Month: July 2026

While most oppose AI data centers, there is one group enthusiastic about them: merchandise thieves

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In the United States, at least a third of all data centers of the world. With investment reaching insane levelseach time they are built larger and more powerful infrastructures Unfortunately for the neighbors, who report an increase in pollution, increases in the electricity bill and problems with water supply. While all this is happening, there is a small sector of the population that has seen a business opportunity: thieves. What’s happening. They tell it in Business Insider. Last week in Illinois, police recovered two truckloads of stolen data center equipment. First they found a trailer containing $300,000 in coils of copper cable at a truck yard in Chicago. Later, they discovered that the same person who left the trailer had stored another one a week before and here came the bombshell: the second trailer contained material worth 1 million dollars. It is not the only theft of this type that has happened recently. At the beginning of the month they had The Canadian Press about $5 million worth of data center materials were disappearing while “in transit.” The containers left the port and were listed as having been picked up by the supposedly legitimate carriers, but never reached their destination. Why is it important. The data center boom is creating a supply chain of very valuable materials, especially DRAM chips and memories, but also metals such as copper. Organized crime is no stranger to this and has begun to attack these infrastructures that are so present in the US. Furthermore, they are using the very technology they are stealing from to achieve successful operations. Theft of merchandise. They say in Futurism that the US Department of Homeland Security estimates the theft of merchandise in losses of 35,000 million dollars a year. These gangs often attack retail trade, intercepting goods before they reach stores such as sports equipment from Nike. More sophisticated. Speaking to the Canadian Press, the head of the venture company Verisk CargoNet states that “The bad guys are very good at marketing (…) Now it is much more strategic, much more specific… They know what is in fashion and what sells well.” In the case of the 5 million theft that we mentioned before, the thieves used generative AI and other tools to impersonate a real transportation company and manipulate systems and communications. For days, it seemed like everything was going well and by the time they realized the deception it was too late. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | The iPhone is one of the most coveted pieces by street thieves. Apple wants to make it more difficult for you

We have found a fossilized excrement and now we know that in the driest desert in Asia 4,000 years ago there was a forest

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China has a few deserts, but there is one that stands out for its aridity: in the Tarim basinin northwest China, rain round 20 millimeters a year. Seeing a landscape of dunes and rocks so barren that it seems lunar, it is difficult to think that there were rivers, wetlands and poplar forests there 4,000 years ago. And yet, as a study just showedthere was. The key to everything was in the people who lived there in the Bronze Age. More specifically, in the fossilized excrement of their animals and the remains of charcoal from their bonfires. The discovery. The research team analyzed coprolites of multiple species of animals from Xiaohe culture sites and also charcoal left over from their bonfires. From here they obtained two pieces of information directly: what trees they used as fuel and what their animals ate. Or what is the same: what plants and trees were in the area. What is clear is that of all desert in the Bronze Age, nothing. Why is it important. The research team proposes that this prehistoric community already practiced a sedentary way of life from the early phases of occupation of that area, which includes livestock farming. The resources offered by that wetland (fishing, aquatic plants, grasses) were sufficient to maintain that town in that territory, without the need for agriculture. From an environmental point of view, the study provides first-hand information on what the Tarim landscape was like four thousand years ago, before aridification transformed the region. The Tarim has been characterized due to an extremely dry climate since the beginning of the Pliocene, although during the Holocene it experienced frequent fluctuations between dry and humid periods. This information is essential to model past climate change and thus better predict possible changes in Central Asia. Context. The Xiaohe culture occupied the Tarim Basin between 2050 and 1350 BC. C. and we know her above all for their mummiesfound in the desert during the 20th century with peculiar wool and leather outfits. However, we knew more about how they buried their dead than about their organization, relationship with the environment and their economy. In detail. The analysis revealed that 54% of the identifiable charcoals corresponded to poplars and willows and 18% to tamarisks, all of them flora typical of riverbank forests. These species are fast growing and regenerate easily, suggesting that the community exploited the forest in a more or less sustained manner for centuries. Considering the few remaining poplar trees, the team proposes that the landscape was organized into three zones: the riverine forest, riverside scrub, and beyond, the desert. The remains of feces preserved pollen grains and phytoliths that allowed us to reconstruct both the diet of the livestock and the nature of the landscape: 83% of all that pollen came from the cattail, an aquatic plant that has historically been used as food, fiber, and even as construction material. In the case of sheep poop, the percentage rose to 99%, a figure so high that the team explains that it is probably because the animals ingested the pollen by drinking water laden with it or by breathing the air during flowering. Yes, but. The first limitation to consider is that it is not always possible to know with certainty which animal each excrement comes from and that is not a trivial matter: not knowing how to differentiate between a sheep, a goat or a camel can be a great condition on its use. On the other hand, the large presence of cattail pollen may be misleading: this plant produces large quantities and resists degradation well, so the real landscape could have had more diversity than the data suggests. The question that remains unresolved is whether the Xiaohe people grew food from the beginning or not. Current evidence suggests not, but not finding them doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. In Xataka | Homo sapiens arrived in China 5,000 years earlier than we thought. And that changes what we believed about their culture. In Xataka | We have found tools from 300,000 years ago in China. And they turn what we believed about the paleo diet upside down Cover | Adaptations in ancient oasis woodlands of the hyper-arid Tarim Basin, Northwestern China: charcoal and coprolite analyzes

If you find airplane seats uncomfortable, wait until you see the first ones: they were wicker chairs

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As an eternal user of economy class when traveling by plane, my small pleasures are limited to trying to get rid of the damn middle seat in favor of being able to stretch my foot in the aisle or see the sky from the window, in addition to having at least one armrest unit of my own. As for the seats, what can I tell you: bearable for a flight of a couple of hours, but it becomes uphill if the flight is longer. And hey, not that bad, it could be worse: I might have to travel standing or sit in a wicker chair. Standing is something in the future, but no matter how incredible the wicker chairs in the cabin of an airplane may seem, it’s a reality. A few years ago someone posted a photo on Twitter that claimed to be of an Imperial Airways plane in 1936 that, more than an aircraft, looked like the living room of your great-aunt Paqui’s house: red carpet on the floor, wicker seats and, of course, no sign of a seat belt. Scopes verified the photo, but not the date (the same cockpit appears in British Airways archives dating back to the 1920s), making the image a faithful representation of what it was like to take a flight in commercial aviation at the time. Soaring through the skies in a wicker chair. In 1919 the first airline companies were born and among the list There are some mythical ones that continue to fly today like the Dutch one KLM either Avianca in America. That year the Lawson Airliner It flew through the skies as the first passenger plane and the seat chosen for passengers to travel seated were wicker chairs, according to Air Charter Service USAmore specifically 26 units. PJ Wilcynski, a Boeing historical researcher who reviewed the company’s archives, confirmed to Travel+Leisure magazine that wicker chairs bolted to the floor were the beginnings of passenger seats. But the wicker chairs were something ephemeral. As commercial aviation took off, the aeronautical industry sought more efficient and safer materials. First, in the late 1920s, with padded and leather-covered wicker chairs. As explains PJ Wilcynski“Leather was very popular because it allowed the seats to be cleaned easily, due to all the soot from airports and the dusty runways where planes landed in those early days.” Why wicker. At that time, the main design criterion For an airplane seat it was that they had the lowest possible weight to maximize the useful load, something decisive given the limited thrust of those engines. Functionality and lightness above all, we will talk about resistance to potential impacts another day. The choice was as innovative as that original Lawson: they were light seats and surprisingly comfortable by the standards of the time. The wicker seat was short-lived. In the 1930s, the Aluminum Company of America created a passenger seat made of a light metal: aluminum. And until now: most airplane seats have an aluminum frame. By the end of that decade, aluminum tube structures were widespread on airline aircraft of the time. With the change, comfort elements such as cushions and covers gained weight and velvet covers and thick seat belts arrived. In 1936, rubber-covered foam seats became the standard, with the legendary airliner Douglas DC-3. In 1952 the first commercial reclining seats arrived. However, according to PJ Wilcynski The real paradigm shift in seats to convert them into the experience we live today came with the Boeing 747, back in 1970: “the multiplex system was introduced, with the function of calling the operator and activating the reading light. It was also the system that provided the audio for the movies being watched, through pneumatic tubes connected to the armrest.” A before and after in security. Traveling on a plane on a structure as flimsy as wicker and without a seat belt does not seem like the safest thing in the world. However, safety criteria have (fortunately) evolved tremendously: in the early years the seats had to withstand a force of 6g, but in the 1950s that requirement rose to 9g. Currently the list of criteria is long: airplane seats must meet a fire resistance test 12 seconds and withstand a force of 16gIn addition to being light, they incorporate foam suitable as a float and offer enough resistance for all types of passengers. In Xataka | In the 1960s planes were going so fast that someone promised trips to the Moon. And people bought them In Xataka | Rise and fall of the Havilland Comet, the first commercial airliner with jet engines that went from innovation to tragedy Cover | Twitter and Mohammad Arrahmanur

They were looking for the Nile virus mosquito in the Doñana marshes. They found four types of flies that suck blood

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Today’s story begins in a trap in the heart of the Guadalquivir marshes. A trap and a suspect. And, a priori, it should not surprise anyone that there is a story here: the device is part of the largest entomological surveillance operation that has ever been mounted in this country. The problem is that the suspect we were looking for is not inside it. The researchers were expecting a mosquito and what appeared was a midge. A two-millimeter bug that has been biting Europeans for five million years and, well, no one had noticed. What exactly have we found? Yes, let’s leave the mystery. A few days ago, a joint team from the CSIC and the University of Milan described four species of completely unknown hematophagous midges. During the sampling they found four more (eight in total). It is interesting because this genus had never been found in Andalusia. Gnats (from the family of Ceratopogonidae) are flies and their females feed on blood by making small cuts in the skin and releasing it from the pool that forms. Two key characteristics are that they bite during the day and live in sandy soils, dunes and marshes, where they raise their larvae. In general, they are very well-known bugs. That’s why it’s curious, beyond the four species, that we have found them in one of the most studied places on the continent: in Doñana. The inevitable question is how come we haven’t seen them before. Everything we are not seeing. Think about it for a moment, if in one of the best studied areas of Spain we are able to find so many new bugs, how much tiny fauna still goes completely unnoticed? After all, gnats are annoying, but they are not dangerous. It is true that, as happens on the Tuscan coasta lack of population control of these species can ruin entire stretches of beach. We have also seen it in Menorca. But little more. Compared to mosquitoes that spread infectious (and possibly deadly) diseases, they are nothing. And thank goodness. Image | Pedro Miguel Aires In Xataka | Doñana has a problem and the most expert hunters have the solution: an old trick to know what time of night the wild boars appear

the proposal of science against solar superstorms

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Our civilization is addicted to electricity and satellites, and this dependence has given us unprecedented technological progress, but it has also left us exposed to a silent and colossal enemy such as the Sun itself. Now, a team of scientists has put on the table a plan worthy of science fiction to protect us from a global blackout that focuses on deploying an immense “airbag” of plasma in Earth’s orbit to cushion the impact of solar storms. The proposal baptized like StormWallis not the script of a Hollywood movie, but has just been published in the prestigious magazine Space Weather. Our problem. To understand why we need a space airbag, we must first understand the threat, because when the Sun experiences coronal mass ejections, spews billions of tons of magnetized plasma into space. If that cloud points towards us, it collides with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic storms. This is where our magnetosphere comes in, which is nothing more than an excellent natural shield, but it has a limit. For example, when we have had extreme solar storms like the famous Carrington event of 1859 or the Quebec blackout of 1989, solar particles can overload power grids, destroy transformers, fry entire satellite constellations, and disrupt global communications. The StormWall project. The physics behind StormWall is based on altering what astrophysicists call magnetic reconnection, which is nothing more than the process by which energy from the solar wind is transferred to the Earth’s magnetic field. The plan proposed by Walsh and Welling consists of placing a fleet of six satellites in orbit geostationary. With all this, when early warning systems detect that a lethal coronal mass ejection is heading towards Earth, for which we have a couple of hours of margin, these satellites would go into action. How would it be done? The maneuver would consist of releasing around 400 tons of ionizable gases directly into space. And the good thing is that the candidate elements for this space dust are lithium, barium, sodium or, in an even cheaper alternative, simply salt water. Upon release, this material would be rapidly ionized by solar radiation, creating a dense cloud of artificial cold plasma as if it were an orbital “airbag.” According to the authors’ computational simulations, this plasma injection would modify the dynamics of magnetic reconnection, reducing the intensity of a severe geomagnetic storm by more than 60%. It would be the difference between a technological extinction event and a simple anecdote with beautiful northern lights. For researchers It is not technical madness and neither is it for the scientific community. Here independent experts who have not participated in the study view the viability of the project favorably. For example, Allison Jaynes, a space physicist at the University of Iowa, and Gurudas Ganguli of the US Naval Research Laboratory, have described the idea as “highly innovative and feasible in the near term.” But also, it is not the first time this has been experimented with. In early 2026, the US Naval Research Laboratory itself carried out experiments injecting barium with sounding rockets into the upper layers of the atmosphere to study radiation cleanup. Images | freepik In Xataka | China has a spaceship of which there are barely any photos. Another unidentified object has just been released into orbit

It is already in its 17th edition

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Sudoku hit the Western press in November 2004 and since then no new paper-and-pencil format has replicated its global reach. Manuel Garand, a Montreal puzzle creator whose riddles have even appeared in the ‘Financial Times’, tried it by combining the logic of mathematical grids with ‘Cluedo’-type murders. The result, published in Spain in October 2025 (and with a second installment on sale from July 1) by Temas de Hoy is ‘Murdoku’ and has become, according to the publisher itself, the best-selling non-fiction book in Spanish of the moment. Where does it come from? Sudoku, despite its two decades of world domination Since ‘The Times’ began publishing it in 2004, it remains perched at the top of the puzzle throne, and has no rival in sight. The mathematical game has colonized newspapers, applications and pocket books with overwhelming efficiency. Its great attraction is its abstraction: without narrative, without characters, without settings. And there may be the key to the success of ‘Murdoku’: giving us everything that the original sudoku lacks. What is ‘Murdoku’. This puzzle takes the mechanics of the Sudoku grid, and embraces the idea that there can only be one of each element in each row and column. But they are not numbers, they are suspicious. If we add scenarios and clues, each puzzle becomes a miniature investigation: when you discover which character was in the same room as the victim, that is the murderer. As Sergi Álvarez, editorial director of Temas de Hoy, told us, “you don’t just solve: you investigate. There is a more immersive and narrative dimension.” Finding an attractive intersection between puzzles and crime narrative is what has given ‘Murdoku’ its commercial appeal. The figures. 300,000 copies sold, 17 editions, number one in non-fiction sales in Spanish. It was one of the best-selling books of Sant Jordi of 2026. In the US and the UK it is also sweeping, and Hachette has already published two volumes of the serieswith a third, ‘Around the World’, scheduled for fall. Regarding these figures, Álvarez tells us that “because of how it has grown, we believe that we are not facing a passing phenomenon, but rather a category with a long history within the editorial catalog.” How it was born. Murdoku was created by Manuel GarandCanadian puzzle designer living in Montreal. The book was originally published in October 2025 and the spanish editionwas edited by Temas de Hoy that same month. The publisher had had another book from the same family in its catalog for months: ‘Murdle‘, a series of criminal-themed puzzles (with elements more typical of a conventional narrative deduction puzzle) that had exceeded three million copies sold in 30 countries. ‘Murdle’ combines mystery and deduction, but with a more textual mechanic, closer to the clue-to-clue puzzle. Álvarez tells us that “the markets are saturated with undifferentiated offers and grow thanks to original and innovative proposals like ‘Murdoku’, which has its own personality, provides a different mechanic, very easy to understand and very addictive.” The success of ‘Murdle’, yes, is what confirmed that the demand for this type of entertainment still had a long way to go. The importance of TikTok. The 208 full-color pages, with detailed illustrations of each crime scene, suspects and surrounding objects, make the book more visually striking than traditional hobby notebooks. Of course, more than the arid grids full of numbers of Sudoku puzzles. Quite a temptation for booktubers: the hashtag #murdoku accumulates millions of viewswith individual videos that have exceeded 254,000 likes. It all started when Spanish-speaking content creators began to solve the puzzles live, although Murdoku is not a novel or regular content for booktubers. Álvarez clarifies, beyond the specific push thanks to social networks: “We are talking about a conversation that grew week by week, the book was slowly cooking its success.” A surprise on many levels that hides something more than a commercial hook: puzzles of very notable solidity. In Xataka | The Spanish Puzzle Championship exists, real professionals participate and there are prizes of up to 1,000 euros

Wool is on the floor, so the ranchers of Ávila have found a way out: making umbrellas

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As an absolute fan of natural fabrics, I have several wool sweaters in my closet saved like gold because of how pretty they are, how warm they are, and how expensive they cost. Paradoxically, and although wool garments have significantly higher prices than others made with synthetic fabrics, the devaluation of wool at source is a worrying reality for livestock professionals. So in Martiherrero, a town of less than 400 inhabitants in Ávila, they have had an idea: covering the umbrellas of the municipal swimming pool with sheep wool from local farmers. Umbrellas made of wool. For this small-scale pilot project, they have used more than 160 kilograms of raw wool which, after selection and conditioning, is already working as a covering for the facility’s umbrellas, as collected by the Royal Spanish Federation of Select Livestock Associations. The initiative is called “Shadow of Origin” and behind it is the Martiherrero town hall and the Kerbest Foundation. Parasols covered with wool. RFEAGAS Why is it important. Because in summer the farmers have to shear their sheep and the calculations don’t work out: like Avicom Cooperative tellsthe shearing cost is 1.5 euros per sheep and the price that the farmer receives for the wool of the most common breeds, such as the Assaf, the Churra or the Castilian, is around 5 cents per kilo. The average wool per sheep is 2.3 kilos. The use of wool for clothing is not profitable in this scenario, so we must take a look and find new uses for this valuable sheep by-product. The problem is enormous, as much as the volume of sheep in Spain, absolute leader in the EU with 24% of the total: according to the MAPA economic indicators report for meat sheep and goats (2025)the sheep census was 13.47 million heads in 2024, 0.89% less than the previous year. And it is not something specific: the price of wool in Spain is at historic lows and has not raised its head since the pandemic, as They explained at the table Rethinking wool just a couple of months ago. Context. The fall in the price of wool is explained by a combination of causes: China was the main destination market before the pandemic, reaching to take 70% of the offer. However, with the pandemic, exports slowed down and there was excess stock, as ASAJA explains. Shortly after, the Chinese market was partially closed after the sheeppox outbreaks in Spain happened since 2022. It has also caused damage the australian wool competition. However and as detailed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Environmentthe main production of sheep is meat and milk, leaving wool in the background. In detail. The idea of ​​wearing a woolen garment in summer may seem crazy, but sheep hair is a magnificent thermal insulator: the thermal conductivity of wool is 0.0324 and 0.0436 W/mKfigures that meet the regulatory standards for thermal insulation in construction and also offer good acoustic performance. In other words, the same thing works for a sweater, an umbrella or to insulate a building. Because wool is also good fireproof materialwhich brings out the colors of some synthetic insulators that emit volatile organic compounds. Yes, but. The project has its technical and economic reason for being framed within the circular economy, but its scale is minimal: they have only used 160 kilos compared to the more than 20,000 annual tons of wool that Spain produces in total (or the 9,500 tons of entrefine wool alone, the most produced variety), according to the MAP. On the other hand, the previous processes necessary for its use as a coating make the operation as is not profitable with the figures that the current market manages. A larger scale replication would require sustained public or private investment over time. In Xataka | A silent phenomenon is brewing in Madrid: people who go to live in Valladolid and return to work by train In Xataka | A town in Segovia with 3,700 residents has its own language with centuries of history. The reason: doing business Cover | Fadi Al Shami and Martin Schmidli

How China is reinventing building air conditioning without using more electricity

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When the heat hits is when those of us who live in historically cool latitudes seriously consider installing large-scale air conditioners and if not, ask France, in whose capital its underground system It seems not to be enough for what is coming our way. But there are entire cities and countries that are ahead of us in that “historically cool Europe” in terms of air conditioning. This is the case of China: there the air conditioning of their buildings goes beyond the simple air conditioner or passive architecture: there are communities that are already cooling their shared outdoor spaces by spraying mist water from the roofs. The rain in Seville Shanxi it’s a wonder. As explains Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Yuncheng, a city in central China’s Shanxi province, there is a residential area where roofs rain: a water spray cooling system capable of reducing surface temperatures by 5 to 8 ° C in a matter of minutes. This other similar spray system called HY-WSWD report drops of up to 10°C in roof temperature and savings of 20-30% in air conditioning consumption. Although it is a political official who shares the system, it does not seem that it is a state air conditioning policy (for the moment), but rather a solution adopted individually by several sprinkler irrigation communities, as they explain in Sina. The principle of operation is essentially the same as a evaporative air conditioner XXL, so it is neither technically revolutionary nor new. In fact, that HY-WSWD is a product that has been on sale since at least 2025. Why is it important. To begin with, because China is the largest consumer of electricity for air conditioning on the planet and its peaks in electricity demand in summer are directly related to the use of air conditioning, as documented by the International Energy Agencywhich also warns that it will get worse: in Asia the demand for refrigeration in Asia will triple before 2050. Any technology that reduces the temperature of the building before using the air conditioning is good news for the grid. As quantifies scienceevaporative cooling systems reduce energy consumption by 30-40% compared to conventional air conditioning systems. Tap to go to the post and watch the video. x Context. We said that the system is not new, it is actually very old (for this type of technology). In the United States there are a patent from the 70s designed for industrial warehouses and discarded for residential use for aesthetic and another from the late 80’s more discreet that contemplates its application in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Furthermore, this evaporative misting in urban areas already applied in hot and dry cities like Phoenix or Tempe (Arizona). Although we are mentioning several American initiatives, the paradoxical reality is that China has its own architectural precedent and it is much older: more than a thousand years ago, the Hanliang Hall of Daming Palace from the Tang dynasty used a circulating cooling system: hydraulic wheels propelled cold water to the roof, letting it fall from the four eaves in the form of a curtain of water that cooled the outer perimeter of the room. In detail. What is striking about the case is not so much the technology, but the scale: covering complete roofs of entire residential blocks to cool the building as a whole and the surrounding areas instead of concentrating the misting in specific points of outdoor comfort, as happens in so many bar terraces in the West or does the Madrid City Council itself, which has installed nebulizers in squares and streets of the city. In this sense, it represents a paradigm shift compared to traditional split when it comes to understanding air conditioning: conventional air conditioning units do not eliminate heat, they move it from the inside to the outside through the compressor, and that residual heat is expelled by thousands of individual units. contributes to intensifying the nocturnal urban heat island. This system that is becoming fashionable in China, on the other hand, intervenes in the building’s own thermal environment (the roof exposed to the sun) before that heat generates a load that the compressor has to expel outwards again. Thus, the thermal difference between inside and outside is reduced at the source: the microdroplets expose a lot of surface area to the air, accelerating evaporation, which extracts latent heat from the roof and the surrounding air without the need for refrigerants. Yes, but. The kryptonite of evaporative air conditioners is the humidityor in other words, this system is only effective in locations with dry climates such as Shanxi, which has a semi-arid continental climate. Of course, in cities in humid southern China like Shenzhen it would be much less effective. In humid and hot environments, high temperatures become a real nightmare and evaporative air conditioners do not work: they raise the relative humidity, worsening thermal comfort. On the other hand, this is a system that continuously consumes water, a precious commodity that is scarce in some places, which poses a dilemma between energy savings and water stress. In Xataka | Best quality-price air conditioners 2026. Which one to buy and seven recommended models for less than 800 euros In Xataka | Air conditioning is the new great political weapon in France: why environmentalists and the extreme right are fighting over it Cover | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China via Twitter

“When it ends, tears of joy fall, you can’t contain them”

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Next August 12 It will be the first time that many Spaniards see a total solar eclipse. This phenomenon had not been seen in mainland Spain since 1912 and since 1959 in the Canary Islands, so only Canarian people of a certain age have been able to see one without having to travel. For the rest, the only Spaniards who have been able to see one of these phenomena so far are the eclipse chasers. Those people who travel around the world only with the intention of enjoying the magnificent spectacle that the Moon gives when it steals the daytime prominence from the Sun by placing itself in front of it and blocking its light for a few minutes. One of those people is Leonor Ana Hernandezan amateur astronomer, scientific communicator and astronomical illustrator, who has been traveling for many years in search of new eclipses. His first time was in 1999, in Hungary. Since then she has seen four total solar eclipses and is overcome with the desire to travel in search of more. From each one of them he treasures something in his memory, a small detail that has remained engraved in his mind in a very special way. For my part, I have never seen a total solar eclipse. Yes, I have witnessed a partial one, but I have never seen the Sun set completely. This summer will be the first for me and the truth is that, after talking to Leo, as she likes to be called, I’m looking forward to the moment. The four eclipses of Leo For Leo it all started when she was a girl. “I loved astronomy and when my father found out that there was an association near where we lived he told me: daughter, at least I’ll take you there, with people who like the same things as you,” she remembers. “There I began to learn more and get informed about eclipses and of course, I read about the people who have seen themI saw images and thought that I would love to see what everyone describes, to experience that sensation of the lunar night in the middle of the day.” With that clear objective, he began to save until In 1999 he had his first opportunity. In fact, he made the trip to Hungary with colleagues from that association in which he had begun to develop his interest in eclipses. “As many of us as possible from the association organized a joint expedition to see the solar eclipse,” he recalls. “The experience marked me and at that moment I knew that whenever I could or life allowed me, I would try to travel to see more.” Seven years later, in 2006, it was his turn to see a new total solar eclipse in Türkiye. This time it was a more intimate trip, with only three people, and he also remembers it with great affection. “We decided to go to the top of a mountain and we were alone, there was pure silence,” he says with a smile. “That silence and that transparent blue sky that I saw left me extremely shocked.” Remember that the emotion was so much that I couldn’t stop crying. “When it was over, tears of joy fell down my cheeks, I couldn’t contain them.” For the next one he didn’t wait that long. In 2009, traveled to Chinathis time on an expedition with a large group of people. It was a complicated occasion, because it coincided with a monsoon that clouded the sky, completely covering the eclipse, which could have lasted six minutes. “We covered the telescopes with whatever we could: ponchos, hats, raincoats… The rain was brutal and we said: how could we have been so unlucky?” However, then something happened that Leo describes as almost magical. “It seems that the heavens heard us, there was a moment when it stopped, a clearing appeared, that clearing opened and we could see the black ball of the Moon,” he remembers. “It opened up enough that for a minute and a half or two minutes we could see it. Then it got cloudy again, but at least we could see something.” Even so, and despite all the beauty he saw in his first three eclipses, Leo is clear that remains with the total solar eclipse of the United States in 2017. For her it was very special because on this occasion she made the decision not to take photos, but to lie down and look at it and draw it. Leo, lying with the materials to draw the eclipse “I would stay with the one from 2017, because I made the decision not to take photos“explains Leo. “The time you spend with the camera makes you very angry, so I decided to take some testimonial photos, with the camera working alone, but I lay down and observe it, observe it, observe it.” In addition, he devised an action plan that began even before totality. “If you do not have eyesight adapted to the darkness, just like at night, you cannot see the subtle details of the solar corona, so I spent the previous minutes with sunglasses so that my eyes were adapted to a dark time.” Of course, when he looked at the Sun during the partial phase used approved glasses. He only used the sunglasses to look at the environment. Once the adaptation began, the materials were prepared. “I lay down, prepared my notebook and a piece of cardboard and captured a nebulous background with a circle to delimit the hole of the Moon, those They were the most beautiful and wonderful minutes I have experienced in a long time.“And the time came. “When you draw something you have to focus a lot on the details and that’s when your eyes really start to see,” she points out. “Normally we look, but we don’t see everything we can, because we go from one place to another in a more superficial way.” She focused on … Read more

Spain has a license only for automatic cars and more and more people choose it

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Getting your driving license without using the clutch and changing gears is now a reality within the reach of anyone who wants to learn to drive in Spain. This is permit B limited to automatic vehiclesa modality that more and more driving school students choose, but which also generates many doubts about how it works or how to request it. That’s why below these lines we tell you all the details. The same permission, but with a nuance: only automatic Despite what many people believe, there is no new or independent license for automatic cars. We have approached some driving schools to ask about it and, as they explain, the permit is the same as it has always been, B, only in the document an annotation is added which indicates that the holder can only drive with automatic transmission vehicles. As expected, those who obtain their license with a manual gear car, however, are enabled to drive both types of transmission without any restrictions. That note It is popularly known as “code 78” and appears printed on the back of the card, next to the permit category. In Spain, the Instruction 2019/C-134 of the DGT, something already marked in the General Regulations for Drivers, says: “if the applicant takes the practical exam with an automatic transmission vehicle, that circumstance must be reflected in the permit and will only enable him to drive cars with those characteristics.” Why is more and more requested? The rise of this type of permit goes hand in hand with the automobile market itself. Two decades ago, automatic transmission was almost a rarity on Spanish roads; Today, however, there are more and more models (especially electric and hybrid, which do not have a clutch) that They are sold exclusively with this transmission. According to share El Periódico, of the 600,000 category B permits issued each year in Spain, between 33,000 and 37,000 already carry this limitation to the automaticwhich places code 78 between 5.5% and 6.2% of the total. However, as the media points out, in the driving school sector the figure they handle is around 10% of the licenses issued. Gear lever on a Volvo CX60 Asking several driving schools, they affirm that this modality has been implemented for a few years. On the other hand, Raül Viladrich, president of the Federation of Driving Schools of Catalonia, counted to El Periódico that the demand started between 2018 and 2020, although it clarified that it is still much lower than that of the traditional card. It is also a case of generational changesince more and more young people see manual transmission as something of the past and, directly, have no intention of ever driving a car with a clutch. How is it obtained and what is the difference with the traditional exam The learning process is identical to that of the conventional B license, that is, you go to the driving school, you take the theory exam, you have your practical classes and a final exam, with the only difference that both the classes and the driving test are done with an automatic transmission vehicle. You also don’t have to make the decision when you first register, since you can start with a manual car and, if you decide, you can upgrade to an automatic car at any time. This is exactly what a former student, Elena García, tells us, who opted for the automatic mode. Elena says that she chose this route because the car she had at home was already automatic, so it seemed like “the best option” to learn directly with the type of vehicle she was going to use later. Even so, he explains that he started his internship with a manual car, but that, after fifteen or twenty classes, he decided to switch to an automatic car. According to him, in your driving school the automatic option existed and was offeredalthough at first they directly recommended the manual. Elena admits that, almost a year after getting her license, not having access to manual cars does not worry her. And in your immediate surroundings you only have automatic vehicles and, when you travel or need to rent a car, you always find hassle-free automatic car options. What happens if you drive a manual car with this permit Basically, if they catch you, fine the song. “They are prohibited from driving any type of car that is not automatic,” assures Sergio Olivera, president of the National Confederation of Driving Schools (CNAE) to El Periódico. And the thing is that whoever has a license with this entry and uses a vehicle with a manual transmission faces a fine of 500 euros and the loss of four points on the license. The Traffic Law considers this situation a very serious infraction, comparable to driving without a permit. In the event that you have obtained your license only with an automatic car, but you want to drive a manual one, it is currently mandatory to go through a practical exam again, this time with a manual transmission car, without the need to repeat the theoretical part. Less procedures to remove the restriction This requirement, however, has an expiration date. And it already exists a European directiveapproved at the end of 2025, which It is intended to replace the complete practical exam for a training course of only seven hours at a driving school to be able to obtain the B permit without any transmission limitations. According to explained Viladrich to El Periódico, this course can be taken both during the process of obtaining the license itself and later, and its entry into force is expected, in principle, for 2029, although there is still no set date for its application in Spain. This model, in fact, already works in other European countries. In France, Germany or Switzerland, drivers with this limitation can eliminate it through specific training, without having to be re-examined from scratch. The future is automatic Just ten years ago, automatic cars accounted for … Read more

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