium, using the model of broadcast radio to bring news and entertainment to people all over the world. Television is now delivered in a variety of ways: “over the air” by terrestrial radio waves (traditional broadcast TV); along coaxial cables (cable TV); reflected off of satellites held in geostationary Earth orbit (direct broadcast satellite, or DBS, TV); streamed through the Internet; and recorded optically on digital video discs (DVDs) and Blu-ray discs.
First public demonstrations
Baird gave the first public demonstration of moving silhouette images by television at Selfridge’s department store in London in a three-week series of demonstrations beginning on 25 March 1925. On 26 January 1926, Baird gave the first public demonstration of true television images for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London, where Bar Italia is now located. Baird initially used a scan rate of 5 pictures per second, improving this to 12.5 pictures per second c.1927. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could scan and display live moving images with tonal graduation.
Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird
https://www.britannica.com/technology/television-technology
https://digital.nls.uk/scientists/biographies/john-logie-baird/
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A far-right, pro-Russia candidate has taken a surprise lead in the first round of Romania's presidential election, with preliminary results putting his pro-Europe rival in close second.
With 96% of votes counted, ultranationalist Calin Georgescu was on 22%, and Marcel Ciolacu, the prime minister, had 20%, according to the Central Electoral Bureau.
The strong showing of Georgescu, who has no party of his own, and campaigned largely on the social media platform TikTok, came as the biggest surprise of the election.
He is now on track to join Ciolacu in a final run-off for the presidency on 8 December.
That would pose a dilemma for the millions of Romanians who voted for other candidates.
One option would be to rally round populist Social Democrat Ciolacu, an establishment figure who would continue Romania’s pro-western path.
Backing Georgescu, who has promised to Romania’s sovereignty, is the alternative.
Georgescu, who belongs to no party, has also sworn to end what he calls subservience to the European Union and Nato, especially on support for Ukraine. He has condemned the Nato ballistic missile defence shield in Deveselu, Romania.
The final result of this round will be known later on Monday, when votes from the capital Bucharest and from the large Romanian diaspora are counted.
Campaigning focused largely on the soaring cost of living, with Romania having the EU's biggest share of people at risk of poverty.
Exit polls released earlier on Sunday suggested that Ciolacu had a commanding lead, and projected the centre-right candidate, Elena Lasconi, would take second place.
The current tally, however, puts Lasconi in third on 18%, and another nationalist, George Simion, in fourth.
The president in Romania has a largely symbolic role but considerable influence on areas such as foreign policy.
Turnout was 51%, similar to the figure five years ago.
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When large swathes of invasive seaweed started washing up on Caribbean beaches in 2011, local residents were perplexed.
Soon, mounds of unsightly sargassum – carried by currents from the Sargasso Sea and linked to climate change – were carpeting the region’s prized coastlines, repelling holidaymakers with the pungent stench emitted as it rots.
Precisely how to tackle it was a dilemma of unprecedented proportions for the tiny tourism-reliant islands with limited resources.
In 2018, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley declared sargassum a national emergency.
Now, a pioneering group of Caribbean scientists and environmentalists hope to turn the tide on the problem by transforming the troublesome algae into a lucrative biofuel.They recently launched the world’s first vehicle powered by bio-compressed natural gas. The innovative fuel source created at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados also uses wastewater from local rum distilleries, and dung from the island’s indigenous blackbelly sheep which provides the vital anaerobic bacteria.
The team says any car can be converted to run on the gas via a simple and affordable four-hour installation process, using an easily available kit, at a total cost of around $2,500 (£1,940).
Researchers had initially looked into using sugarcane to reduce reliance on costly, imported fossil fuels and help steer the Caribbean towards its ultimate target of zero emissions.
However, despite Barbados being one of few islands still producing sugarcane, the quantity was deemed insufficient for the team’s ambitious goals, explains the project’s founder Dr Legena Henry.Sargassum on the other hand, she grimaces, is something “we will never run out of”.
“Tourism has suffered a lot from the seaweed; hotels have been spending millions on tackling it. It’s caused a crisis,” Dr Henry, a renewable energy expert and UWI lecturer, continues.
The idea that it could have a valuable purpose was suggested by one of her students, Brittney McKenzie, who had observed the volume of trucks being deployed to transport sargassum from Barbados’ beaches.
“We’d just spent three weeks researching sugarcane. But I looked at Brittney’s face and she was so excited, I couldn’t break her heart,” Dr Henry recalls.
“We already had rum distillery waste water so we decided to put that with sargassum and see what happened.”
Brittney was tasked with collecting seaweed from beaches and setting up small scale bioreactors to conduct preliminary research.
“Within just two weeks we got pretty good results,” Brittney tells the BBC. “It was turning into something even bigger than we initially thought.”
The team filed a patent on their formula and, in 2019, presented their project to potential investors during a side meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Upon touchdown back in Barbados, Dr Henry’s phone was “buzzing” with messages of congratulation – including one from US non-profit Blue Chip Foundation offering $100,000 to get the work off the ground.
Biologist Shamika Spencer was hired to experiment with differing amounts of sargassum and waste water to figure out which combination produced the most biogas.She says she leapt at the chance to take part.
“Sargassum has been plaguing the region for several years,” Ms Spencer, who is from Antigua and Barbuda, explains. “I had always wondered about this new seaweed ruining the beaches in Antigua, and when I came to Barbados to study I noticed it here too.”
The algae do not just threaten tourism. They also pose a threat to human health through the hydrogen sulphide they release as they decomposes, along with native wildlife like critically endangered sea turtle hatchlings which get trapped in thick mats of beached seaweed.
Water pollution and warming seas are credited with the upsurge in sargassum, another cataclysmic result of climate change that the Caribbean has done little to contribute to but often bears the brunt of.
Calls for eco reparations from leaders including Barbados' leader Mia Mottley and Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne have been clamorous in recent years as the region battles ever-rising sea levels and worsening storms.
While waiting for those to bear fruit, this project represents one example of the Caribbean taking its environmental future into its own hands.
“I realised it was important that after removing the sargassum from beaches, it doesn’t just go to landfills,” Ms Spencer continues.
“By repurposing it in vehicles you protect tourism and prevent people from inhaling it. When we scale up to fuel more vehicles it will require a very large volume.”
Watching the successful test drive of a biogas-charged Nissan Leaf – supplied by the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency – was utterly exhilarating, smiles Dr Henry.
The MIT-educated mechanical engineer knew she was risking her reputation should the venture fail.
“We didn’t sleep the night before the test drive event,” she admits. “I was putting my whole life’s work on the line.”
Dr Henry and her husband, career data scientist Nigel Henry, created deep tech firm Rum and Sargassum Inc and are on a mission to change the face of energy production in the Caribbean.
Both are originally from leading oil producer Trinidad, studied in the US and were determined to bring their skills back home.
“My goal is to help build up this region,” Dr Henry says. “We are now setting up a four-car pilot to demonstrate real life working prototypes to convince funders that this is workable and scalable.”
She estimates it will cost around $2m to display initial commercial activity and $7.5m to reach the point where the company is able to sell gas to 300 taxis in Barbados.
Potential funders include the US Agency for Internationals Development, the European Union and international development banks through debt financing.
The team plans to expand its work by setting up a biogas station to replace its small existing facility.
UWI hopes to introduce other sargassum-based innovations too, such as pest control products.
Ms Spencer says it’s been "heart-warming” to witness the results of the team’s research.
“Just seeing the actual potential is motivating me to keep working,” she adds.As for Brittney, five years after her eureka moment, she says she’s still “pinching” herself.
“To see the car in action was mind-blowing,” she grins. “I would encourage all young scientists to press ahead with their ideas. You never know when you might make the next big discovery.”
“It’s taken years of work, plenty of grit and pushing against walls to reach this point,” Dr Henry concurs. “It’s an example of UWI innovation and is exportable to the wider world, because it’s not just the Caribbean that’s affected; sargassum also impacts parts of West Africa, South America and Florida.
“These small islands have created technology that can benefit the rest of the world; this is a big win for the Caribbean.”
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Artificial intelligence-powered speech synthesisers can now hold eerily realistic spoken conversations, putting on accents, whispering and even cloning the voices of others. So how can we tell them apart from the human voice?
These days it's quite easy to strike up a conversation with AI. Ask a question of some chatbots, and they'll even provide an engaging response verbally. You can chat with them across multiple languages and request a reply in a particular dialect or accent.
It is now even possible to use AI-powered speech cloning tools to replicate the voices of real humans. One was recently used to copy the voice of the late British broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson to produce an eight-part podcast series while natural history broadcaster Sir David Attenborough was "profoundly disturbed" to hear his voice has been cloned by AI and used to say things he never uttered.
In some cases the technology is being used in sophisticated scams to trick people into handing over money to criminals.
Not all AI-generated voice are used for nefarious means. They are also being built into chatbots powered by large language models so they can hold respond and converse in a far more natural and convincing way. ChatGPT's voice function, for example, can now reply using variations of tone and emphasis on certain words in very similar ways that a human would to convey empathy and emotion. It can also pick up non-verbal cues such as sighs and sobs, speak in 50 languages and is able to render accents on the fly. It can even make phone calls on behalf of users to help with tasks. At one demonstration by OpenAI, the system ordered strawberries from a vendor.
These capabilities raise an interesting question: is there anything unique about the human voice to help us distinguish it from robo-speech?
Jonathan Harrington, a professor of phonetics and digital speech processing at the University of Munich, Germany, has spent decades studying the intricacies of how humans talk, produce the sounds of words and accents. Even he is impressed by the capabilities of AI-powered voice synthesisers."In the last 50 years, and especially recently, speech generation/synthesis systems have become so good that it is often very difficult to tell an AI-generated and a real voice apart," he says.
But he believes there are still some important cues that can help us to tell if we are talking to a human or an AI.
Before we get into that, however, we decided to set up a little challenge to see just how convincing an AI-generated voice could be compared to a human one. To do this we asked New York University Stern School of Business chief AI architect Conor Grennan to create pairs of audio clips reading out short segments of text.
One was a passage from Lewis Carroll's classic tale, "Alice in Wonderland" read by Grennan and the other was an identical segment generated with an AI speech cloning tool from software company ElevenLabs. You can listen to them both below to see if you can tell the difference.Surprisingly, around half of the people we played the clips to couldn't tell which was which by ear. It's worth pointing out that our experiment was far from scientific and the clips weren't being listened to over high-end audio equipment – just typical laptop and smart phone speakers.
Steve Grobman, who serves as the chief technology officer of cybersecurity company, McAfee, struggled to discern which voice was human and which was AI merely by listening with his ear.
"There were definitely things beyond speech, like the inhalation which would have me go more towards human, but the cadence, balance, tonality would push me to AI," he says. For the untrained human ear, many of these things can be difficult to pick up.
"Humans are very bad at this," says Grobman, explaining that deepfake detection software is helping catch things the human ear can miss. But it gets especially challenging when bad actors manipulate real audio with bits of fake audio, he says, pointing to a video of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates hawking a quantum AI stock trading tool. To the human ear, the audio sounded exactly like the tech billionaire, but running it through a scam classifier, it was flagged as a deepfake.
McAfee recently highlighted how a fabricated advert used mixed deepfake and real audio of singer Taylor Swift. Grobman's tip: "Always listen to the context of what is being said, things that sound suspicious likely are." Another cybersecurity expert we spoke to – Pete Nicoletti, global chief information security officer of Check Point Software, a threat analysis platform – was also stumped by our "Alice in Wonderland" challenge.
He says he usually listens for unnatural speech patterns such as irregular pauses and awkward phrasing when playing audio. Strange artefacts like distortions and mismatched background noise can also be a give-away. He also listens for limited variations in volume, cadence and tone because voices that are cloned from just a few seconds of audio may not have the full range of a human voice.
"We live in a post-real society where AI generated voice clones can fool even the voice validation systems of credit card companies," Nicoletti says. "Turing would be turning over in his grave right now," referring to World War II British code breaker Alan Turing, who designed the "Turing Test" as a way to identify AI by engaging with it in conversation.
Dane Sherrets, innovation architect of emerging technologies at HackerOne, a community of bug bounty hunters that work to expose security vulnerabilities of some of the biggest companies in the world, was among those able to correctly identify the human voice. The natural inflection and breathing in the clips were the give-away, he says.
Listening for the accentuation, or emphasis, words are given in a sentence can be a good trick for spotting computer-generated speech, agrees Harrington. This is because humans use accentuation to give a sentence more meaning within the context of a dialogue.
"For example, a sentence like 'Marianna made the marmalade' typically has most emphasis on the first and last words if read as an individual sentence devoid of context," he says. But if someone asked if Marianna bought the marmalade, the emphasis might instead fall on the word "made" in the answer.
Intonation – the change in pitch of the voice across a sentence – can also change the same words from being a statement ("Marianne made the marmalade"), into a question ("Marianne made the marmalade?").Phrasing is also an important factor. The way a sentence is broken up can also alter its meaning. The sentence "when danger threatens, children call the police", has a very different meaning from "when danger threatens children, call the police", Harrington explains.
Together these three elements of speech are known as sentence-level prosody. It is "one of the ways computer-generated speech has been quite poor and not very human like", says Harrington.
But as the technology develops, AI is growing more adept at replicating these aspects of speech too.
"If you think about it, this is the worst the technology is ever going to be," says Sherrets. "Even something that is 60% as good is still pretty powerful. It's only going to get cheaper, faster, better from here."
He and many of the people we spoke to are particularly worried about voice cloning. It is a very real threat for businesses, for example. Assaf Rappaport, chief executive at Wiz, a leading cybersecurity company, told an audience at a technology conference in October that someone had created a voice clone of him from one of his recent talks. They then used it to send a deepfake voice message to dozens of employees in an attempt to steal credentials. The scammers were unsuccessful, but the incident was a wakeup call.
In another example, a school principal received death threats after a fake audio clip appeared to show him making deeply offensive remarks. Other cases have seen family members scammed out of money in phone calls using voice clones of their loved ones.
Sherrets advises developing other ways of authenticating that you really are speaking to the person you think you are.
"At home this means deciding on family passwords," he says. "At work this means not making a wire transfer just because you got a voice message from the chief executive officer of your company."
You can also ask personal questions, such as their favourite song. But perhaps the best thing to do if you suspect an AI is impersonating someone you know is to say you will call them back. Call them on the number you have for them and don't panic.Michael McNerney is senior vice president of security at cyber risk insurance firm, Resilience, which covers attacks like "spear fishing" where employees are duped into wire transferring money with deepfake audio. He too correctly guessed which voice was AI and which was human in our "Alice in Wonderland" challenge.As he listened to the samples, he found himself asking: Is that real breathing or fake breathing? Were there any mistakes being made? Was it too bright, too perfect? Stumbling over words and taking breaths are very human, so if things are too perfect, it can actually be a sign that AI is faking it.
But McNerney says even here, the technology is sounding more and more human. "These are super hard to tell," he says.Listening to our two pairs of audio clips, Harrington and his colleagues at the University of Munich's Institute of Phonetics also struggled to tell the AI voices apart when listening by ear. They pointed to a number of features that should have helped them identify the human speech.
Variations in the rate of speech are often an apparent giveaway of a human voice, but in fact the AI voice seemed to produce this more than the human in our examples.Breath intakes too should also be another tell-tale sign. A few of those we played the clips to identified something off about the breathing in both sets of clips. Harrington and his colleagues also said they found he breath intakes in one of the "Alice in Wonderland" clips almost too regular for their liking. But it turned out to be the human sample.
The fact that many of the experts we spoke to for this article struggled to tell the AI and human voices apart should not be seen as a failure in their abilities. Rather it is a sign of just how good at imitating human voices AI has now become.
It is something that could have some worrying implications, says Harrington.
"I'm amazed at how the AI voices knew where to put false stats and hesitations, assuming they were not typed in by someone at the keyboard," he says. "The ability for AI to communicate, in speech, ideas from an individual that might be completely at odds with the individual's real views is now complete," he says. "That's the bit I find quite scary."There could, however, be another way of telling a human from an AI voice, Harrington says. He suggests using something known as prosodic deaccenting. Take the example below:
Question: Has John read "Hard Times" yet?
Answer: John doesn't LIKE Dickens.
The emphasis on the verb in the answer signals that the person replying understands that Dickens is the author of the novel, "Hard Times".
"The synthesis of these types of dialogue with a natural prosody might still be quite hard for many AI systems because it requires a knowledge of the world that goes well beyond the words printed on the page," says Harrington.But even this sort of test could soon be overcome by large language models drawing on large datasets from the internet as it trains itself to speak more human.
"It would be really interesting to find out at some stage if AI gets that right as well," Harrington adds.
Mainstream services such as ChatGPT's voice function can already laugh, whisper, be interrupted and then continue what it was saying. It can also remember everything you ever told it.
Perhaps in the search to find out if you are speaking to a human, the solution is simple – spend more time meeting face to face
When asked what safeguards were in place to ensure its AI would disclose that it is AI while conversing with humans, OpenAI – the developers of ChatGPT – said there were none. It also said it was not planning to "watermark" AI to identify it because of the potential for bias against its users. This could include groups of impaired speakers using ChatGPT to communicate or it could include students using ChatGPT to help with homework.
However, OpenAI says it is actively trying to block voice cloning as ChatGPT's advanced features roll out.
"We work to prevent our synthetic voices from copying the voices of real people," ChatGPT multimodal product lead Jackie Shannon tells the BBC. "For Advanced Voice, in particular, we only allow the model to use the preset voices." These include two British-sounding and seven American-sounding voices, split between gender.There are a couple of other tricks you could try if you have any doubts that the voice you are conversing with might not be human. You could, for example, ask it to scream. Many of AI-voice systems struggle to speak outside the normal vocal range, unless they have been specifically trained to, said Nicoletti. I asked ChatGPT to shout and it told me it couldn't.
The flaws in human speech could be another give away, says Grennan. Correcting oneself and doubling back on one's thoughts, is a very human thing to do. It's unlikely you'll ever hear ChatGPT say, "Uh nevermind!" or "You know what!?"
There are also moves to make deepfake detection software more readily available to consumers. McAfee, for example, has partnered with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer and Asus to pre-install their solution on AI enabled PCs. The company is also expecting to roll out its software to mobile devices in the near future, according to Grobman.
ElevenLabs – which is the maker of the tool that was used to create the AI voice clones in our "Alice in Wonderland" challenge – also offers a free AI detection tool to help people identify if its software has been used to create a piece of audio.
But in the inevitable arms race between AI generation and AI detection, we may find new value in something we have lost in our increasingly virtually connected world – physical interaction. Perhaps in the search to find out if you are speaking to a human, the solution is simple – spend more time meeting face to face.
For those of you still puzzling over which of our audio clips was real, we can reveal that the first clip was AI while the second was human. Were you able to guess correctly?
Source : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241122-ai-deepfakes-is-there-something-special-about-the-human-voice
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Looking back to all that has occurred to me since that eventful day, I am scarcely able to believe in the reality of my adventures. They were truly so wonderful that even now I am bewildered when I think of them.
My uncle was a German, having married my mother's sister, an Englishwoman. Being very much attached to his fatherless nephew, he invited me to study under him in his home in the fatherland. This home was in a large town, and my uncle a professor of philosophy, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and many other ologies.
One day, after passing some hours in the laboratory—my uncle being absent at the time—I suddenly felt the necessity of renovating the tissues—i.e., I was hungry, and was about to rouse up our old French cook, when my uncle, Professor Von Hardwigg, suddenly opened the street door, and came rushing upstairs.
Now Professor Hardwigg, my worthy uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man; he is, however, choleric and original. To bear with him means to obey; and scarcely had his heavy feet resounded within our joint domicile than he shouted for me to attend upon him.
"Harry—Harry—Harry—"
I hastened to obey, but before I could reach his room, jumping three steps at a time, he was stamping his right foot upon the landing.
"Harry!" he cried, in a frantic tone, "are you coming up?"
Now to tell the truth, at that moment I was far more interested in the question as to what was to constitute our dinner than in any problem of science; to me soup was more interesting than soda, an omelette more tempting than arithmetic, and an artichoke of ten times more value than any amount of asbestos.
But my uncle was not a man to be kept waiting; so adjourning therefore all minor questions, I presented myself before him.
He was a very learned man. Now most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods, for the benefit of others, and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg; he studied, he consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge acquired to himself.
There was a reason, and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his learning more than was absolutely necessary: he stammered; and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun, moon, and stars that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced by a very powerful adjective.
In connection with the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names—names very much resembling those of Welsh villages; and my uncle being very fond of using them, his habit of stammering was not thereby improved. In fact, there were periods in his discourse when he would finally give up and swallow his discomfiture—in a glass of water.
As I said, my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, was a very learned man; and I now add a most kind relative. I was bound to him by the double ties of affection and interest. I took deep interest in all his doings, and hoped some day to be almost as learned myself. It was a rare thing for me to be absent from his lectures. Like him, I preferred mineralogy to all the other sciences. My anxiety was to gain real knowledge of the earth. Geology and mineralogy were to us the sole objects of life, and in connection with these studies many a fair specimen of stone, chalk, or metal did we break with our hammers.
Steel rods, loadstones, glass pipes, and bottles of various acids were oftener before us than our meals. My uncle Hardwigg was once known to classify six hundred different geological specimens by their weight, hardness, fusibility, sound, taste, and smell.
He corresponded with all the great, learned, and scientific men of the age. I was, therefore, in constant communication with, at all events the letters of, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain Franklin, and other great men.
But before I state the subject on which my uncle wished to confer with me, I must say a word about his personal appearance. Alas! my readers will see a very different portrait of him at a future time, after he has gone through the fearful adventures yet to be related.
My uncle was fifty years old; tall, thin, and wiry. Large spectacles hid, to a certain extent, his vast, round, and goggle eyes, while his nose was irreverently compared to a thin file. So much indeed did it resemble that useful article, that a compass was said in his presence to have made considerable N (Nasal) deviation.
The truth being told, however, the only article really attracted to my uncle's nose was tobacco.
Another peculiarity of his was, that he always stepped a yard at a time, clenched his fists as if he were going to hit you, and was, when in one of his peculiar humors, very far from a pleasant companion.
It is further necessary to observe that he lived in a very nice house, in that very nice street, the Konigstrasse at Hamburg. Though lying in the centre of a town, it was perfectly rural in its aspect—half wood, half bricks, with old-fashioned gables—one of the few old houses spared by the great fire of 1842.
When I say a nice house, I mean a handsome house—old, tottering, and not exactly comfortable to English notions: a house a little off the perpendicular and inclined to fall into the neighboring canal; exactly the house for a wandering artist to depict; all the more that you could scarcely see it for ivy and a magnificent old tree which grew over the door.
My uncle was rich; his house was his own property, while he had a considerable private income. To my notion the best part of his possessions was his god-daughter, Gretchen. And the old cook, the young lady, the Professor and I were the sole inhabitants.
I loved mineralogy, I loved geology. To me there was nothing like pebbles—and if my uncle had been in a little less of a fury, we should have been the happiest of families. To prove the excellent Hardwigg's impatience, I solemnly declare that when the flowers in the drawing-room pots began to grow, he rose every morning at four o'clock to make them grow quicker by pulling the leaves!
Having described my uncle, I will now give an account of our interview.
He received me in his study; a perfect museum, containing every natural curiosity that can well be imagined—minerals, however, predominating. Every one was familiar to me, having been catalogued by my own hand. My uncle, apparently oblivious of the fact that he had summoned me to his presence, was absorbed in a book. He was particularly fond of early editions, tall copies, and unique works.
"Wonderful!" he cried, tapping his forehead. "Wonderful—wonderful!"
It was one of those yellow-leaved volumes now rarely found on stalls, and to me it appeared to possess but little value. My uncle, however, was in raptures.
He admired its binding, the clearness of its characters, the ease with which it opened in his hand, and repeated aloud, half a dozen times, that it was very, very old.
To my fancy he was making a great fuss about nothing, but it was not my province to say so. On the contrary, I professed considerable interest in the subject, and asked him what it was about.
"It is the Heims-Kringla of Snorre Tarleson," he said, "the celebrated Icelandic author of the twelfth century—it is a true and correct account of the Norwegian princes who reigned in Iceland."
My next question related to the language in which it was written. I hoped at all events it was translated into German. My uncle was indignant at the very thought, and declared he wouldn't give a penny for a translation. His delight was to have found the original work in the Icelandic tongue, which he declared to be one of the most magnificent and yet simple idioms in the world—while at the same time its grammatical combinations were the most varied known to students.
"About as easy as German?" was my insidious remark.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
"The letters at all events," I said, "are rather difficult of comprehension."
"It is a Runic manuscript, the language of the original population of Iceland, invented by Odin himself," cried my uncle, angry at my ignorance.
I was about to venture upon some misplaced joke on the subject, when a small scrap of parchment fell out of the leaves. Like a hungry man snatching at a morsel of bread the Professor seized it. It was about five inches by three and was scrawled over in the most extraordinary fashion.
The lines shown here are an exact facsimile of what was written on the venerable piece of parchment—and have wonderful importance, as they induced my uncle to undertake the most wonderful series of adventures which ever fell to the lot of human beings.
My uncle looked keenly at the document for some moments and then declared that it was Runic. The letters were similar to those in the book, but then what did they mean? This was exactly what I wanted to know.
Now as I had a strong conviction that the Runic alphabet and dialect were simply an invention to mystify poor human nature, I was delighted to find that my uncle knew as much about the matter as I did—which was nothing. At all events the tremulous motion of his fingers made me think so.
"And yet," he muttered to himself, "it is old Icelandic, I am sure of it."
And my uncle ought to have known, for he was a perfect polyglot dictionary in himself. He did not pretend, like a certain learned pundit, to speak the two thousand languages and four thousand idioms made use of in different parts of the globe, but he did know all the more important ones.
It is a matter of great doubt to me now, to what violent measures my uncle's impetuosity might have led him, had not the clock struck two, and our old French cook called out to let us know that dinner was on the table.
"Bother the dinner!" cried my uncle.
But as I was hungry, I sallied forth to the dining room, where I took up my usual quarters. Out of politeness I waited three minutes, but no sign of my uncle, the Professor. I was surprised. He was not usually so blind to the pleasure of a good dinner. It was the acme of German luxury—parsley soup, a ham omelette with sorrel trimmings, an oyster of veal stewed with prunes, delicious fruit, and sparkling Moselle. For the sake of poring over this musty old piece of parchment, my uncle forbore to share our meal. To satisfy my conscience, I ate for both.
The old cook and housekeeper was nearly out of her mind. After taking so much trouble, to find her master not appear at dinner was to her a sad disappointment—which, as she occasionally watched the havoc I was making on the viands, became also alarm. If my uncle were to come to table after all?
Suddenly, just as I had consumed the last apple and drunk the last glass of wine, a terrible voice was heard at no great distance. It was my uncle roaring for me to come to him. I made very nearly one leap of it—so loud, so fierce was his tone.
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OBSERVATION—THE KEY TO SUCCESS
Years ago we went up the Ganges River in India. I was then a traveling correspondent, and we visited Argra, the sacred city of northern India, going thence to the Taj Mahal. Then we hired an ox team to take us across country twenty-two miles to visit the summer home of Ackba, the great Mogul of India. That is a wonderful, but dead city.
I have never been sorry that I traversed that country. What I saw and heard furnished me with a story which I have never seen in print. Harper's Magazine recently published an illustrated article upon the city, so that if you secure[Pg 2] the files you may find the account of that wonderful dead city at Futtepore Sicree.
As we were being shown around those buildings the old guide, full of Eastern lore, told us a tradition connected with the ancient history of that place which has served me often as an illustration of the practical ideas I desire to advance. I wrote it down in the "hen tracks" of short-hand which are now difficult to decipher. But I remember well the story.
He said that there was a beautiful palace on that spot before the great Mogul purchased it. That previous palace was the scene of the traditional story. In the palace there was a throne-room, and at the head of that room there was a raised platform, and upon the platform was placed the throne of burnished gold. Beside the throne was a pedestal upon which rested the wonderful Crown of Silver, which the emperor wore when his word was to be actual law. At other times he was no more than an ordinary citizen. But when he assumed that crown, which was made of silver because silver was then worth much more than gold, his command was as absolute as the law of the Medes and Persians.
The guide said that when the old king who had ruled that country for many years died he was[Pg 3] without heirs, leaving no person to claim that throne or to wear that Crown of Silver. The people, believing in the divine right of kings, were unwilling to accept any person to rule who was not born in the royal line. They wasted twelve years in searching for some successor, some relative of the late king. At last the people sank into anarchy, business ceased, famine overspread the land, and the afflicted people called upon the astrologers—their priests—to find a king.
The astrologers, who then worshiped the stars, met in that throne-room and, consulting their curious charts, asked of the stars:
"Where shall we find a successor to our king?"
The stars made to them this reply:
"Look up and down your country, and when you find a man whom the animals follow, the sun serves, the waters obey, and mankind love, you need not ask who his ancestors were. This man will be one of the royal line entitled to the throne of gold and the Crown of Silver."
The astrologers dispersed and began to ask of the people:
"Have you seen a man whom the animals follow, the sun serves, the waters obey, and mankind love?"
They were only met with ridicule. At last, in[Pg 4] his travels, one gray old astrologer found his way into the depths of the Himalaya Mountains. He was overtaken by a December storm and sought shelter in a huntsman's cottage on the side of a mountain.
That night, as he lay awake, weeping for his suffering and dying people, he suddenly heard the howl of a wild beast down the valley. He listened as it drew nearer. He detected "the purr of the hyena, the hiss of the tiger, and the howl of the wolf." In a moment or two those wild animals sniffed at the log walls within which the astrologer lay. In his fright he arose to close the window lest they should leap in where the moonlight entered. While he stood by the window he saw the dark outline of his host, the huntsman, descending the ladder from the loft to the floor. The astrologer saw the huntsman approach the door as though he were about to open it and go out. The astrologer leaped forward, and said:
"Don't open that door! There are tigers, panthers, hyenas, and wolves out there."
The huntsman replied:
"Lie down, my friend, in peace. These are acquaintances of mine."
He flung open the door and in walked tiger, panther, hyena, and wolf. Going to the corner[Pg 5] of his hut, the huntsman took down from a cord, stretched across the corner, the dried weeds which he had gathered the fall before because he had noticed that those weeds were antidotes for poisoned wild animals. Those poisoned animals had sniffed the antidote from afar and gathered at his door. When he opened that door they followed him to the corner of the hut, in peace with one another because of their common distress. He fed each one the antidote for which it came, and each one licked his hand with thanks and turned harmlessly out the door. Then the huntsman closed the door after the last one, and went to his rest as though nothing remarkable had happened.
This is the fabulous tradition as it was told me.
When the old astrologer lay down on his rug after the animals were gone, he said to himself, "The animals follow him," and then he caught upon the message of the stars and said, "It may be this huntsman is the king," but on second thought he said, "Oh no; he is not a king. How would he look on a throne of gold and wearing a Crown of Silver—that ignorant, horny-handed man of the mountains? He is not the king."
The next morning it was cold and they desired a fire, and the huntsman went outside and gathered some leaves and sticks. He put them in the[Pg 6] center of the hut upon the ground floor. He then drew aside a curtain which hid a crystal set in the roof, which he had placed there because he had noticed that the crystal brought the sunlight to a focused point upon the floor. Then the astrologer saw, as that spot of light approached the leaves and sticks with the rising of the sun, the sticks began to crackle. Then the leaves began to curl, little spirals of smoke arose, and a flame flashed forth. As the astrologer looked on that rising flame, he said to himself:
"The sun has lit his fire! The sun serves him; and the animals followed him last night; after all, it may be that he is the king."
But on second thought he said to himself again: "Oh, he is not the king; for how would I look with all my inherited nobility, with all my wealth, cultivation, and education, as an ordinary citizen of a kingdom of which this ignorant fellow was a king? It is far more likely to be me."
A little later the astrologer desired water to drink, and he applied to the huntsman, and the huntsman said, "There is a spring down in the valley where I drink."
So down to the spring went the astrologer. But the wind swept down and roiled the shallow water so that he could not drink, and he went[Pg 7] back and complained of that muddy water. The huntsman said:
"Is that spring rebellious? I will teach it a lesson."
Going to another corner of his hut, he took down a vial of oil which he himself had collected, and, going down to the spring with the vial of oil, he dropped the oil upon the waters. Of course, the surface of the spring became placid beauty. As the astrologer dipped his glittering bowl into the flashing stream and partook of its cooling draught, he felt within him the testimony, "This is the king, for the waters obey him!" But again he hesitated and said, "I hope he is not the king."
The next day they went up into the mountains, and there was a dam holding back, up a valley, a great reservoir of water. The astrologer said, "Why is there a dam here with no mill?" And the huntsman said: "A few years ago I was down on the plains, and the people were dying for want of water. My heart's sympathies went out for the suffering and dying humanity, and when I came back here I noticed...."
I may as well stop here in this story and emphasize this phrase. He said, "When I came back here I noticed." This is the infallible secret[Pg 8] of success. I wish you to be happy; I wish you to be mighty forces of God and man; I wish you to have fine homes and fine libraries and money invested, and here is the only open road to them. By this road only have men who have won great success traveled.
The huntsman said: "When I came back here I noticed a boulder hanging on the side of the mountain. I noticed it could be easily dislodged, and I noticed that it would form an excellent anchorage in the narrow valley for a dam. I noticed that a small dam here would hold back a large body of water in the mountain. I let the boulder fall, filled in for the dam, and gathered the water. Now every hot summer's day I come out and dig away a little more of the dam, and thus keep the water running in the river through the hot season. Then, when the fall comes on, I fill up the dam again and gather the waters for the next year's supply."
When the astrologer heard that he turned to the huntsman and said:
"Do mankind down on the plains know that you are their benefactor?"
"Oh yes," said he; "they found it out. I was down there a little while ago, selling the skins I had taken in the winter, and they came around[Pg 9] me, kissed me, embraced me, and fairly mobbed me with their demonstrations of gratitude. I will never go down on the plains again."
When the astrologer heard that mankind loved him, all four conditions were filled. He fell upon his knees, took the horny hand of the huntsman, looked up into his scarred face, and said:
"Thou art a king born in the royal line. The stars did tell us that when we found a man whom the animals followed, the sun served, the waters obeyed, and mankind loved, he would be the heir entitled to the throne, and thou art the man!"
But the huntsman said: "I a king! Oh, I am not a king! My grandfather was a farmer!"
The astrologer said: "Don't talk about your grandfather. That has nothing to do with it. The stars told us thou art the man."
The huntsman replied: "How could I rule a nation, knowing nothing about law? I never studied law!"
Then the astrologer cut short the whole discussion with a theological dictum quoted from the ancient sacred books, which I will give in a very literal translation:
"Let not him whom the stars ordain to rule dare disobey their divine decree."[Pg 10]
Now I will put that into a phrase a little more modern:
"Never refuse a nomination!"
When the huntsman heard that very wise decision he consented to be led down to the Juna Valley and to the beautiful palace. There they clothed him in purple. Then, amid the acclaim of happy and hopeful people, they placed upon his brow that badge of kingly authority—the Silver Crown. For forty years after that, so the old guide said to us, he ruled the nation and brought it to a peace and prosperity such as it had never known before and has never enjoyed since.
That wonderful tradition, so full of illustrative force, has remained with me all the subsequent years. When I look for a man to do any great work, I seek one having these four characteristics. If he has not all four he must have some of them, or else he is good for little in modern civilization.
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Following closely upon the discovery of the telephone the phonograph came, literally speaking for itself, and adding another surprise to the wonderful inventions of that prolific period. It was in the latter part of 1877 that Thomas A. Edison showed to a few privileged friends a modest looking little machine. He turned the crank, and to the astonishment of those present it said. “Good morning! How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?” Its voice was a little metallic, it is true, but here was presented an insignificant looking piece of mechanism which was undeniably a talking machine and one with an unlimited vocabulary. So-called talking machines had been made before, of which the Faber machine was a type. These, by an arrangement of bellows to furnish air, and flexible pipes in imitation of the larynx and vocal organs, made laborious and wheezy efforts to imitate the mechanical functions of the throat and tongue in articulate speech, but the method was fundamentally faulty and no success was attained. Edison followed no such leading. His phonograph made no attempt at imitating in construction the complex organization of the human throat, but was as wonderful in its divergence therefrom and in its simplicity as it was in the success of its results. The machine was patented by him Feb. 19, 1878, No. 200,521, and its life principle is simply and clearly defined in the first claim of the patent, as follows:
“The method herein specified of reproducing the human voice, or other sounds, by causing the sound vibrations to be recorded substantially as specified, and obtaining motion from that record as set forth for the reproduction of sound vibrations.”
The invention was a striking and interesting novelty and at once attracted the attention of scientific men as well as the general public. Its first public exhibition was about the latter part of January, 1878, before the Polytechnic Association of the American Institute, at New York. It spoke English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Hebrew with equal facility. It imitated the barking of a dog and crowing of a cock, and then catching cold, coughed and sneezed and wheezed until it is said a physician in the audience proposed sending a prescription for it. It was also suggested by an irreverent man that it might take the place of preachers in the rendition of sermons, while another thought that as it reproduced music with equal facility it might take the place of preacher and choir both. In the spring of 1878 it was exhibited at Washington by Edison and his assistant, Mr. Batchelor. Mr. Edison was the guest of Mr. U. H. Painter, and in his parlors it was shown to a party of gentlemen.
From Mr. Painter’s house the machine was taken to the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, thence to the Academy of Sciences, in session at the Smithsonian Institution, and at night it was taken to the White House and exhibited to President and Mrs. Hayes.
It consisted of three principal parts—the mouthpiece A, into which speech was uttered, the spirally grooved cylinder B, carrying on its periphery a sheet of tin foil, and a second mouthpiece D. The cylinder B and its axial shaft were both provided with spiral grooves or screw threads of exactly the same pitch, and when the shaft was turned by its crank its screw threaded bearings caused the cylinder to slowly advance as it rotated. The mouthpiece A had adjacent to the cylinder a flexible diaphragm carrying a little point or stylus which bore against the tin foil on the cylinder. When the mouthpiece A was spoken into and the cylinder B was turned, the little stylus, vibrating from the voice impulses, traced by indentations a little jagged path in the tin foil that formed the record. To reproduce the record in speech again, the mouthpiece A was adjusted away from the cylinder, the cylinder run back to the starting point, and mouthpiece D was then brought up to the cylinder. This mouthpiece had a diaphragm and stylus similar to the other one, only more delicately constructed. This stylus was adjusted to bear lightly in the little spiral path in the tin foil traced by the other stylus, and as the tin foil revolved with the cylinder its jagged irregularities set up the same vibrations in the diaphragm of mouthpiece D as those caused by the voice on the other diaphragm, and thus translated the record into sounds of articulate speech, exactly corresponding to the words first spoken into the instrument. The phonograph, in which a single mouthpiece with diaphragm and stylus serves the purpose both of recorder for making the record and a speaker for reproducing it, a trumpet or horn being used, as indicated in dotted lines, to concentrate the vibrations in recording and to augment the sound in reproducing.
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Scientists in India have reported the “first significant result” from Aditya-L1, the country’s first solar observation mission in space.
The new learnings, they said, could help keep power grids and communication satellites out of harm's way the next time solar activities threatened infrastructure on Earth and space.
On 16 July, the most important of the seven scientific instruments Aditya-L1 is carrying – Visible Emission Line Coronagraph, or Velc – captured data that helped scientists estimate the precise time a coronal mass ejection (CME) began.
Studying CMEs – massive fireballs that blow out of the Sun’s outermost corona layer – is one of the most important scientific objectives of India’s maiden solar mission.
“Made up of energy particles, a CME could weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km [1,864 miles] per second while travelling. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth,” says Prof R Ramesh of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics that designed Velc.
“Now imagine this huge fireball hurtling towards Earth. At its top speed, it would take just about 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.”
The coronal ejection that Velc captured on 16 July had started at 13:08 GMT. Prof Ramesh, Velc’s Principal Investigator who has published a paper on this CME in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal Letters, said it originated on the side of the Earth.
“But within half an hour of its journey, it got deflected and went in a different direction, going behind the Sun. As it was too far away, it did not impact Earth’s weather.”But solar storms, solar flares and coronal mass ejections routinely impact Earth's weather. They also impact the space weather where nearly 7,800 satellites, including more than 50 from India, are stationed.
According to Space.com, they rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they can cause mayhem on Earth by interfering with the Earth’s magnetic field.
Their most benign impact is causing beautiful auroras in places close to the North and South Pole. A stronger coronal mass ejection can cause auroras to show up in skies further away such as in London or France – as it did in May and October.
But the impact is much more serious in space where the charged particles of a coronal mass ejection can make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction. They can knock down power grids and affect weather and communication satellites.
“Today our lives fully depend on communication satellites and CMEs can trip the internet, phone lines and radio communication,” Prof Ramesh says. “That can lead to absolute chaos.”The most powerful solar storm in recorded history occurred in 1859. Called the Carrington Event, it triggered intense auroral light shows and knocked out telegraph lines across the globe.
Scientists at Nasa say an equally strong storm was headed at Earth in 2012 and we had “a close shave just as perilous”. They say a powerful coronal mass ejection tore through Earth’s orbit on 23 July but that we were “incredibly fortunate” that instead of hitting our planet, the storm cloud hit Nasa’s solar observatory STEREO-A in space.
Aditya-L1: India's Sun mission reaches final destination
Chandrayaan-3: India makes historic landing near Moon's south pole
In 1989, a coronal mass ejection knocked out part of Quebec's power grid for nine hours, leaving six million people without power.
And on 4 November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control at Sweden and some other European airports, leading to travel chaos for hours.
Scientists say that if we are able to see what happens on the Sun and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and keep them out of harm’s way.US space agency Nasa, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan and China have been watching the Sun through their space-based solar missions for decades. With Aditya-L1 - named after the Hindu god of Sun - Indian space agency Isro joined that select group earlier this year.
From its vantage point in space, Aditya-L1 is able to watch the Sun constantly, even during eclipses and occultations, and carry out scientific studies.
Prof Ramesh says when we look at the Sun from the Earth, we see an orange ball of fire which is the photosphere - the Sun's surface or the brightest part of the star.
It’s only during a total eclipse, when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun and covers the photosphere that we are able to see the solar corona, the Sun’s outermost layer.ndia’s coronagraph, Prof Ramesh says, has a slight advantage over the coronagraph in Nasa-ESA's joint Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
"Ours is of a size that it's able to mimic the role of the Moon and artificially hide the Sun’s photosphere, providing Aditya-L1 an uninterrupted view of the corona 24 hours a day 365 days a year.”
The coronagraph on Nasa-ESA's mission, he says, is bigger which means it hides not only the photosphere but also parts of corona - so it cannot see the genesis of a CME if it originates in the hidden region.
“But with Velc, we can precisely estimate the time a coronal mass ejection begins and in which direction it’s headed.”
India also has three ground based observatories - in Kodaikanal, Gauribidanur in the south and Udaipur in the northwest - to look at the Sun. So if we add up their findings with that of Aditya-L1, we can greatly improve our understanding of the Sun, he adds.
SOURCE : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qdy5dg7v7o
