محمد الأوسط العَيّارِي عالم ومخترع تونسي بوكالة الفضاء الأمريكية ناسا.

بهذه الحدثات عبر تونسي فطن عن سيرة فذ زمانه العياري فنطق:

"لقد سمعت الرجل عند وليد التليلي ولم تبهرني حكمته ولا تواضعه ولا كلامه الذي استبلهنا فيه كما شاء وخلاصة ما اتى به أننا التوانسة قووييين قويين قويين برشا برشا برشا ... ما هذا يا هذا ،يا ترى؟ "

Please translate for the benefit of the general readership, this is very important information to the Arabic readers, who may other wise be duped . I'm sorry I canot write in Arabic, so this is in English.

With all due respect to Dr. Ayari’s career, I firmly believe he has been exaggerating his achievements, links to NASA, work on Hubble telescope, and other NASA missions. He may have played a very small part (within JPL, Ball Aerospace, etc…) in these missions, and may have been part of larger teams that worked on those missions. But he consistently said he was the lead engineer/scientist, which is completely untrue, unless he shows us otherwise. There is no reference to substantiate his claims and a simple search on Google scholars (database of scientific publications worldwide) reveals he has produced very little and of mediocre values).

I think the problem is with us Arabs, our culture, intellectual output is so little that we cling to any story of this nature. People, like Dr. Ayari, take advantage of this vulnerability and thirst in our societies for something that may lift our spirits.

I carefully searched the internet (NASA sites, JPL, Ball aerospace, Google scholars, etc..) and hardly found any thing of value to support his outrageous claims. I did find two references (may be there are more and he has to shows us) that remotely link him to NASA work, one from JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California) and in this reference (http://202.118.250.135/nasa/STAR/star0416.pdf see page #25 last lines) he is listed as the last person in a team of scientists that worked on the Mars rover antenna Gimbal (an extremely small part of the Mars rover mission) . The other reference was a progress report posted on NASA web site (http://search.nasa.gov/nasasearch/search/advSearch.jsp?start=&filter=null&spell=&nasaInclude=Ayari&qt=all&qx=&qm=anywhere&dtype=on&dn1=&dn=nasa.gov&dt=at&recPerPg=10&displayFormat=detail and http://ntrs.larc.nasa.gov/search.jsp?N=4294687580) and again he was listed as the last author for the same report. For some of you who don’t know how the scientific community works your name order corresponds to your contribution to the work, so in this case it makes Dr. Ayari as the least contributor to this work which conflict with his exaggerated statement that he fixed Hubble and that he was the lead scientist/engineer.

Even in this/his story about Al-Chaahad, which by the way after critical evaluation I came to conclude that it is nothing but a few of the shelf electronic parts (CCD camera, GPS receiver, a bogus access to an atomic clock that hardly means a thing but gives the impression of high scientific accuracy, and an internet uplink/downlink, etc…), that he and his team (of unknowns) put together to simply picture the moon crescent. Even the overall system he is presenting as something out of the ordinary is nothing more than “snap an image and use what is called local frequency domain analysis image analysis to detect the presence of the crescent – looking at the edge of the crescent for who you know basic image processing), the rest of the system is simply added to give the impression of serious project and work. He claims the cost is $66M, which is absolutely outrageous if you read and understand carefully what this is supposed to achieve. Overall this is nothing but a ploy against our ignorance and lack of understanding how the scientific world works. He is perpetuating this in Tunisia and at obscure venues and presenting himself as something he is not. Big scientists have a sustained and a clear track records in scientific journals, and major scientific venues. Dr. Ayari has none. Even a search on the net will produce only Tunisian news articles that are mostly bogus and written by Tunisian news people that lack objectivity, etc…

If you truly want to learn about real Arab/Tunisian scientists who worked on Hubble and with NASA, and made major scientific discoveries read about Dr. Lotfi Ben Jaffel (who lives and works in France- Google his name – his publications in AAAS science the most famous journal in the whole world is a testament to his work). You can also search his name on Google scholars and compare to Dr. Ayari.

Dr. Ayari is simply exaggerating this story and is being presented by the Tunisian government & news as a big NASA scientist when in fact he is not even directly linked to NASA. To show how pathetic this story is, in one of the interviews (of course with a Tunisian journal) Dr. Ayari stated the following “I’m very happy that our Al-Chaahad tests indicate that Tunisia was always right in Hillal sighting compared to other country (I will not argue if that is true or not). For you who don’t know how the Tunisian government function that is all they care about science and scientist,s a good mention of Ben Ali and his government unprecedented support to science and research and Islam wins you lots of favors (http://www.carthage.tn/en/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=15368&year=2008&month=07&day=11&Itemid=1). I understand that there is nothing wrong with being honored with one’s country head, but there is no honesty in this story and we will see how far Dr. Ayari will go with this story and if he will ever see Ben Ali again when he wins the Nobel Prize as one ignorant Tunisian journalist suggested to him once in an interview.

To ascertain the above do a Google search and you’ll see how pathetic this story really is, go to NASA site and search for Ayari only (not the full name) and you’ll see the extent of his involvement with NASA.

Finally my intent was not to unfairly treat Dr. Ayari, but I was disgusted at how he blew this no story out of proportion, exaggerated things, and made a big hoopla about nothing. He also gave a bad name to true Tunisian scientists abroad and I know many. And finally so there is no doubt here the link for Dr. Ayari support to Ben Ali for another presidential run back in 2004 (http://www.benali.tn/english/soutien/personalites.html), that is the fourth time Ben Ali runs for president (disrespecting the Tunisian constitution). Rest assured that Dr. Ayari will once again support Ben Ali to run in 2009. Science meets Politics Tunisian style...I will not be surprised Ayari will be made a minister of the Tunisian NASA one day. Well I know there is no NASA in Tunisia, they will make one for him, it will be a la Tunisienne "The first Arab, Moslem and African NASA". And forever "التوانسة قووييين قويين قويين برشا برشا برشا ..."

حياته وتكوينه

• والده هوالشيخ عثمان العياري أصيل مدينة مكثر أحد أبرز أساتذة كلية الشريعة وأصول الدين بجامعة الزيتونة ومصحح أغلب المصاحف التي طبعت في حياته في تونس. وقد أنجب ستة أولاد من بينهم محمد الأوسط وقد وصلوا جميعهم إلى درجات فهمية متقدمة.
• درس محمد الأوسط تعليمه العالي في المدرسة الوطنية للمهندسين بتونس، ثم اتجه إلى الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية للتعمق في البحث، حيث توجه إلى جامعة كولورادوليتخصص في الميكانيك التطبيقية.
• اشتغل في أطروحة الدكتوراه على تشقق المواد العضوية والهندسية عبر متابعة أثر الثقل المسلط عليها، ومن هناك طلبت منه إحدى الجامعات الكندية دراسة خاصيات البيوت الجوفية والهياكل تحت الأرضية لدفن النفايات النووية حتى ذوبانها نهائيا، وهوما قام به بين 1988 و1991. وقد فتح له هذا الاهتمام الباب للعمل على نطاق أوسع وبإمكانيات أكبر للبحث، حتى لقد سنحت له الفرصة لإصلاح المرآة العاكسة لهابل، ومن هناك بدأ التعاطي مع الهندسة الفضائية.

• في عام 1993 منحته جامعة " مانيتوبا " الكندية لقب أستاذ محاضر مدى الحياة .

اختراع الشاهد

في أواخر شهر جوان حزيران 2008 قدم محمد الأوسط العياري في مدينة القيروان اختراعا يتمثل في منظار إلكتروني متطور لرصد الأشهر القمرية. وقد أطلق عليه اسم الشاهد وهوتعبير عن منظومة متكاملة من المراصد تسهل متابعة تحركات الهلال عند غروب الشمس لتحديد مسقطه ثم إرسال إشارات إلى مركز المراقبة لتأكيد ثبوت رؤية الهلال سواء بالنسبة لبدء شهر رمضان أوسائر الأشهر القمرية. وفضلا عن ذلك فإن هذا الاختراع يساعد أيضا في فهم درجة حرارة الأرض ورصد زحف الصحراء وقياس حالات التلوث.

مراجع

وصلات خارجية

• مسقط مشروع الشاهد.
• العالم التونسي محمد الأوسط العيارى يقدم بالقيروان اختراعا رائدا في مجال الفلك.
• (بالفرنسية) الشاهد على مسقط وكالة تونس إفريقيا للأنباء.