China generated half of the digital viewing of the last World Cup. There is one month left until 2026 and it is still not clear if they will issue it

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Less than five weeks before the whistle that will kick off the opening match of this year’s World Cup, FIFA has signed broadcast contracts with more than 175 countries. China and India, with almost three billion inhabitants, are not among them. It is the unpleasant fruit of a price war over broadcast rights that pits the largest football organization in the world against the two most populated markets on the planet. What is at stake. The mbiggest World Cup in historywhich is said soon: 48 teams, 104 matches to be played in USACanada and Mexico between June 11 and July 19. FIFA is selling it as the most watched and broadcast event of all time. If they manage to resolve the conflicts with the two countries with the largest number of inhabitants on the planet, of course. According to data from FIFA itselfChina generated 49.8% of all viewing hours on digital and social platforms during the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Half of global digital consumption. More: India added 32 million digital viewers in the final alone. They are two very important markets that should not be ignored. Why is this happening? Part of the explanation is in the schedules. The tournament is held in North America, which means that the highest-rated matches will start at 3:00 a.m. in Beijing and Shanghai, and at 12:30 a.m. in New Delhi. These are schedules that destroy the advertising market: there is not enough audience beyond the fans, and advertisers are reluctant to pay the very high rates for the events. And without substantial advertising revenue, networks cannot support the tens of millions of dollars that broadcasts cost. India: bidding war. JioStar, India’s largest media conglomerate (the result of the merger between Viacom18 and Disney Star), even offered $20 million for the rights. And FIFA rejected the offer: it wanted 100 million dollars for a package that would also include the rights to the 2030 World Cup. According to local mediaFIFA would have lowered its price to around 35 million, although the negotiation is still not closed. China: crazy prices. ApparentlyFIFA would have demanded between 250 and 300 million dollars for the rights in the Chinese market, a figure that CCTV (the only broadcaster authorized by law to negotiate these rights) would not be willing to even remotely match. Its budget is around 60-80 million dollars, according to the same sources. FIFA may be willing to go down to between 120 and 150 million, but it is still double what CCTV wants to pay. On social networks, fans protest the difference in numbers between China and India. They are their traditions and they must be respected. CCTV has broadcast the World Cup without missing a single edition since Argentina 1978. Previously, agreements were closed with enough notice to launch promotional campaigns and attract sponsors, but this time there is no agreement, and the tournament starts in five weeks. For example, In the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, CCTV had the rights closed months in advance. And to this is added an extra problem: journalists from the country have had difficulties obtaining visas to cover the World Cup, which would reduce the quality of the broadcasts and, consequently, weaken the attractiveness for Chinese sponsors (which, as is easy to imagine, are among the main sponsors of the tournament). High tension. What we have right now are two millionaire forces pulling the rope in different directions: both want the highest profitability, knowing that time is an absolutely essential variable, because each week without a signed deal is equivalent to advertising and sponsorships that disappear. Not to mention the exasperation of millions of fans, who are now turning Asia into a sea of ​​nail-biting fans. And not in the penalty shootout, precisely. In Xataka | You will only be able to get to the World Cup stadiums in the USA and Mexico by car. And they are going to charge you 300 dollars to park it

an artificial island with a wood and stone structure older than Stonehenge

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In several rural areas of Scotland there has been an old tradition for centuries: when the level of some lakes drops after periods of drought or storms, strange rows of stones and dark wood sometimes appear briefly, the neighbors call “the traces of the ancients.” For a long time they were thought to be simply natural remains… until archaeologists discovered that many actually belonged to hidden human constructions underwater for thousands of years. The artificial island hidden under the waters of Scotland. At the beginning of May something unusual happened in Scotland: a small artificial island built some time ago reappeared more than five thousand years with wood, branches and stone, even before Stonehenge. What today seems like just a rocky islet lost in a lake on the Isle of Lewis hid under water a complex human structure built during the Neolithica time when British communities were still taking their first steps towards large collective projects. He find It not only forces us to reconsider the antiquity of the so-called Scottish “crannogs”, but also the organizational capacity of societies that were already capable of completely transforming an aquatic landscape thousands of years before the most famous large megalithic constructions in Europe. A wooden platform from before the pyramids. Apparently, archaeologists discovered that the islet of Loch Bhorgastail originally began as a huge circular wooden platform about 23 meters in diameter covered with layers of branches and vegetation. As the centuries passed, different generations expanded and reinforced the structure by adding new layers of stone and brushwood until transforming it into the small island visible today. The dating places the first phase of construction between 3800 and 3300 BCthat is, several centuries before the best known phases of Stonehenge and a lot before the pyramids Egyptians. The investigation It also demonstrates that those Neolithic communities not only built funerary monuments or stone circles, but were also capable of modifying entire lakes to build artificial spaces isolated from the continent. The wooden platform of the crannog, below the waterline Under the water a lost stone path appeared. One of the most striking discoveries was the location of a stone road submerged bridge that connected the island to the shore of the lake. Today it remains hidden underwater, but in the past it provided easy access to the artificial platform before lake levels and the natural environment changed. Researchers believe that this access demonstrates that the island was not a simple symbolic structure lost in the middle of the water, but a regularly used place by entire communities. The fact that the construction was modified and reused for thousands of years (from the Neolithic to the Iron Age) further indicates that the place maintained special importance for entire generations. Fragments of a Neolithic pot found near the crannog Remains of banquets and meetings. Not only that. Hundreds of fragments appeared around the island neolithic ceramic belonging to bowls and vessels, many of them still retaining remains of food adhered to the interior surfaces. Archaeologists believe that this points to activities related communitys with meetings, food preparation and possible ritual banquets. The enormous amount of work required to build an artificial island in the middle of a lake also suggests the existence of societies much more organized than is normally imagined for that time. They were not small improvised groups surviving in isolation, but communities capable of coordinating labor, resources and planning over long periods of time. Aerial view of the Loch Bhorgastail crannog, illustrating the site context and the land-water interface where integrated terrestrial and underwater survey methods are applied Another way to explore the past underwater. Much of the progress has been possible thanks to a new technique developed specifically to study very shallow water areas, an especially problematic environment for archeology because terrestrial and underwater methods often fail precisely in that intermediate zone. The researchers combined drones, waterproof cameras and stereophotogrammetry systems capable of generating continuous three-dimensional models both above and below water. The result has made it possible to digitally reconstruct the entire island and document structures invisible from the surface with centimeter precision. Until now, many of these environments were considered a kind of “blind zone” for archaeology. Scotland could hide hundreds. The Loch Bhorgastail case is especially important because researchers believe that there are hundreds of crannogs spread across the Scottish lochs and many could hide much older origins than previously thought. For decades it was believed that most belonged to the Iron Age or medieval times, but recent discoveries are pushing their origins back thousands of years, until the Neolithic. This opens the possibility that more artificial platforms, submerged paths and remains of human activities at a surprisingly early time in European history remain hidden beneath the calm waters of many Scottish lochs. The island changes the image of British Neolithic societies. The most fascinating of the discovery is that it forces us to abandon the simplified image of Neolithic communities as dispersed and technically limited groups. Building an artificial island of wood and stone in the middle of a lake required planning, knowledge of the aquatic environment, transportation of materials, and large-scale social cooperation. And all this was happening in Scotland ago more than five thousand yearseven before some of the most famous prehistoric monuments on the planet were built. Beneath the dark waters of a seemingly normal lake, a an extraordinary test of the extent to which those ancient societies were much more complex and ambitious than was believed. Image | University of Southampton In Xataka | Some 5,000-year-old tombs went unnoticed for millennia. Until we look from the sky In Xataka | About to close, this remote mine in the Polar Circle has found a 2 billion-year-old yellow diamond that weighs 158 carats

It’s your “hypertrophied” amygdala resetting your brain.

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When we are sad or stressed, it is easy to let out a deep sigh almost automatically, which draws a lot of attention to those around us, who immediately understand that something ‘bad’ is happening to us. And it is not because there is a lack of oxygen, nor is it a reflex from the lungs, but rather it has an origin that could be in the amygdala of our brain. What do we know? Recently, the neuroscientist and popularizer Nazareth Castellanos pointed out to amygdala hypertrophy as one of the causes of these stress-related sighs. And here the bibliography agrees when it comes to saying that our brain ‘gets fat’ due to stress and forces us to sigh, although with some nuances. The amygdala It is nothing more than a small almond-shaped structure that acts as a large threat radar in our brain, and is responsible, for example, that we are afraid. Under normal conditions, its activity is perfectly regulated, but in the face of chronic stress and constant anxiety, its function and structure are altered, causing any slightest thing to cause anxiety. And although the term “tonsil hypertrophy” is a great informative formulation To understand what is happening, science allows us to talk about an increase in activity and its volume, as was seen in different imaging studies which pointed out that an increase in volume in the first years of life is directly linked to a greater intensity of symptoms. The sigh. But… What does the increase in the amygdala have to do with breathing if they are elements that are very far away? To understand it, we must keep in mind that when the amygdala increases its functions enough, it has a function of “hijacking” the emotional responseand one of its first hostages is the respiratory system. Because? According to researchers and popularizers, in a state of anxiety the amygdala causes an abnormal prolongation of the pause we make just after exhaling the air. It is a kind of “induced apnea” or temporary respiratory block. And to compensate for this imbalance and that pause that exists after expelling the air, the body rebalances and It physically translates into a long, deep sigh. In this way, it is not that we are short of breath when we are stressed, but rather it is the overactive amygdala directly influencing respiratory patterns related to mood. And this is something that is not literally found in a neurology manual, but it does have an important scientific basis to point out that hyperactivation of the amygdala alters our breathing. Images | freepik In Xataka | Scientists have discovered something strange: city birds are more afraid of women than men

If the question is how the Egyptian pyramids were made, science has an idea: hydraulic systems

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Ancient Egypt is recognized for being one of the first hydraulic civilizations in history: they had control over irrigation canals, dams and transportation that was essential for erect and maintain a centralized kingdom for more than three thousand years in a fertile strip surrounded by desert. In the Old Kingdom period (c. 2700–2200 BC), the Egyptians built seven enormous pyramids representing approximately 25 million tons of rock cut, transported and fitted in less than 150 years. How they did it remains a mystery. In that period the pharaohs they ordered stone blocks to be moved at a rate equivalent to 50 tons per hour sustained for decades. There are several hypothesesbut none are satisfactory enough to explain that performance, especially at the beginning. The origin of everything is in Saqqara: the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser It is the oldest of the great pyramids and the first built entirely of carved stone. This is precisely where a multidisciplinary team proposes for the first time that water was the driving force of its construction. The hydraulic hypothesis. What the research team led by Xavier Landreau proposes is a kind of hydraulic elevator formed by three large structures from the Zoser complex. The Gisr el-Mudir functioned as a retention dam, the southern Dry Trench was the settling tank and the twin shafts (connected by a 200 meter underground tunnel) constituted the lifting mechanism: a huge float that would have raised the blocks from inside the pyramid in cycles of filling and emptying. Water from the desert wadis was channeled and filtered before reaching the vertical wells. When filled, the water buoyantly raised a platform on which the blocks rested, allowing them to be deposited on the upper levels without the need for external ramps and with less labor effort. Why is it important. Firstly, because it provides a coherent functional explanation for three structures at Saqqara whose purpose was not entirely clear. The analysis brings together hydrology, archeology and civil engineering to integrate all these elements into a unified and logical system, possibly making the Saqqara complex the oldest hydraulic infrastructure in history. If the hypothesis is confirmed, it would leave behind the hegemonic belief of ramps and a large amount of labor as a universal solution for building pyramids. A hydraulic lifting system implies efficient management of resources, energy and logistics, by significantly reducing labor. Additionally, it involves even more advanced knowledge of hydraulics. The next question is clear: are there more pyramids in Egypt built like this? Context. Saqqara is on a limestone plateau west of the Nile. How the research team mappedto the west of the complex there was a potential watershed of 400 square kilometers linked to the wadi Taflah, an ancient tributary of the Nile already documented on 18th century maps. This point is important because although today it is a desert plateau, studies of sediments from the complex itself show that during the reign of Djoser the area received intense seasonal runoffwith enough kinetic energy to deposit sediments of water origin inside the structures. In short, there was water available and in quantity. Other historical hypotheses. The most consolidated theories about the construction of the pyramids point to ramps with different geometries combined with levers and sleds. For Giza for example, Jean-Pierre Houdin proposed an interior spiral ramp. For Saqqara, studies collected in the paper itself suggest that the Dry Pit was the main limestone quarry, with short ramps on each side as a supply mechanism. As for the twin wells, the dominant interpretation until now was funerary: the royal tomb of Djoser and the abode of his ka. As for the dry grave, it was considered a quarry or had a ritual function. How have they done it. This research team has not excavated anything: it has combined satellite images of Airbus Pléiadeselevation models from the French IGN and the QGIS GIS to reconstruct the paleohydrology of the environment. From here, they generated 3D models of the complex’s internal architecture with quite popular commercial software such as SolidWorks or SketchUp. Regarding the hydraulic mechanism, they developed their own deliberately simple numerical model to estimate the water consumption and carrying capacity of the system. Yes, but. Using existing data has been both its greatest strength and also its greatest virtue, as the team recognizes. That is, although their study integrates basin topography, hydraulics and internal architecture, they have not accessed the wells or dated the sediments directly. On the other hand, from the perspective of the study of Egypt, stating that the wells are not funerary contradicts decades of consolidated interpretation. On the other hand, it raises a structural question: if those who made the first pyramids in Egypt mastered this hydraulic technology, why are the pyramids after Giza increasingly smaller and poorer? In Xataka | China’s first pipeline network is 4,000 years old and something revolutionary: it was built without the need for kings or nobles In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system Cover | Charles J Sharp

A new study reveals how they manage to avoid cancer

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Reaching 100 years old is a statistical feat, but do it while avoiding diseases as serious as cancer or surviving a serious infection is almost a superpower. For decades, science has been asked what makes centenarians biologically special to reach where few reach, and the clearest answer we have right now is that your immune system ages at a completely different rate than the rest of us mortals. The passage of time. As we age, our body deteriorates at a more or less rate depending on how much we have taken care of it with the lifestyle we have wanted to follow. But something that cannot be skipped is the generation of a low-grade chronic inflammation called ‘inflammation‘ which is the perfect breeding ground for cells to deteriorate, cardiovascular problems and tumors to appear. An exception. But as a recent review points out published in Nature With Spanish participation, it has been seen that centenarians have an extremely efficient system for “cleaning” damaged or senescent cells before they cause problems, something that is very efficient in young people, but becomes less so with the passage of time. But in addition, compared to the impoverishment of the intestinal flora common in old age, centenarians preserve a spectacular microbial diversity, also lacking the pro-inflammatory obesity that affects a large part of the population. But not everything is natural genetics, since the habits one follows and the environment in which one has lived shape part of the genetics by activating or deactivating genes, protecting them from accumulated damage. The paradox of cancer. One of the most fascinating data that medical research reveals is the relationship between centenarians and cancer. Although the risk of suffering from tumors increases with age as more genetic errors accumulate, when the 100-year barrier is exceeded, the curve falls sharply. This means that the incidence of cancer in people over the age of one century is less than 4%. And again the question is: why? Here, science suggests that centenarians have very high selective cytotoxicity, that is, cells with problems inside are destroyed before they get worse. Here the protagonists are the immune cells that maintain relentless anti-tumor surveillance, eliminating malignant cells with the efficiency of a young adult, but maintaining a high tolerance towards their own healthy tissues to avoid autoimmune diseases such as the famous rheumatoid arthritis that is quite common in older people. We are moving forward. The study does not remain only in the laboratory, but compiles evidence about the “real world” such as the famous ‘Blue Zones’ of Okinawa (Japan) where great longevity among its inhabitants stands out. Here the autopsies on the corpses indicated that their coronary arteries were obstructed by age but that they had only suffered massive fatal heart attacks. Here the body had found ways to adapt and survive. During the worst waves of COVID, there have also been cases of centenarians in residences who managed to survive the virus even without being vaccinated. This fits with the published data in 2023 by Nature Aging on supercentenarians in Boston, who revealed an “elite” immune system, trained by a lifetime of environmental exposures that formed a profile highly resilient to infections. For the future. Although genetics are important, what we can control much better are lifestyle habits and their effect on how certain genes are expressed. In this way, it is about investigating the people who survive the longest with the aim of ‘copying’ what they do to find the Holy Grail of longevity. Images | freepik In Xataka | The promise of 120 years is dismantled: biology sets a life ceiling that is quite difficult to break

NASA’s new ion engine, a fundamental piece to reach Mars

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Ion engines are not new. There are many satellites that have used them to stabilize themselves in their orbit. It has also been used in small ships like that of the Psyche missionwhose objective was to explore the asteroid with the same name. However, NASA wants to go further and create an ion engine so powerful that in the future it can be used to take humans to Mars. There is still a long way to go; But, according to their latest evidence, they could be on the right track. The most powerful ion engine. Until now, the most powerful ion engine that has been used to go to space has been that of the Psyche mission. With it, a speed of 200,000 kilometers per hour has been reached. Instead, NASA scientists have recently tested a much more powerful engine on Earth. It is a lithium-powered magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, which uses an electric current, which interacts with a magnetic field to accelerate a lithium-ion-based propellant. All this is done in a vacuum chamber 8 meters long. After the tests, 120 kilowatts of power have been reached: 25 times more than with Psyche. It is still not enough to travel to Mars, but, after the success of the tests, these researchers hope to be able to scale the process until they achieve 4 megawatt engines. Several of those could be used to conquer the red planet. Different ions. Broadly speaking, an ion engine consists of a vacuum chamber in which an electromagnetic field accelerates electrically charged atoms through a nozzle, generating thrust. Those charged atoms are the ionic propellant. Traditionally, xenon is used, although metallic plasmas have also begun to be explored. That’s where lithium comes into play. Advantages. Ion-powered engines use 90% less propellant than chemical ones. That, in itself, is already a great advantage. On the other hand, although they start with a very low speed, they have the advantage that, in the absence of friction, as occurs in the vacuum of space, they keep accelerating for a long timeso they can reach very high speeds. This is how has been achieved that many satellites can adjust their orbit. A key piece is missing. In order to start this electromagnetic field, an energy source is needed, which is normally obtained through solar panels. However, to go to very distant places where the Sun does not reach so easily, it would be necessary to look for alternatives. For this reason, NASA scientists consider that this ion engine should be complemented with the nuclear thrusters that Both this agency and others have been studying for some time. In the case of NASA, They have made a lot of progress with Space Reactor-1 Freedoma nuclear-powered spacecraft, whose first launch is scheduled for 2028. Investment is needed. In order to scale what has been achieved so far, strategic investments will have to be made, as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has already pointed out. in statements collected by Space. The scale they want to make is not small, so they are still waiting to receive adequate financing. In the meantime, you can at least be proud that the first 5 firings of this initial prototype went perfectly. Image | POT In Xataka | The West stopped building nuclear power plants because they were too expensive: China is teaching it a lesson

They measure 85 meters, have no anchors and are connected to Starlink: the gigantic "Roombas" sailors who want to save AI from the blackout

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The rise of artificial intelligence is devouring the capacity of electrical grids around the world, skyrocketing consumption and carbon emissions. And this is just the beginning. As Garth Sheldon-Coulson, CEO of the startup Panthalassa, warned, in an interview with CBS News: “We are still at the beginning of this lawsuit.” To solve this bottleneck, the heaviest investors in the technology sector are looking to the sea. Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, just led a $140 million injection into Panthalassa. But what exactly is Panthalassa? To understand it, you have to erase the traditional image of an industrial warehouse full of servers. Sheldon-Coulson described it with a rather peculiar metaphor: “It’s like ‘a giant Roomba,’ an autonomous, self-propelled system that sails without anchors across the Pacific.” The anatomy of a marine colossus. Panthalassa will use this newly raised $140 million to complete its pilot plant in Oregon and accelerate the deployment of its new model, the Ocean-3which will be tested in the North Pacific in 2026 with a view to commercialization in 2027, as detailed ESG Today. We are not talking about small buoys. The proportions are colossal. As explained Financial Timesthese solid steel structures measure about 85 meters long. To give us an idea, they are almost as tall as the iconic Big Ben of London or the building Flatiron from New York. In Xataka There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk The engineering behind. Just as described Tom’s Hardwarethe nodes are shaped like a “lollipop”: a huge white sphere floats on the surface, while a long tubular structure submerges vertically under the water. As the waves pass, the structure rises and falls. This relative motion forces seawater up the pressurized tube into the spherical chamber, where it spins a turbine. Being a continuous cycle powered by an ocean that never stops, the system generates electricity 24 hours a day. But this is where the real twist of the project lies. Historically, the big problem with wave energy has been the enormous cost of laying underwater cables to bring electricity to the coast. According to GeekWirePanthalassa solves this in one fell swoop: it doesn’t send power to shore, but uses it directly on board to power the AI ​​chips. Once the information is processed, the results (inference tokens) are sent back to clients on the ground via low-orbit satellite connections, such as SpaceX’s Starlink network. The end of terrestrial bottlenecks. This approach represents a radical paradigm shift in technological infrastructure. “Panthalassa’s idea transforms a power transmission problem into a data transmission problem,” explains to Ars Technica Benjamin Lee, computer engineer and architect at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to inexhaustible energy, the ocean offers another vital advantage: cold. Traditional data centers spend fortunes and consume millions of liters of drinking water just to prevent servers from melting due to heat. On the high seas, the story is different. As detailed BusinessWirethe ocean provides “free supercooling,” solving one of the industry’s biggest engineering challenges and extending the life of chips. Added to this is the growing citizen resistance. As pointed out Tom’s Hardwarelocal communities are increasingly rejecting the construction of these huge land-based industrial warehouses due to noise, land grabbing and energy diversion. On the ocean, there are simply no neighbors to bother or urban planning plans to navigate. Besides, as highlighted Finance TimesBeing a closed water circuit without external engines or emissions, the impact on marine life is minimal, underpinning its ecological appeal. The challenge of taming the ocean. As revolutionary as the idea may sound, transforming the ocean into a global supercomputer has titanic obstacles: The connectivity bottleneck. As he warns Ars Technicarelying on satellites is fine for “inference” (i.e. returning real-time responses to ChatGPT users or similar), but satellites have limited bandwidth and latency. If multiple ocean nodes are required to coordinate to train a heavy AI model, satellite connectivity simply won’t measure up against traditional fiber optic cables. The fury of the sea. Data Center Dynamics emphasizes that these nodes They will have to survive extreme conditions: hurricanes, corrosive saltpeter and perpetual motion for more than a decade without human intervention or maintenance. They are not alone in the idea of ​​​​wetting the servers. According to Ars Technica, Microsoft has already tested submerging data centers in the seabed with its Project Natickand Chinese companies already operate underwater infrastructure near Hainan Island. However, Panthalassa is much bolder: being floating, autonomous nodes without grounded cables, they completely break the umbilical cord with the continental electrical grid. {“videoId”:”x9sjece”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”CHINA is WINNING the TECH WAR because they planned it that way 10 YEARS AGO”, “tag”:”china”, “duration”:”721″} A bet at the height of desperation. Despite investor optimism, transforming the Pacific into the next computing cloud will not be a cake walk. $210 million (the company’s total funding to date) may seem like an outrageous amount to throw servers into the sea, but it needs to be put into perspective. As highlighted Ars Technicathis figure is anecdotal if we consider that large American technology companies plan to spend $765 billion building terrestrial data centers in 2026 alone. Faced with the desperation of the sector – which has been exploring since reopen abandoned nuclear power plants until setting up servers powered by solar panels in space orbit—the option of floating in the ocean seems reasonable. The ultimate goal of Panthalassa, as shared by its CEOis to deploy thousands of these nodes far from the coasts. If they can tame the waves and satellite bottlenecks, they could have found the Holy Grail of AI: “The cheapest energy on the planet, infinite, clean and beyond the reach of Earth’s bureaucracy.” Image | Panthalassa Xataka | Old chips never die: companies that made “boring” chips are riding the dollar (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news They … Read more

We just discovered a new island in an oceanic “danger zone”

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In February 2026 the SWOSan international team of 93 science professionals, embarked on the icebreaker Polarstern from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) toward the northwest Weddell Sea with a mission: study what the flow of water and ice was like in the Larsen Ice Shelf to determine its influence on the planet’s ocean circulation. Neither more nor less. However, a strong storm forced them to seek shelter, changing the course of the expedition. What they found when they turned aside was an island of solid rock that did not appear on the maps. There is a new island on the map. The island is in the northwest of the Weddell Sea, in the vicinity of Joinville Island, near the Danger Isletsan area that fulfills what its name promises: it has dense ice, part of which is hidden beneath the surface, and the navigation conditions are extreme. Its dimensions are approximately 130 meters long, 50 meters wide and it rises 16 meters above sea level, more or less like the Polarstern, whose length measures 118 meters. Despite being a full-fledged island, the island had no name or coordinates nor did it appear in international cartographic databases in the area, vaguely defined as “a danger zone for navigation”, as explains Simon Dreutterfrom the AWI Bathymetry section. The few charts that hinted at its existence did not even locate it well (deviation of one nautical mile, about 1.85 kilometers). Although it doesn’t have a name yet at the SCARYes, we know how to place it on the map. Why is it important. From a geological point of view, this finding shows that although we are immersed in space exploration, there are still corners of our planet to discover. World cartography is incomplete and the Wedell Sea is precisely one of the territories with the most candidates to harbor surprises: it has difficult access and little data coverage, in addition to the interpolation systems that generate bathymetric maps such as the IBCSO can literally erase unregistered objects physically, as the entity itself warns. Simply put, the island may have remained invisible for decades simply because no ship had boarded it with the right tools. Its discovery is also a reflection of the retreat of sea ice in the region since 2017, attributed to warming surface waters. The retreat of the ice has made a previously impenetrable area navigable, which raises the question: was the island always there or has it emerged recently? From a biological point of view, it is a virgin laboratory: its flora and fauna are completely unknown, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand adaptation to that environment. Context. The Weddell Sea is a key piece of global ocean circulation. That is where the Antarctic bottom waterone of the densest and coldest masses of water on the planet. This mass of water feeds the bottom currents of all oceans and regulates the exchange of heat and carbon on a planetary scale, as documented in oceanographic literature. Altering its dynamics, as is happening due to the retreat of the Larsen Ice Shelf, has consequences that spread thousands of kilometers. The SWOS expedition was designed precisely to quantify these changes and so far what they have discovered is how much the thickness of the ice varies: up to four meters on the western continental shelf, where the tides compress and deform the ice, and just five feet to the east, where it comes from the Ronne and Filchner ice sheets, which are subject to less pressure. Antarctic bottom water is formed in the Antarctic Ocean as a result of the cooling of surface water in polynyas.Wikipedia How they discovered it. That storm that forced the Polastern to seek refuge in the shelter of Joinville Island. It was then that Simon Dreutter detected an anomaly in the charts and went up to the bridge. There he saw what looked like an unusually dirty iceberg. Like it was a rock. Approaching with caution, always keeping at least 50 meters of water under the keel to minimize the risk of hitting ice, the team confirmed that it was an island. The ship surrounded it at a distance of about 150 meters and took the opportunity to map both its seabed (with a multibeam echo sounder) and its orography using a drone. They already had the first elevation model of the island. What’s going to happen now. Once the official naming process is complete, the team will publish the coordinates of the island and all that information will be incorporated into the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean and international nautical charts, so that its existence will no longer surprise anyone again. As a curiosity, due to maritime tradition, whoever discovers such a geographical feature has the privilege of proposing the name in a process that can last months. Beyond the name, the island opens up a new scientific range: rock samples will determine its lithological composition and age and biological studies will help understand how Antarctic ecosystems respond to climate change. In Xataka | A century ago Denmark built an island to defend its capital. Now it is full of tourists and is sold for ten million In Xataka | China prepares a pilotable “floating island” for marine exploration: for whatever reason, it resists nuclear explosions Cover | Alfred Wegener Institute / Christian Haas

We have become obsessed with “natural” sleeping pills. The problem is that we are not solving much

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In a society where problems falling asleep are on the agenda, the promise of having a deep and restful rest It has become one of the great businesses of the 21st century. And faced with a silent epidemic of insomnia, millions of people have turned to a parallel pharmacy where no prescription is needed, since products such as melatonin, magnesium or CBD are available to anyone. The melatonin paradox. Health authorities in the United States have been warning for years of a drastic increase in melatonin consumption among adults. It is perceived here as a “natural hormone” and therefore harmless, and although it is true that has proven usefulnessscience calls for curbing enthusiasm. Here’s Duffy’s essay pointed Because at low doses it can improve the efficiency and duration of sleep, but what must be taken into account is the importance of following medical instructions to have a dose adjusted and controlled to the personal situation. It is true that there is still a lot of research ahead to determine the safety of melatonin supplementation, since some studies they even point to an increased risk of heart failure with taking for more than one year. The CBD. Cannabidiol is another of the protagonists that is beginning to have more and more importance on the shelves of many people who have sleep problems. Unlike melatonin or magnesium, CBD is a compound derived from cannabis to “turn off” the nighttime mental noise. And here the science suggests that the effect of CBD is promising, but there is still a long way to go to determine its safety. The most solid studies conclude that CBD is not a pure sedative, but that its greatest effectiveness is observed above all with patients whose insomnia is directly related to anxiety or chronic stress, since it can modulate the stress response, reduce nocturnal rumination and allows sleep to come as a side effect. But they have problems. Right now, marketing inconsistency is a big drawback of CBD, as much of the failures reported by users are due to over-the-counter products that are not of the proper purity or concentration. Magnesium. If there is a mineral that has capitalized on the attention on the internet in recent years, it is this one. It is promoted as the ultimate natural anxiolytic and sleeping pill; However, science suggests that they are greatly inflating the effects it has. Here, as we have repeated on many occasions, supplementing when there is no deficiency of this or other minerals is not the best decision. Some small trials indicate that specific formats such as magnesium bisglycinate can provide modest improvements in cases of mild insomnia, but at a general level, the scientific community concludes that its “miracle pill” status lacks robust support. Go to the doctor. On many occasions, when we have a problem, we want to resort to the miracle pill without doing anything else. When we are told about maintaining good sleep hygiene, keeping screens out of our sight several hours before going to sleep or forgetting about heavy dinners, the truth is that we find it complicated. Or at least more difficult than taking a pill they sell us, which will make us sleep without doing anything else. It is for all this that it is always best to go to the doctor to determine what is underneath the insomnia, to be able to treat the root of the problem and not put patches on top, which is ultimately what is achieved with supplements. Images | diana.grytsku in Magnific In Xataka | There is a whole fever for magnesium as a supplement to sleep better: science has things to say about it

Why more and more mobile phones last up to two days and weigh less

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Technological devices have been chained to the chemical limitations of lithium-ion batteries for almost 30 years. Until recently, if we wanted a mobile phone to have more autonomy, what we needed was a much larger battery. This, in the end, translated into much thicker and heavier phones. That has changed in recent years, since in the middle of 2026 we are witnessing a change in the x-ray of batteries. Now, there are mobile phones on the market that they do not exceed 7 mm thick (as is the case with the Honor Magic V3, which when deployed has a thickness of just 4.35 mm) and which are capable of mounting 5,500 or 6,000 mAh batteries (or even more) without the design looking crude. The secret is not magic, but the anode silicon-carbon. HONOR Magic8 Pro 5G Smartphone, 12+512 GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links How to understand this progress? In order to understand this progress, we must look inside the battery. Traditional ones use graphite in the anode – the negative electrode –, a cheap and stable material, but with a clear capacity limit. This means that a lot of graphite is needed to be able to store an amount of energy for our mobile phone. He silicon It is a “supermaterial” that can store up to 10 times more lithium ions per gram than graphite (with a specific capacity of around 4,200 mAh/g compared to approximately 370 mAh/g for graphite). This translates into smaller batteries for the same autonomy or more autonomy in the same space. If silicon has such advantageous properties, why isn’t it used sooner? The answer is given by its defect and that is that it is a material that can reach expand by 300-400%depending on the type of silicon used. This is something that could end up fracturing the battery of our mobile phone with just a few charging cycles. This has currently been solved in mobile phone batteries, managing to encapsulate silicon nanoparticles within a carbon structure, which functions as a cage. He carbon It acts as a shock absorber, allowing the silicon to expand and contract internally without destroying the physical structure of the battery. Benefits of mobile phones that have this type of battery The fact that this technology is being implemented in mobile phone batteries basically offers us three benefits that can be translated into the following: Higher energy density: It is now possible to mount a 5,800 mAh battery in the space where a 4,500 mAh battery previously fit. Less thickness on mobile phones: Manufacturers no longer have to sacrifice design so that the mobile battery lasts until we go to sleep. This means that the thickness of today’s mobile phones (in the vast majority of cases) is decreasing. Better fast charging: This type of battery better supports high current densities. This allows us to do ultra-fast charging with less long-term battery degradation. Some mobile phones that have this type of battery A few years ago, Honor (it was one of the first brands to bring this technology to a high-profile folding device with the Honor Magic V3) and Xiaomi began to experiment with this type of batteries, although it is now that silicon-carbon has gone from being a luxury for become the new industry standard. These are some of the mobile phones with silicon-carbon batteries that you can buy currently. Xiaomi 17 (855.34 euros currently on Amazon): the latest release from the Chinese manufacturer, the Xiaomi 17 mount a battery 6,330 mAh on a phone with a thickness of 8.06 mm. This battery supports 100 W fast charging and 50 W wireless charging. Its photographic system signed by Leica is another of its assets, as is its 6.3-inch OLED screen. XIAOMI 17, Smartphone 12+256 GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra (1,559 euros on the Samsung website): after years with graphite, Samsung has implemented a hybrid silicon architecture in its S26 series. Of course, the 5,000 mAh remains, but the mobile is much thinner and lighter than the S24 Ultra (7.9 mm and 214 grams of weight S26 Ultra compared to the 8.6 mm and 232 g weight of the S24 Ultra). This Korean firm’s mobile is a clear example that the industry uses silicon-carbon not only to provide more battery, but to make phones more ergonomic without losing capacity. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, 512GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Honor Magic8 Pro (899 euros): As we have already said, Honor was the first brand to launch a mobile phone with this type of battery. He Honor Magic8 Pro It is its latest addition to the market. Your battery 6,270 mAh Not only is it thinner, but it also stands out for using a dedicated chip (E2; whose main function is to optimize consumption and stabilize the voltage at the minivolt level) to manage the silicon-carbon. Its autonomy is enough for a day and then some, something unthinkable recently on such a bright and fluid 120 Hz screen. HONOR Magic8 Pro 5G Smartphone, 12+512 GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Xiaomi, Samsung, Honor and Álex Alcolea (Xataka Móvil and Xataka) In Xataka | The best quality-price mobiles. Their analyzes and videos are here In Xataka | Fast chargers for your mobile phone or tablet. Best models to buy for their power and safety

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