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How To Write an IELTS Map Essay

IELTS map questions are the easiest to answer. There are no numbers to analyse, just 2 or 3 maps to compare. Very occasionally, there might only be a single map, but this is rare.

The maps will be of the same location at different times. This could be in the past, the present time or a plan for a proposed development in the future. You are required to write about the changes you see between the maps.

There are 5 steps to writing   a high-scoring IELTS map essay:

1)  Analyse the question

2)  Identify the main features

3)  Write an introduction

4)  Write an overview

5)  Write the details paragraphs

I must emphasise the importance of steps 1 and 2. It is essential that you complete this planning stage properly before you start writing. You’ll understand why when I guide you through it. It should only take 5 minutes, leaving you a full 15 minute to write your essay.

In this lesson, we’re going to work through the 5 stages step-by-step as we answer a practice IELTS map question.

Before we begin, here’s a model essay structure that you can use as a guideline for all IELTS Academic Task 1 questions.

Ideally, your essay should have 4 paragraphs:

Paragraph 1  – Introduction

Paragraph 2  – Overview

Paragraph 3  – 1 st  main feature

Paragraph 4  – 2 nd  main feature

We now have everything we need to begin planning and writing our IELTS map essay.

Here’s our practice question:

The maps below show the village of Stokeford in 1930 and 2010.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words.

Step 1 –  Analyse the question

The format of every Academic Task 1 question is the same. Here is our practice question again with the words that will be included in all questions highlighted.

Every question consists of:

• Sentence 1 – A brief description of the graphic
• Sentence 2 – The instructions
• The graphic – map, chart, graph, table, etc.

Sentence 2 tells you what you have to do.

You must do 3 things:

1.     Select the main features.

2.     Write about the main features.

3.     Compare the main features.

All three tasks refer to the ‘ main features ’ of the graphic. You  do not  have to write about everything. Just pick out 2 or 3 key features and you’ll have plenty to write about.

Step 2 – Identify the Main Features

All you are looking for are the main features. Start with the earliest map. Identify the key features and look to see how they have changed in the later map, and again in the final map if there are three.

Here are some useful questions to ask?

1) What time periods are shown?

Are the maps of past, present or future situations? This is important to note because it will determine whether you write your essay using past, present or future tenses.

The two maps in our practice IELTS map question show the village of Stokeford at two different times in the past. This immediately tells us that we will need to use the past tense in our essay.

2) What are the main differences between the maps?

What features have disappeared? What new features are in their place?

3) What features have remained the same over the time period?

Although the location on the maps will have undergone major development, some features may remain unchanged.

Also, think about directional language you can use, such as:

So,  what information is contained our maps? Here they are again.

Source: IELTS past paper

There are a number of different features we could select such as, the loss of the shops, the disappearance of farmland, the enlargement of the school and the development of the large house into a retirement home.

Many maps will contain far more changes than our sample maps and the changes may be more complex. In such cases, you won’t have time to write about all of them and will need to select just 2 or 3 main features to focus on.

Our maps are quite simple so we’ll list all 4 of the major changes I’ve just identified. 

Main feature 1:  The farmland has been built on.

Main feature 2:  The large house has been converted into a retirement home.

Main feature 3:  The school has been enlarged.

Main feature 4:  The shops have disappeared.

The key features you select will be the starting point for your IELTS map essay. You will then go on to add more detail later. However, with just 20 minutes allowed for Task 1, and a requirement of only 150 words, you won't be able to include many details.

We’re now ready to begin writing our essay. Here’s a reminder of the 4 part structure we’re going to use.

For this essay, we’ll adapt this a little to write about two of the features in Paragraph 3 and the other two features in Paragraph 4.

Step 3 – Write an Introduction 

In the introduction, you should simply paraphrase the question, that is, say the same thing in a different way. You can do this by using synonyms and changing the sentence structure. For example:

Introduction (Paragraph 1): 

The two maps illustrate how the village of Stokeford, situated on the east bank of the River Stoke, changed over an 80 year period from 1930 to 2010.

This is all you need to do for the introduction.

Step 4 – Write an Overview (Paragraph 2)

In the second paragraph, you should describe the general changes that have taken place. The detail comes later in the essay.

State the information simply. No elaborate vocabulary or grammar structures are required, just the appropriate words and correct verb tenses.

For example:

Overview  (Paragraph 2): 

There was considerable development of the settlement over these years and it was gradually transformed from a small rural village into a largely residential area.

Two sentences would be better than one for the second paragraph but we’ll be getting into the detail if we say more about these maps at this point, so we’ll leave the overview as one sentence.

Step 5  – Write the 1st Detail Paragraph

Paragraphs 3 and 4 of your IELTS map essay are where you include more detailed information. In paragraph 3, you should give evidence to support your first 1or 2 key features.

In the case of our main features, 1 and 3 are closely related so we’ll write about these two together.

Here they are again:

And this is an example of what you could write:

Paragraph 3 :

The most notable change is the presence of housing in 2010 on the areas that were farmland back in 1930. New roads were constructed on this land and many residential properties built. In response to the considerable increase in population, the primary school was extended to around double the size of the previous building.

Step 6  – Write the 2nd Detail Paragraph

For the fourth and final paragraph, you do the same thing for your remaining key features. 

Here are the two we have left:

This is an example of what you could write:

Paragraph 4 :

Whilst the post office remained as a village amenity, the two shops that can be seen to the north-west of the school in 1930, no longer existed by 2010, having been replaced by houses. There also used to be an extensive property standing in its own large gardens situated to the south-east of the school. At some time between 1930 and 2010, this was extended and converted into a retirement home. This was another significant transformation for the village.

Here are the four paragraphs brought together to create our finished essay.

Finished IELTS Map Essay

This sample IELTS map essay is well over the minimum word limit so you can see that you don’t have space to include very much detail at all. That’s why it is essential to select just a couple of main features to write about.

Now use what you’ve learnt in this lesson to practice answering other IELTS map  questions. Start slowly at first and keep practicing until you can plan and write a complete essay in around 20 minutes.

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Ielts academic writing task 1 – all lessons.

IELTS Academic Writing  –  A summary of the test including important facts, test format & assessment.

Academic Writing Task 1  – The format, the 7 question types & sample questions, assessment & marking criteria.  All the key information you need to know.

Understanding Task 1 Questions  – How to quickly and easily analyse and understand IELTS Writing Task 2 questions.

How To Plan a Task 1 Essay  –  Discover  3 reasons why you must plan, the 4 simple steps of essay planning and learn a simple 4 part essay structure.

Vocabulary for Task 1 Essays  –  Learn key vocabulary for a high-scoring essay. Word lists & a downloadable PDF.

Grammar for Task 1 Essays   – Essential grammar for Task 1 Academic essays including, verb tenses, key sentence structures, articles & prepositions.

The 7 Question Types:

Click the links below for a step-by-step lesson on each type of Task 1 question.

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• IELTS Maps Essays
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MAPS ESSAY EXAMPLES

IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic Maps Essay Examples

View High Band Score Examples Of IELTS Writing Task 1Academic Maps Essays.

IELTS Writing Task 1 – Maps Example Essay 4

IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic map essay example that is a band score 8.  The question is: The map below shows the changes in an American town between 1948 and 2010. Take a look at the sample answer.

IELTS Writing Task 1 – Maps Example Essay 3

IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic map essay example that is a band score 8.  The question is: The map below is of the town of Garlsdon. A new supermarket (S) is planned for the town. The map shows two possible sites for the supermarket. Take a look at the sample answer.

IELTS Writing Task 1 – Maps Example Essay 2

IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic map essay example that is a band score 8.  The question is: The diagram shows the proposed changes to Foster road. Write a 150-word report describing the proposed changes for a local committee. Take a look at the sample answer.

IELTS Writing Task 1 – Maps Example Essay 1

IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic map essay example that is a band score 8.  The question is: The two maps below show an island, before and after the construction of some tourist facilities. Take a look at the sample answer.

Essay on Earth

500 words essay on earth.

The earth is the planet that we live on and it is the fifth-largest planet. It is positioned in third place from the Sun. This essay on earth will help you learn all about it in detail. Our earth is the only planet that can sustain humans and other living species. The vital substances such as air, water, and land make it possible.

All About Essay on Earth

The rocks make up the earth that has been around for billions of years. Similarly, water also makes up the earth. In fact, water covers 70% of the surface. It includes the oceans that you see, the rivers, the sea and more.

Thus, the remaining 30% is covered with land. The earth moves around the sun in an orbit and takes around 364 days plus 6 hours to complete one round around it. Thus, we refer to it as a year.

Just like revolution, the earth also rotates on its axis within 24 hours that we refer to as a solar day. When rotation is happening, some of the places on the planet face the sun while the others hide from it.

As a result, we get day and night. There are three layers on the earth which we know as the core, mantle and crust. The core is the centre of the earth that is usually very hot. Further, we have the crust that is the outer layer. Finally, between the core and crust, we have the mantle i.e. the middle part.

The layer that we live on is the outer one with the rocks. Earth is home to not just humans but millions of other plants and species. The water and air on the earth make it possible for life to sustain. As the earth is the only livable planet, we must protect it at all costs.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

There is No Planet B

The human impact on the planet earth is very dangerous. Through this essay on earth, we wish to make people aware of protecting the earth. There is no balance with nature as human activities are hampering the earth.

Needless to say, we are responsible for the climate crisis that is happening right now. Climate change is getting worse and we need to start getting serious about it. It has a direct impact on our food, air, education, water, and more.

The rising temperature and natural disasters are clear warning signs. Therefore, we need to come together to save the earth and leave a better planet for our future generations.

Being ignorant is not an option anymore. We must spread awareness about the crisis and take preventive measures to protect the earth. We must all plant more trees and avoid using non-biodegradable products.

Further, it is vital to choose sustainable options and use reusable alternatives. We must save the earth to save our future. There is no Planet B and we must start acting like it accordingly.

Conclusion of Essay on Earth

All in all, we must work together to plant more trees and avoid using plastic. It is also important to limit the use of non-renewable resources to give our future generations a better planet.

FAQ on Essay on Earth

Question 1: What is the earth for kids?

Answer 1: Earth is the third farthest planet from the sun. It is bright and bluish in appearance when we see it from outer space. Water covers 70% of the earth while land covers 30%. Moreover, the earth is the only planet that can sustain life.

Question 2: How can we protect the earth?

Answer 2: We can protect the earth by limiting the use of non-renewable resources. Further, we must not waste water and avoid using plastic.

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The Waldseemüller Map: Charting the New World

Two obscure 16th-century German scholars named the American continent and changed the way people thought about the world

Toby Lester

It was a curious little book. When a few copies began resurfacing, in the 18th century, nobody knew what to make of it. One hundred and three pages long and written in Latin, it announced itself on its title page as follows:

INTRODUCTION TO COSMOGRAPHY WITH CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY NECESSARY FOR THIS MATTER

ADDITIONALLY, THE FOUR VOYAGES OF AMERIGO VESPUCCI

A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE WORLD ON BOTH A GLOBE AND A FLAT SURFACE WITH THE INSERTION OF THOSE LANDS UNKNOWN TO PTOLEMY DISCOVERED BY RECENT MEN

The book—known today as the Cosmographiae Introductio , or Introduction to Cosmography —listed no author. But a printer's mark recorded that it had been published in 1507, in St. Dié, a town in eastern France some 60 miles southwest of Strasbourg, in the Vosges Mountains of Lorraine.

The word "cosmography" isn't used much today, but educated readers in 1507 knew what it meant: the study of the known world and its place in the cosmos. The author of the Introduction to Cosmo­graphy laid out the organization of the cosmos as it had been described for more than 1,000 years: the Earth sat motionless at the center, surrounded by a set of giant revolving concentric spheres. The Moon, the Sun and the planets each had their own sphere, and beyond them was the firmament, a single sphere studded with all of the stars. Each of these spheres wheeled grandly around the Earth at its own pace, in a never-ending celestial procession.

All of this was delivered in the dry manner of a textbook. But near the end, in a chapter devoted to the makeup of the Earth, the author elbowed his way onto the page and made an oddly personal announcement. It came just after he had introduced readers to Asia, Africa and Europe—the three parts of the world known to Europeans since antiquity. "These parts," he wrote, "have in fact now been more widely explored, and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be heard in what follows). Since both Asia and Africa received their names from women, I do not see why anyone should rightly prevent this [new part] from being called Amerigen—the land of Amerigo, as it were—or America, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of perceptive character."

How strange. With no fanfare, near the end of a minor Latin treatise on cosmography, a nameless 16th-century author briefly stepped out of obscurity to give America its name—and then disappeared again.

Those who began studying the book soon noticed something else mysterious. In an easy-to-miss paragraph printed on the back of a foldout diagram, the author wrote, "The purpose of this little book is to write a sort of introduction to the whole world that we have depicted on a globe and on a flat surface. The globe, certainly, I have limited in size. But the map is larger."

Various remarks made in passing throughout the book implied that this map was extraordinary. It had been printed on several sheets, the author noted, suggesting that it was unusually large. It had been based on several sources: a brand-new letter by Amerigo Vespucci (included in the Introduction to Cosmography ); the work of the second-century Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy; and charts of the regions of the western Atlantic newly explored by Vespucci, Columbus and others. Most significant, it depicted the New World in a dramatically new way. "It is found," the author wrote, "to be surrounded on all sides by the ocean."

This was an astonishing statement. Histories of New World discovery have long told us that it was only in 1513—after Vasco Núñez de Balboa had first caught sight of the Pacific by looking west from a mountain peak in Panama—that Europeans began to conceive of the New World as something other than a part of Asia. And it was only after 1520, once Magellan had rounded the tip of South America and sailed into the Pacific, that Europeans were thought to have confirmed the continental nature of the New World. And yet here, in a book published in 1507, were references to a large world map that showed a new, fourth part of the world and called it America.

The references were tantalizing, but for those studying the Introduction to Cosmography in the 19th century, there was an obvious problem. The book contained no such map.

Scholars and collectors alike began to search for it, and by the 1890s, as the 400th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage approached, the search had become a quest for the cartographical Holy Grail. "No lost maps have ever been sought for so diligently as these," Britain's Geographical Journal declared at the turn of the century, referring both to the large map and the globe. But nothing turned up. In 1896, the historian of discovery John Boyd Thacher simply threw up his hands. "The mystery of the map," he wrote, "is a mystery still."

On March 4, 1493, seeking refuge from heavy seas, a storm-battered caravel flying the Spanish flag limped into Portugal's Tagus River estuary. In command was one Christoforo Colombo, a Genoese sailor destined to become better known by his Latinized name, Christopher Columbus. After finding a suitable anchorage site, Columbus dispatched a letter to his sponsors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, reporting in exultation that after a 33-day crossing he had reached the Indies, a vast archipelago on the eastern outskirts of Asia.

The Spanish sovereigns greeted the news with excitement and pride, though neither they nor anybody else initially assumed that Columbus had done anything revolutionary. European sailors had been discovering new islands in the Atlantic for more than a century—the Canaries, the Madeiras, the Azores, the Cape Verde islands. People had good reason, based on the dazzling variety of islands that dotted the oceans of medieval maps, to assume that many more remained to be found.

Some people assumed that Columbus had found nothing more than a few new Canary Islands. Even if Columbus had reached the Indies, that didn't mean he had expanded Europe's geographical horizons. By sailing west to what appeared to be the Indies (but in actuality were the islands of the Caribbean), he had confirmed an ancient theory that nothing but a small ocean separated Europe from Asia. Columbus had closed a geographical circle, it seemed—making the world smaller, not larger.

But the world began to expand again in the early 1500s. The news first reached most Europeans in letters by Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine merchant who had taken part in at least two voyages across the Atlantic, one sponsored by Spain, the other by Portugal, and had sailed along a giant continental landmass that appeared on no maps of the time. What was sensational, even mind-blowing, about this newly discovered land was that it stretched thousands of miles beyond the Equator to the south . Printers in Florence jumped at the chance to publicize the news, and in late 1502 or early 1503 they printed a doctored version of one of Vespucci's letters, under the title Mundus Novus , or New World , in which he appeared to say that he'd discovered a new continent. The work quickly became a best seller.

"In the past," it began, "I have written to you in rather ample detail about my return from those new re­gions...and which can be called a new world, since our ancestors had no knowledge of them, and they are entirely new matter to those who hear about them. Indeed, it surpasses the opinion of our ancient authorities, since most of them assert that there is no continent south of the equator....[But] I have discovered a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous peoples and animals than in our Europe, or Asia or Africa."

This passage has been described as a watershed moment in European geographical thought—the moment at which a European first became aware that the New World was distinct from Asia. But "new world" didn't necessarily mean then what it means today. Europeans used it regularly to describe any part of the known world that they had not previously visited or seen described. In fact, in another letter, unambiguously attributed to Vespucci, he made clear where he thought he had been on his voyages. "We concluded," he wrote, "that this was continental land—which I esteem to be bounded by the eastern part of Asia."

In 1504 or so, a copy of the New World letter fell into the hands of an Alsatian scholar and poet named Matthias Ringmann. Then in his early 20s, Ringmann taught school and worked as a proofreader at a small printing press in Strasbourg, but he had a side interest in classical geography—specifically, the work of Ptolemy. In a work known as the Geography , Ptolemy had explained how to map the world in degrees of latitude and longitude, a system he had used to stitch together a comprehensive picture of the world as it was known in antiquity. His maps depicted most of Europe, the northern half of Africa and the western half of Asia, but they didn't, of course, include all the parts of Asia visited by Marco Polo in the 13th century, or the parts of southern Africa discovered by the Portuguese in the latter half of the 15th century.

When Ringmann came across the New World letter, he was immersed in a careful study of Ptolemy's Geography , and he recognized that Vespucci, unlike Columbus, appeared to have sailed south right off the edge of the world that Ptolemy had mapped. Thrilled, Ringmann printed his own version of the New World letter in 1505—and to emphasize the southness of Vespucci's discovery, he changed the work's title from New World to On the Southern Shore Recently Discovered by the King of Portugal , referring to Vespucci's sponsor, King Manuel.

Not long afterward, Ringmann teamed up with a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller to prepare a new edition of Ptolemy's Geography . Sponsored by René II, the Duke of Lorraine, Ringmann and Waldseemüller set up shop in the little French town of St. Dié, in the mountains just southwest of Strasbourg. Working as part of a small group of humanists and printers known as the Gymnasium Vosagense, the pair developed an ambitious plan. Their edition would include not only 27 definitive maps of the ancient world, as Ptolemy had described it, but also 20 maps showing the discoveries of modern Europeans, all drawn according to the principles laid out in the Geography —a historical first.

Duke René seems to have been instrumental in inspiring this leap. From unknown contacts he had received yet another Vespucci letter, also falsified, describing his voyages and at least one nautical chart depicting the new coastlines explored to date by the Portuguese. The letter and the chart confirmed to Ringmann and Waldseemüller that Vespucci had indeed discovered a huge unknown land across the ocean to the west, in the Southern Hemisphere.

What happened next is unclear. At some time in 1505 or 1506, Ringmann and Waldseemüller decided that the land Vespucci had explored was not a part of Asia. Instead, they concluded that it must be a new, fourth part of the world.

Temporarily setting aside their work on their Ptolemy atlas, Ringmann and Waldseemüller threw themselves into the production of a grand new map that would introduce Europe to this new idea of a four-part world. The map would span 12 separate sheets, printed from carefully carved wood blocks; when pasted together, the sheets would measure a stunning 4 1/2 by 8 feet—creating one of the largest printed maps, if not the largest, ever produced to that time. In April of 1507, they began printing the map, and would later report turning out 1,000 copies.

Much of what the map showed would have come as no surprise to Europeans familiar with geography. Its depiction of Europe and North Africa derived directly from Ptolemy; sub- Saharan Africa derived from recent Portuguese nautical charts; and Asia derived from the works of Ptolemy and Marco Polo. But on the left side of the map was something altogether new. Rising out of the formerly uncharted waters of the Atlantic, stretching almost from the map's top to its bottom, was a strange new landmass, long and thin and mostly blank—and there, written across what is known today as Brazil, was a strange new name: America.

Libraries today list Martin Waldseemüller as the author of the Introduction to Cosmography , but the book does not actually single him out as such. It includes opening dedications by both him and Ringmann, but these refer to the map, not the text—and Ringmann's dedication comes first. In fact, Ringmann's fingerprints are all over the work. The book's author, for instance, demonstrates a familiarity with ancient Greek—a language that Ringmann knew well but Waldseemüller did not. The author embellishes his writing with snatches of verse by Virgil, Ovid and other classical writers—a literary tic that characterizes all of Ringmann's writing. And the one contemporary writer mentioned in the book was a friend of Ringmann's.

Ringmann the writer, Waldsee­müller the mapmaker: the two men would team up in precisely this way in 1511, when Waldseemüller printed a grand map of Europe. Accompanying the map was a booklet titled Description of Europe , and in dedicating his map to Duke Antoine of Lorraine, Waldseemüller made clear who had written the book. "I humbly beg of you to accept with benevolence my work," he wrote, "with an explanatory summary prepared by Ringmann." He might just as well have been referring to the Introduction to Cosmography .

Why dwell on this arcane question of authorship? Because whoever wrote the Introduction to Cosmography was almost certainly the person who coined the name "America"—and here, too, the balance tilts in Ringmann's favor. The famous naming-of-America paragraph sounds a lot like Ringmann. He's known, for example, to have spent time mulling over the use of feminine names for concepts and places. "Why are all the virtues, the intellectual qualities and the sciences always symbolized as if they belonged to the feminine sex?" he would write in a 1511 essay. "Where does this custom spring from: a usage common not only to the pagan writers but also to the scholars of the church? It originated from the belief that knowledge is destined to be fertile of good works....Even the three parts of the old world received the name of women."

Ringmann reveals his hand in other ways. In both poetry and prose he regularly amused himself by making up words, by punning in different languages and by investing his writing with hidden meanings. The naming-of-America passage is rich in just this sort of wordplay, much of which requires a familiarity with Greek. The key to the whole passage, almost always overlooked, is the curious name Amerigen (which Ringmann quickly Latinizes and then feminizes to come up with America). To get Amerigen, Ringmann combined the name Amerigo with the Greek word gen, the accusative form of a word meaning "earth," and by doing so coined a name that means—as he himself explains—"land of Amerigo."

But the word yields other meanings. Gen can also mean "born" in Greek, and the word ameros can mean "new," making it possible to read Amerigen as not only "land of Amerigo" but also "born new"—a double-entendre that would have delighted Ringmann, and one that very nicely complements the idea of fertility that he associated with female names. The name may also contain a play on meros , a Greek word sometimes translated as "place." Here Amerigen becomes A-meri-gen, or "No-place-land"—not a bad way to describe a previously unnamed continent whose geography is still uncertain.

Copies of the Waldseemüller map began to appear at German universities in the decade after 1507; sketches of it and copies made by students and professors in Cologne, Tübingen, Leipzig and Vienna survive. The map clearly was getting around, as was the Introduction to Cosmography itself. The little book was reprinted several times and attracted acclaim across Europe, largely because of the long Vespucci letter.

What about Vespucci himself? Did he ever come across the map or the Introduction to Cosmography ? Did he ever learn that the New World had been named in his honor? The odds are that he did not. Neither the book nor the name is known to have made it to the Iberian Peninsula before he died, in Seville, in 1512. But both surfaced there soon afterward: the name America first appeared in Spain in a book printed in 1520, and Christopher Columbus' son Ferdinand, who lived in Spain, acquired a copy of the Introduction to Cosmography sometime before 1539. The Spanish didn't like the name, however. Believing that Vespucci had somehow named the New World after himself, usurping Columbus' rightful glory, they refused to put the name America on official maps and documents for two more centuries. But their cause was lost from the start. The name America, such a natural poetic counterpart to Asia, Africa and Europa, had filled a vacuum, and there was no going back, especially not after the young Gerardus Mercator, destined to become the century's most influential cartographer, decided that the whole of the New World, not just its southern part, should be so labeled. The two names he put on his 1538 world map are the ones we've used ever since: North America and South America.

Ringmann didn't have long to live after finishing the Introduction to Cosmography . By 1509 he was suffering from chest pains and exhaustion, probably from tuberculosis, and by the fall of 1511, not yet 30, he was dead. After Ringmann's death Waldseemüller continued to make maps, including at least three that depicted the New World, but never again did he depict it as surrounded by water, or call it America—more evidence that these ideas were Ringmann's. On one of his later maps, the Carta Marina of 1516—which identifies South America only as "Terra Nova"—Waldseemüller even issued a cryptic apology that seems to refer to his great 1507 map: "We will seem to you, reader, previously to have diligently presented and shown a representation of the world that was filled with error, wonder, and confusion.... As we have lately come to understand, our previous representation pleased very few people. Therefore, since true seekers of knowledge rarely color their words in confusing rhetoric, and do not embellish facts with charm but instead with a venerable abundance of simplicity, we must say that we cover our heads with a humble hood."

Waldseemüller produced no other maps after the Carta Marina, and some four years later, on March 16, 1520, in his mid-40s, he died—"dead without a will," a clerk would later write when recording the sale of his house in St. Dié.

During the decades that followed, copies of the 1507 map wore out or were discarded in favor of more up-to-date and better-printed maps, and by 1570 the map had all but vanished. One copy did survive, however. Sometime between 1515 and 1517, the Nuremberg mathematician and geographer Johannes Schöner acquired a copy and bound it into a beechwood-covered folio that he kept in his reference library. Between 1515 and 1520, Schöner studied the map carefully, but by the time he died, in 1545, he probably had not opened it in years. The map had begun its long sleep, which would last more than 350 years.

It was found again by accident, as happens so often with lost treasures. In the summer of 1901, freed from his teaching duties at Stella Matutina, a Jesuit boarding school in Feldkirch, Austria, Father Joseph Fischer set out for Germany. Balding, bespectacled and 44 years old, Fischer was a professor of history and geography. For seven years he had been haunting the public and private libraries of Europe in his spare time, hoping to find maps that showed evidence of the early Atlantic voyages of the Norsemen. This current trip was no exception. Earlier in the year, Fischer had received word that the impressive collection of maps and books at Wolfegg Castle, in southern Germany, included a rare 15th-century map that depicted Greenland in an unusual way. He had to travel only some 50 miles to reach Wolfegg, a tiny town in the rolling countryside just north of Austria and Switzerland, not far from Lake Constance. He reached the town on July 15, and upon his arrival at the castle, he would later recall, he was offered "a most friendly welcome and all the assistance that could be desired."

The map of Greenland turned out to be everything Fischer had hoped. As was his custom on research trips, after studying the map Fischer began a systematic search of the castle's entire collection. For two days he made his way through the inventory of maps and prints and spent hours immersed in the castle's rare books. And then, on July 17, his third day there, he walked over to the castle's south tower, where he had been told he would find a small second-floor garret containing what little he hadn't yet seen of the castle's collection.

The garret is a simple room. It's designed for storage, not show. Bookshelves line three of its walls from floor to ceiling, and two windows let in a cheery amount of sunlight. Wandering about the room and peering at the spines of the books on the shelves, Fischer soon came across a large folio with beechwood covers, bound together with finely tooled pigskin. Two Gothic brass clasps held the folio shut, and Fischer gently pried them open. On the inside cover he found a small bookplate, bearing the date 1515 and the name of the folio's original owner: Johannes Schöner. "Posterity," the inscription began, "Schöner gives this to you as an offering."

Fischer started leafing through the folio. To his amazement, he discovered that it contained not only a rare 1515 star chart engraved by the German artist Albrecht Dürer, but also two giant world maps. Fischer had never seen anything quite like them. In pristine condition, printed from intricately carved wood blocks, each one was made up of separate sheets that, if removed from the folio and assembled, would create maps approximately 4 1/2 by 8 feet in size.

Fischer began examining the first map in the folio. Its title, running in block letters across the bottom of the map, read, THE WHOLE WORLD ACCORDING TO THE TRADITION OF PTOLEMY AND THE VOYAGES OF AMERIGO VESPUCCI AND OTHERS. This language brought to mind the Introduction to Cosmography , a work Fischer knew well, as did the portraits of Ptolemy and Vespucci that he saw at the top of the map.

Could this be... the map? Fischer began to study it sheet by sheet. Its two center sheets, which showed Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East and western Asia, came straight from Ptolemy. Farther to the east, it presented the Far East as described by Marco Polo. Southern Africa reflected the nautical charts of the Portuguese.

It was an unusual mix of styles and sources: precisely the sort of synthesis, Fischer realized, that the Introduction to Cosmography had promised. But he began to get truly excited when he turned to the map's three western sheets. There, rising out of the sea and stretching from the top to bottom, was the New World, surrounded by water.

A legend at the bottom of the page corresponded verbatim to a paragraph in the Introduction to Cosmography . North America appeared on the top sheet, a runt version of its modern self. Just to the south lay a number of Caribbean islands, among them two big ones identified as Spagnolla and Isabella. A small legend read, "These islands were discovered by Columbus, an admiral of Genoa, at the command of the King of Spain." Moreover, the vast southern landmass stretching from above the Equator to the bottom of the map was labeled DISTANT UNKNOWN LAND. Another legend read THIS WHOLE REGION WAS DISCOVERED BY THE ORDER OF THE KING OF CASTILE. But what must have brought Fischer's heart to his mouth was what he saw on the bottom sheet: AMERICA.

The 1507 map! It had to be. Alone in the little garret in the tower of Wolfegg Castle, Father Fischer realized that he had discovered the most sought-after map of all time.

Fischer took the news of his discovery straight to his mentor, the renowned Innsbruck geographer Franz Ritter von Wieser. In the fall of 1901, after intense study, the two went public. The reception was ecstatic. "Geographical students in all parts of the world have awaited with the deepest interest details of this most important discovery," the Geographical Journal declared, breaking the news in a February 1902 essay, "but no one was probably prepared for the gigantic cartographical monster which Prof. Fischer has now awakened from so many centuries of peaceful slumber." On March 2 the New York Times followed suit: "There has lately been made in Europe one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of cartography," its report read.

Interest in the map grew. In 1907, the London-based bookseller Henry Newton Stevens Jr., a leading dealer in Americana, secured the rights to put the 1507 map up for sale during its 400th-anniversary year. Stevens offered it as a package with the other large Waldseemüller map—the Carta Marina of 1516, which had also been bound into Schöner's folio—for $300,000, or about $7 million in today's currency. But he found no takers. The 400th anniversary passed, two world wars and the cold war engulfed Europe, and the Waldseemüller map, left alone in its tower garret, went to sleep for another century.

Today, at last, the map is awake again—this time, it would appear, for good. In 2003, after years of negotiation with the owners of Wolfegg Castle and the German government, the Library of Congress acquired it for $10 million. On April 30, 2007, almost exactly 500 years after its making, German Chancellor Angela Merkel officially transferred the map to the United States. That December, the Library of Congress put it on permanent display in its grand Jefferson Building, where it is the centerpiece of an exhibit titled "Exploring the Early Americas."

As you move through it, you pass a variety of priceless cultural artifacts made in the pre-Columbian Americas, and a choice selection of original texts and maps dating from the period of first contact between the New World and the Old. Finally you arrive at an inner sanctum, and there, reunited with the Introduction to Cosmography , the Carta Marina and a few other select geographical treasures, is the Waldseemüller map. The room is quiet, the lighting dim. To study the map you have to move close and peer carefully through the glass—and when you do, it begins to tell its stories.

Adapted from The Fourth Part of the World , by Toby Lester. © 2009 Toby Lester. Published by the Free Press. Reproduced with permission.

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Research Paper On Poland History

History of Poland

Poland or officially, the Republic of Poland, is located in central Europe. It shares borders with Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Belarus and Ukraine. It has a population of 38.4 million people and the country is divided into 16 administrative units. The World War II was a grim event for Poland as millions of Polish people perished in this war.

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Essay on Our World

Students are often asked to write an essay on Our World in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Our World

What is our world.

Our world is the place where we live. It is a big ball floating in space. It has land, water, air, and many kinds of plants and animals. People live all over the world in different countries.

The Land and Seas

The world has seven big pieces of land called continents. Between these lands are oceans. The land has mountains, valleys, and flat areas. The seas are deep and full of fish and other sea creatures.

Weather and Climate

Our world has different kinds of weather. Some places are hot, some are cold. Rain, snow, and sunshine happen because of the weather. Climate is what the weather is like over a long time.

People and Cultures

Many people live on Earth. They speak different languages and have different traditions. This is called culture. People eat different foods, wear different clothes, and celebrate different festivals.

Animals and Plants

Our world has many animals and plants. Some live in forests, some in deserts, and some in the water. They all need each other to live and grow. This is called nature.

250 Words Essay on Our World

Our beautiful planet.

Our world is a wonderful place. It is full of different lands, waters, and skies. The Earth is the third planet from the sun and the only place we know that has life. It has seven big land parts called continents and five large water parts called oceans.

The Variety of Life

Many types of living things call Earth their home. From tiny bugs to huge whales, life is everywhere. Trees and plants grow in many places and help make the air we breathe. Animals live on land, in water, and in the air. People live all over the world in cities, towns, and villages.

The Changing Seasons

Our world has seasons because our planet tilts as it goes around the sun. Some places have four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each season has its own kind of weather and changes in nature. In spring, flowers bloom. Summer brings warmth and sunshine. Fall makes leaves change color. Winter covers many places with snow.

Our Shared Home

Earth is a shared home for all of us. We must take care of it. This means not littering, recycling, and saving water. Everyone can help, even kids. By taking care of our world, we make sure it stays beautiful and safe for all living things, including us, for a very long time.

500 Words Essay on Our World

Our world is a wonderful place filled with all sorts of amazing things. It’s like a giant home that we all share with people, animals, plants, and many other living things. The world has different parts, like the land where we walk and build houses, the sky where birds fly and clouds float, and the oceans that have fish and other sea creatures.

The land is split into parts called continents, and each one has its own special features. For example, Africa has vast deserts and amazing wildlife, while Europe is known for its rich history and beautiful cities. No matter where you are on land, there’s always something new and exciting to see.

The Blue Oceans

Our planet is mostly covered by water, which is why it looks blue from space. The oceans are home to thousands of creatures, from tiny fish to huge whales. The water in the oceans also helps to keep our world’s climate just right, so it’s not too hot or too cold. We also use the oceans to travel from one place to another and to find food.

The Sky Above Us

When we look up, we see the sky. During the day, it’s bright because of the sun, which gives us light and warmth. At night, the sky changes and becomes dark, but it’s still beautiful with the moon and stars. The sky also gives us weather, which can be sunny, rainy, or snowy.

Living Things

Our world is full of life. People live in different places, speak various languages, and have their own ways of doing things. Animals can be found everywhere, from the hot savannas of Africa to the cold Arctic. Plants grow all over too, giving us food to eat and air to breathe.

Taking Care of Our World

It’s important to take care of our world because it’s the only one we have. We need to make sure that we don’t harm the environment. This means not polluting the air and water, and not cutting down too many trees. We should also try to use less energy by doing simple things like turning off lights when we’re not using them.

Learning and Exploring

There’s so much to learn about our world. By reading books, going to school, and talking to different people, we can learn about other cultures and places. Exploring can be as simple as visiting a park near your home or as big as traveling to another country.

Our world is an amazing place that’s full of wonders. From the deep blue oceans to the vast continents, and the sky above, there’s always something new to discover. It’s important to remember that we need to take care of our planet so it stays beautiful and healthy. By learning and exploring, we can all help to make sure our world is a great place for everyone.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Why Taiwan Was So Prepared for a Powerful Earthquake

Decades of learning from disasters, tightening building codes and increasing public awareness may have helped its people better weather strong quakes.

Search-and-rescue teams recover a body from a leaning building in Hualien, Taiwan. Thanks to improvements in building codes after past earthquakes, many structures withstood Wednesday’s quake. Credit...

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By Chris Buckley ,  Meaghan Tobin and Siyi Zhao

Photographs by Lam Yik Fei

Chris Buckley reported from the city of Hualien, Meaghan Tobin from Taipei, in Taiwan.

• April 4, 2024

When the largest earthquake in Taiwan in half a century struck off its east coast, the buildings in the closest city, Hualien, swayed and rocked. As more than 300 aftershocks rocked the island over the next 24 hours to Thursday morning, the buildings shook again and again.

But for the most part, they stood.

Even the two buildings that suffered the most damage remained largely intact, allowing residents to climb to safety out the windows of upper stories. One of them, the rounded, red brick Uranus Building, which leaned precariously after its first floors collapsed, was mostly drawing curious onlookers.

The building is a reminder of how much Taiwan has prepared for disasters like the magnitude-7.4 earthquake that jolted the island on Wednesday. Perhaps because of improvements in building codes, greater public awareness and highly trained search-and-rescue operations — and, likely, a dose of good luck — the casualty figures were relatively low. By Thursday, 10 people had died and more than 1,000 others were injured. Several dozen were missing.

“Similar level earthquakes in other societies have killed far more people,” said Daniel Aldrich , a director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University. Of Taiwan, he added: “And most of these deaths, it seems, have come from rock slides and boulders, rather than building collapses.”

Across the island, rail traffic had resumed by Thursday, including trains to Hualien. Workers who had been stuck in a rock quarry were lifted out by helicopter. Roads were slowly being repaired. Hundreds of people were stranded at a hotel near a national park because of a blocked road, but they were visited by rescuers and medics.

On Thursday in Hualien city, the area around the Uranus Building was sealed off, while construction workers tried to prevent the leaning structure from toppling completely. First they placed three-legged concrete blocks that resembled giant Lego pieces in front of the building, and then they piled dirt and rocks on top of those blocks with excavators.

“We came to see for ourselves how serious it was, why it has tilted,” said Chang Mei-chu, 66, a retiree who rode a scooter with her husband Lai Yung-chi, 72, to the building on Thursday. Mr. Lai said he was a retired builder who used to install power and water pipes in buildings, and so he knew about building standards. The couple’s apartment, near Hualien’s train station, had not been badly damaged, he said.

“I wasn’t worried about our building, because I know they paid attention to earthquake resistance when building it. I watched them pour the cement to make sure,” Mr. Lai said. “There have been improvements. After each earthquake, they raise the standards some more.”

It was possible to walk for city blocks without seeing clear signs of the powerful earthquake. Many buildings remained intact, some of them old and weather-worn; others modern, multistory concrete-and-glass structures. Shops were open, selling coffee, ice cream and betel nuts. Next to the Uranus Building, a popular night market with food stalls offering fried seafood, dumplings and sweets was up and running by Thursday evening.

Earthquakes are unavoidable in Taiwan, which sits on multiple active faults. Decades of work learning from other disasters, implementing strict building codes and increasing public awareness have gone into helping its people weather frequent strong quakes.

Not far from the Uranus Building, for example, officials had inspected a building with cracked pillars and concluded that it was dangerous to stay in. Residents were given 15 minutes to dash inside and retrieve as many belongings as they could. Some ran out with computers, while others threw bags of clothes out of windows onto the street, which was also still littered with broken glass and cement fragments from the quake.

One of its residents, Chen Ching-ming, a preacher at a church next door, said he thought the building might be torn down. He was able to salvage a TV and some bedding, which now sat on the sidewalk, and was preparing to go back in for more. “I’ll lose a lot of valuable things — a fridge, a microwave, a washing machine,” he said. “All gone.”

Requirements for earthquake resistance have been built into Taiwan’s building codes since 1974. In the decades since, the writers of Taiwan’s building code also applied lessons learned from other major earthquakes around the world, including in Mexico and Los Angeles, to strengthen Taiwan’s code.

After more than 2,400 people were killed and at least 10,000 others injured during the Chi-Chi quake of 1999, thousands of buildings built before the quake were reviewed and reinforced. After another strong quake in 2018 in Hualien, the government ordered a new round of building inspections. Since then, multiple updates to the building code have been released.

“We have retrofitted more than 10,000 school buildings in the last 20 years,” said Chung-Che Chou, the director general of the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taipei.

The government had also helped reinforce private apartment buildings over the past six years by adding new steel braces and increasing column and beam sizes, Dr. Chou said. Not far from the buildings that partially collapsed in Hualien, some of the older buildings that had been retrofitted in this way survived Wednesday’s quake, he said.

The result of all this is that even Taiwan’s tallest skyscrapers can withstand regular seismic jolts. The capital city’s most iconic building, Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world, was engineered to stand through typhoon winds and frequent quakes. Still, some experts say that more needs to be done to either strengthen or demolish structures that don’t meet standards, and such calls have grown louder in the wake of the latest earthquake.

Taiwan has another major reason to protect its infrastructure: It is home to the majority of production for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest maker of advanced computer chips. The supply chain for electronics from smartphones to cars to fighter jets rests on the output of TSMC’s factories, which make these chips in facilities that cost billions of dollars to build.

The 1999 quake also prompted TSMC to take extra steps to insulate its factories from earthquake damage. The company made major structural adjustments and adopted new technologies like early warning systems. When another large quake struck the southern city of Kaohsiung in February 2016, TSMC’s two nearby factories survived without structural damage.

Taiwan has made strides in its response to disasters, experts say. In the first 24 hours after the quake, rescuers freed hundreds of people who were trapped in cars in between rockfalls on the highway and stranded on mountain ledges in rock quarries.

“After years of hard work on capacity building, the overall performance of the island has improved significantly,” said Bruce Wong, an emergency management consultant in Hong Kong. Taiwan’s rescue teams have come to specialize in complex efforts, he said, and it has also been able to tap the skills of trained volunteers.

Taiwan’s resilience also stems from a strong civil society that is involved in public preparedness for disasters.

Ou Chi-hu, a member of a group of Taiwanese military veterans, was helping distribute water and other supplies at a school that was serving as a shelter for displaced residents in Hualien. He said that people had learned from the 1999 earthquake how to be more prepared.

“They know to shelter in a corner of the room or somewhere else safer,” he said. Many residents also keep a bag of essentials next to their beds, and own fire extinguishers, he added.

Around him, a dozen or so other charities and groups were offering residents food, money, counseling and childcare. The Tzu Chi Foundation, a large Taiwanese Buddhist charity, provided tents for families to use inside the school hall so they could have more privacy. Huang Yu-chi, a disaster relief manager with the foundation, said nonprofits had learned from earlier disasters.

“Now we’re more systematic and have a better idea of disaster prevention,” Mr. Huang said.

Mike Ives contributed reporting from Seoul.

Chris Buckley , the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues. More about Chris Buckley

Meaghan Tobin is a technology correspondent for The Times based in Taipei, covering business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China. More about Meaghan Tobin

Siyi Zhao is a reporter and researcher who covers news in mainland China for The Times in Seoul. More about Siyi Zhao

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Vălenii de Munte, Romania. Photo by Adriana Duduleanu/Getty

How to make a map of smell

We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal strangely, no.

by Jason Castro   + BIO

What is the distance between the scent of a rose and the odour of camphor? Are floral smells perpendicular to smoky ones? Is the geometry of ‘odour space’ Euclidean, following the rules about lines, shapes and angles that decorate countless high-school chalkboards? To many, these will seem like either unserious questions or, less charitably, meaningless ones. Geometry is logic made visible, after all; the business of drawing unassailable conclusions from clearly stated axioms. And odour is, let’s be honest, a bit too vague and vaporous for any of that. The folksy idea of smell as the blunted and structureless sense is at least as old as Plato, and I have to confess that, even as an olfactory researcher, I sometimes feel like I’m studying the Pluto of the sensory systems – a shadowy, out-there iceball on a weird orbit.

In recent years, however, things have changed dramatically, and understanding what one might call ‘the geometry of smell’ is a field that now enlists task forces of neuroscientists working together with mathematically trained theorists and artificial intelligence (AI) experts. While we’re notoriously bad at intuiting how our minds organise phenomena like colours and smells, machines offer a potential route for outsourcing introspection, and doing it with rigour. They can be trained to mimic human performance on perceptual tasks, and they make available the internal representations they use to do this – the abstract spaces and coordinate frames in which the ineffable stuff of thought lives.

The recent publication of an unprecedentedly comprehensive and accurate ‘odour map’ in the journal Science is a declaration of this new paradigm for smell. In the same way that a map of the United States tells you that Buffalo is a bit closer to Detroit than to Boston, the odour map can tell you that the smell of lily is closer to grape than it is to cabbage. That much may seem obvious, but the real magic comes from the fact that any arbitrary chemical’s precise location on the odour map can be calculated. From having only a few facts on hand about a chemical, we can compute that it smells, say, 13 per cent closer to lily than to grape. By analogy, it would be something like having a formula that takes in information about an unknown city’s population size and soil composition, and spits out, correctly, the exact longitude and latitude of Philadelphia.

A map like this isn’t just an accurate, laboriously assembled catalogue of relative locations and perceptual similarities. It’s something much more powerful: a set of derived rules for calculating which odour goes where. Knowing these rules, you can apply them not just to a small handful of chemicals, but to the entire world of odorous chemicals. You can see where the most densely populated areas are, and where the ‘state lines’ are in the world of smells. This is a prospect that dazzles the world’s perfumers and gourmands, and anyone else interested in the notoriously difficult and fickle task of predicting how something will smell from its chemical properties.

But, even more than this, it also raises intriguing philosophical questions about what our noses even think chemicals are , and what it means to measure their similarity. What is it about the world that our noses are ‘mapping’, in other words, when they put lily close to grape? Are they latching on to some single molecular property like a chemical’s weight or size? Are they calculating some kind of average fingerprint across a variety of such properties? Or are they doing something different altogether, like locating molecules in a space of common metabolic reactions?

Interestingly, the last of these seems to be more the case. The perceptual yardstick our brains use to measure, organise and compare smells may ultimately have less to do with what a chemist could discover from running a sample, and more to do with our deep relational histories with the world. Our noses may turn out to be geometers not of the world’s fixed and invariant properties , but of its evolved and Earthly processes .

There is something poetic in the idea that, in order to crack the ‘ancient sense’, the crude, most scientifically incorrigible sense, we’ve had to wait for machine intelligence. This is in contrast with the other sensory modalities, which began to share their secrets in the 17th century to wizard-like seers bearing prisms and tuning forks.

T he basic investigative template for ‘geometrising’ the senses was developed by Isaac Newton in the late 1600s. In his iconic experiments in optics, performed in his Cambridge parlour, he uncovered a relationship between the colour of light and its refrangibility – the degree to which it was bent by a simple prism. The mere description of this fact would have ranked among the most important scientific discoveries ever, but Newton went a step further, and fit his observations to a geometric model. Wrapping the seven primary colours of the visible spectrum along the circumference of a circle (see figure below), he produced the first ‘chromaticity diagram’ – a forerunner of the colour wheels that we use to organise our thinking about colours and their mixtures.

The circle, for Newton, was not just some poetic flourish, but a commitment to a very particular way of encoding colour’s properties. It was an invitation to pull out our protractors and rulers, and make calculations about how colours relate to one another, and combine into mixtures. The components of a three-part mixture of fully saturated red, yellow and green, for example, would be represented as the three vertices of a triangle, with each vertex pinned on the colour circle’s circumference at the appropriately labelled point. The centre of mass of this triangle is a single point in the circle’s interior, and specifies the hue and saturation of the resultant mixture. In the case of mixing all seven primary colours to an equal degree, the centre of mass of the seven-pointed figure would be at the exact centre of the circle, which Newton designated as white.

There is of course a lot more to colour vision than what Newton described in his Opticks (1704), and even his contemporaries noted flaws and shortcomings in his model. Nevertheless, his achievement still encapsulates the ambition of the classical paradigm for sensory mapping. It seeks a mathematical correspondence between measurable and intrinsic properties of the natural world (like light’s refrangibility, which we now attribute to wavelength), and phenomenological qualities of mind (like colour, pitch and smell). There is something like a Pythagorean, the-world-is-mathematics mysticism to the endeavour.

The basic logic of pitch perception was also cracked similarly, with simple tools like tuning forks and spherical ‘resonators’ used to produce pure tones of a single frequency, from which rules about consonant pitch combination could be derived. Pitch perception as a whole is fantastically complex but, in broad strokes, our entire auditory system – from the tiny coiled-up cochlea of our inner ear, to the auditory portions of our sensory cortex – is built on the basic principle of organising low, middle and high tones like the keys of a piano. Striking neighbouring notes on a piano will also ‘strike’ neighbouring neurons in your brain.

S mell could never be parsed with a tool as fundamental as a tuning fork, and it never got its Newton, but it was not for a lack of people trying to follow his lead as a geometer of the senses. The idea that there might exist a small number of ‘odour primaries’ that, by analogy to the prismatic colours, organised the world of smells has occurred to many, and the search for these continued in earnest well into the 20th century.

An early and influential classification scheme for odours by the famed botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, in 1756, included seven types: aromatic, fragrant, ambrosial (musky), alliaceous (garlic), hircine (goaty), repulsive, and nauseous. A contemporary of Linnaeus’s, Albrecht von Haller, was a bit stingier with his adjectives, and proposed a more austere scheme of three basic odour types: sweet/ambrosiac, stench, and intermediate. One senses that ‘intermediate’ is doing a lot of work here, but perhaps Haller adopted the idea out of a conviction that all odours could be squeezed onto a line, and organised along a single axis. If these early odour taxonomies sound like they have a rather ad-hoc feel to them, it’s because they were the fruit of introspection rather than careful data collection and measurement. Basically, these guys were winging it.

In fairness though, it wasn’t (and honestly still isn’t) really obvious how to not wing it. With all due deference to one of history’s geniuses, Newton had it easy. He could create essentially any visible colour at will by rotating a few pieces of polished glass in a slit of sunlight. The stimulus just showed up, unasked for, when the sun rose, and in a form that was virtually readymade for scientific interrogation. Odours are far less workable. If Newton had wanted to study odour, he would have had to start by grabbing some plants, maybe some spoiled food, a crust of bread, a swab from his chamber pot if he was feeling audacious and naughty. This doesn’t exactly scream ‘Newtonian’. The critical missing abstraction of ‘the chemical compound’ as the basic property-bearing token of smell was still far off, as were the techniques for synthesising pure chemicals for testing purposes.

Henning proposed an odour prism that organised smells into flowery, fruity, resinous, spicy, burnt, and foul

But even if these impediments could have been, miraculously, dealt with, there are additional, deeper complications that make the problem of smell harder than the problem of colour. These boil down to the fact that chemicals aren’t smoothly graded variations of a single underlying phenomenon, like light is. Rather, they’re collections of the world’s particulate stuff. And, ultimately, there’s just a lot of stuff and kinds of stuff out there, making it highly unlikely that some single chemical property – a molecular analogue of light’s refrangibility – will capture all the meaningful variability in the wild and woolly world of chemicals. If there was a map from chemical features to odour qualities, it would have to involve something more complicated than a circle, with more places – in fact, more dimensions – to distribute the chemicals.

Perhaps something like a prism would do? If we take it as a loose geometric metaphor, it seems to have some virtues over the circle, and is reaching in the right direction. The prism has faces and facets on different planes, which could be used for organising molecules according to diverse criteria like atom type or chemical group. Its sharp points suggest areas of aggregation and separation in chemical space that emphasise odour’s discrete categories versus light’s continua.

For the German scholar of smell Hans Henning, this was more than just metaphor. In his book Der Geruch (‘Smell’) (1916), he proposed the idea of an abstract odour prism that organised the world of smells, with its six pointy vertices corresponding to what he considered to be the olfactory primaries: flowery, fruity, resinous, spicy, burnt, and foul. Even though there had been considerable developments that allowed for better quantification of how humans perceive odour, and better physical descriptions of odour stimuli, the field was not ready for a proposal like Henning’s. He was, by all accounts, one of those scientists, described by the US neurobiologist Gordon Shepherd, ‘whose imaginations cannot resist the temptation to put together an underconstrained theory.’ Also, Henning didn’t do himself any favours in forcefully promoting his work, and swiping at influential icons of the field like the Dutch scientist Hendrik Zwaardemaker, who had pioneered the use of olfactometers – steam-punky contraptions of valves and tubing that delivered controlled doses of odour. An early reviewer who otherwise spoke very positively of Henning’s book still felt compelled to refer to him, on the record, as ‘a ruthless – in fact very uncivil – iconoclast.’ Henning had bulldozed into the discussion a strongly geometric conception of odour that was inspired and influential but, ultimately, a house of cards.

To Henning’s credit, despite his theory’s shakiness, it was specific enough to be testable, and the invitation was taken up by several, including the psychologist Malcolm Macdonald. In a comprehensive and devastating critique from 1922 that ended with a long section entitled ‘Logical and Factual Inadequacies of Henning’s Theory’, Macdonald investigated whether there was really a prism behind things in the world of smells. Using judgments of relative odour similarity as a proxy for distance (where ‘similar smelling’ = ‘close’), he performed critical perceptual reality-checks, like asking whether chemicals taken from opposite ends of the long prism diagonal smelled the least similar. When you say that odour is a prism, you should expect that your colleagues will pull out their calculators and check.

‘Odour maps’ gave a bird’s eye view of how the human nose organises the world of chemicals

What, exactly, did Henning get wrong? The question is a bit tongue-in-cheek, because it’s not clear that there’s anything he got right. Still, if we want to be charitable, we might say he was seduced by a Lego-like view of molecules that organic chemists were developing at the time. They saw a modular system in which organic molecules were assembled from a small library of so-called functional groups, resulting in motifs of a few atoms arranged in stereotyped ways. In addition to haunting the dreams of hopeful premeds everywhere, these functional groups were thought to confer a molecule’s specific properties, and define its basic reactivity. In Henning’s view, it was perfectly sensible that the same functional groups should also confer the primary odours he had identified. Indeed, there is something enticing about the idea that the chemist’s alphabet for organic molecules might also be the nose’s alphabet for smell. Ultimately, however, nature chose not to oblige. Few olfactory neuroscientists would claim that functional group is unimportant for determining odour quality, but it is clearly not the whole story.

In modern machine-learning parlance, we might say that Henning didn’t have a rich enough feature set for representing smells. In committing to functional group as his basic smell alphabet, he implicitly adopted a specific idea of what a molecule fundamentally is, and discarded other potentially useful features that could serve as the grist for odour prediction. A molecule, after all, isn’t just a list of the Lego blocks from which it’s made. It’s also a springy little thing that spins and vibrates, and chemists can ring it like a tiny molecular bell to listen for clues about its structure. It is also a list of descriptive attributes like ‘strongly acidic’, or ‘non-polar’ (having symmetrically distributed charges). And it’s also a lump of just so much stuff, maybe a bit bulkier here, and more stretched-out there.

Instead of doing what Henning did, seizing on one characteristic in advance, the best way forward is obviously an agnostic mindset where the data does the talking. Instead of making fantastically wrong guesses about which chemical features determined odour quality, why not winnow them down from a massive list of all conceivable features?

That’s the approach in studies pioneered by the US scholar Susan Schiffman and others in the 1970s and ’80s. The basic idea was to take a set of a few dozen odorous molecules and create a map summarising their relative perceptual similarities. Similar to how one could create a rough map of the US from a table of all (of the many!) between-city distances, these ‘odour maps’ gave a bird’s eye view of how the human nose organises the world of chemicals. With this perceptual map in hand, the question then turned to chemistry: what is it about molecules that assigns them to some particular portion of the perceptual map? To get at this, Schiffman and others used a range of ‘dimensionality reduction’ techniques to see which chemical features – of the many hundreds potentially available – were most effective at recapitulating the map. These approaches generated significant interest for a time, but they too were unable to solve the problem and went dormant for decades – until the age of AI.

I t was in 2017 that data sets were finally democratised enough for machine learning to help scientists widen the search. An important milestone that year was the DREAM challenge to see who might solve the odour map using AI. Published in Science , the winning models were endorsed by the community as potential inroads – suggesting that handing our model-making to the custody of the machines was the right intellectual move.

The best models, the so-called ‘random forests’, used AI to aggregate a host of models. The result could be baroque and inscrutable systems of rules for performing prediction tasks. They can get the right answer, but it’s often by finding lengthy and complex rubrics along the lines of: ‘If the molecular weight is > X, and the number of carbons is > Y, and the Moreau-Broto autocorrelation of lag 7 is < Z, and…, and…, then the molecule will smell like rose.’

It’s of course possible that odour categorisation is handled by similar ‘brute’ computations in the brain, but one is left with the nagging question: is that really how nature solved it? Not through the economy of Occam’s razor but in the thicket of Occam’s forest? Where’s the deep principle? The basic organising axes? The geometric insight? An important and often-asked question about these kinds of ‘data-driven’ models is whether their success at prediction actually indicates understanding or, at least, the kind of understanding that science has historically prized and glorified through tidy parables of discovery like ‘Newton and the prism’.

One way forward is to give up on the idea of an organised odour space whose curves and contours cleanly track some yet-to-be revealed chemical properties. After all, if ‘stinky feet’ and ‘gourmet cheese’ can be two valid descriptions of the same physical object, perhaps odour qualities are just too labile and individual to really serve as the targets for prediction. Perhaps they reflect more what we’ve learned from living in the messy world than anything intrinsic to it, encoding our idiosyncratic experiences with, and predilections for, feet and cheeses. Perhaps there is even something romantic and worth defending here in the idea of a sense that, decades into the age of mass digitisation, remains stubbornly phantom-like and evanescent, unmeasurable, and fundamentally unavailable for capture by geometric concepts.

Scientists are training, tuning and tweaking million-parameter models that ingest digitised molecule after digitised molecule

Or we go in the opposite direction. Hit the problem with even more data and more computing power. This was the big bet made by Osmo, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that began several years ago as the digital olfaction group at Google Brain, and which now has several dozen neuroscientists, chemists and computer scientists on its staff.

Osmo is the brainchild of Alex Wiltschko, a Harvard-trained neurobiologist who made his mark in grad school developing pioneering computer-vision systems for analysing animal behaviour. After growing up in small-town Texas, where, he drily notes ‘neither computers nor perfume were popular’, his twin passions for aromas and algorithms eventually landed him at the helm of a company that is ‘giving computers a sense of smell’.

This is about as far as one can get from Newton investigating the senses in his lonely parlour, sketching models on vellum with a quill pen. Instead, these scientists are collaborating to develop dense code repositories, training, tuning and tweaking million-parameter models that ingest digitised molecule after digitised molecule under the mandate This one smells like rose, this one smells like grass, figure out how to make that happen. The chemicals are not given to the model as lists of predetermined molecular properties that are served up to some homunculus chemist in the nose. Instead, they’re represented as skeletal and stripped-down graphs that capture only basic information about atom identities and their connectivity. The model is not trying to find what aspects of known chemistry are important for smell. It’s trying to discover whether chemical principles we haven’t yet thought of may hold the key for smell.

The Osmo model is a type of graphical ‘deep net’ that’s loosely inspired by the successive processing stages of the brain’s sensory systems. The analogy isn’t exact, but it’s similar to how your brain captures raw information from the world and passes it downstream to units that will ultimately have something useful or actionable to say about the inputs: ‘It’s a cat!’ or ‘Smells awful!’ The output units are the doers and the deciders whose performance can be evaluated (‘Nope, it’s actually a dog’ or ‘Yup, that chemical really does smell awful’), but many important insights are found in the intermediate, or ‘hidden’, network layers, too. These can be thought of as a transformational space that squeezes and warps raw sensory inputs into sensory judgments. The connections between units that define these transformations are learned gradually and incrementally by an AI system as it continually iterates and self-adjusts based on how well it mimics human judgments. By peeking at these intermediate layers, we can get the insights of a latterday, AI-supercharged Newton of smell. They tell us how we might think about the space that chemicals live in. Or at least, as our nose sees it.

S o how do we get from the transformations within the Osmo net to a literal geometry? The geometry at hand is not a circle, or a prism, or any kind of simple archetypal shape. Instead, it’s more like a world of craggy chemical continents, each demarcating a conspicuous aspect of human ecology, each seeming to invite a set of actions or appetites. There is, for example, a continent of ‘fermentation’, a ‘green’ continent, a land of the ‘meaty and savoury’. The key notion is that, in this space, two chemicals are rendered as close together and similar-smelling not because they necessarily share intrinsic structural features, but because they share ecological roles and have a close and contingent relationship out in the wild, as it were.

The Newtonian story of colour space is about how human perception latches on to the world’s universal and impersonal attributes (think about light’s wavelength and refrangibility). But the developing story of smell is about how our noses have decoded the world as it manifests locally, relationally and idiosyncratically on our planet. Odour space, in other words, is framed in human-centred coordinates, reflecting our histories as foragers and hunters in a world that blooms and withers, with matter that ripens and decays. It is a geometry that invests matter with its meanings and possibilities for us .

But it’s not just some loosely poetic space. Tapping the Osmo model, one can compute distances and angles here, predict which chemical will smell exactly halfway in-between musk and carvone, examine whether a collection of chemicals should trace out a smooth or squiggly path in odour-perceptual space. Moreover, the Osmo model does this demonstrably better than other attempts, suggesting that the way it’s measuring distances between chemicals may point to a deep principle of odour processing.

To smell something is to understand the neighbourhood it lives in

Interestingly, distances computed on the map correlate strongly with what has been termed ‘metabolic distance’ – roughly, how reachable one chemical is from another through common metabolic pathways. If nature can easily move from chemical A to chemical B through a small number of fermentation reactions, say, chances are your nose will find A and B to smell alike, even if they lack obvious structural similarities. The important corollary is that molecules with striking structural similarities needn’t smell alike (though, of course, they often will). A and B might hypothetically differ by only one double bond, but if it’s a very expensive double bond to form or break, requiring a large number of synthesis steps and chemical pirouettes, then the compounds will smell different to us. What the nose seems to know is not the static world of chemicals, but the movements that nature makes through it.

A philosopher would say that your nose appears to be an empiricist – it classifies and categorises chemicals on the basis of relationships that must be learned from the world either over evolutionary timescales or over an individual’s lifetime. A mathematician, following up, would say that what is learned is the abstract, high-dimensional manifold that tracks the world’s chemical relationships – its partitioning into the branches, cycles and pathways that shuttle around the world’s carbon. To smell something is to locate it on this manifold, to understand the neighbourhood it lives in.

These are still early days for theorising about the structure of odour space, but several investigators have put forward the idea that the space is non-Euclidean, meaning that it’s a far cry from the ‘intuitive’ geometry of secondary school, where the angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees. Instead, odour space may have an intrinsic curvature to it (like a potato chip, according to one theorist), driven by the fact that distances in odour space are defined less like the physical distance between two people, and more like their social distance.

Amazingly, Macdonald, the critic of Henning described above, had an intuition of this back in 1922, when he suggested modifications to the odour prism that amounted to replacing it with a ‘hollow hyper-solid with solid tetrahedrons as its sides’. This is difficult to visualise but, basically, it is a higher-dimensional prism that gives odours more space in which they can distribute themselves. ‘There is no reason why mental continua should occur only under Euclidian [sic] limitations,’ he noted. Perhaps smell has been the last standing sensory mystery because its mathematics has proven to be the most esoteric.

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• Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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