Black

A seven-dimensional black hole model proves that Stephen Hawking was right, to say the least.

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For a long time it was thought that black holes could only grow, since nothing escapes from them. Later, Stephen Hawking dismantled this theory, pointing out that radiation can come out of its interior and that, in fact, with this process the black hole it is fading away little by little. This hypothesis generated a new paradox; since, according to quantum mechanics, information cannot be created or destroyed in a quantum system. If the information cannot be destroyed, when the black hole disappears, where does all the information it stored go? This question has been a mystery until a team of scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences It occurred to him to do simulations in a 7-dimensional system. A reminder about black holes. a black hole It is an astronomical object so massive that its gravitational pull does not allow anything to escape from it. Not even the light. At a certain distance from the black hole is the event horizon, which is that point of no return from which everything is attracted towards its interior. Hawking radiation. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking launched a hypothesis which destroyed the idea that nothing can escape from a black hole. According to him, if we take quantum physics into account, there is something that can do it. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that a vacuum is not empty as such. Particle-antiparticle pairs continually form and appear and disappear. If this occurs in the vicinity of the event horizon, it could be that one of these particles is attracted towards the black hole, while another manages to escape from it, being slightly beyond the point of no return. That exhaust extracts energy from the black hole. This is what was called Hawking radiation. Disappearing black holes. We have all heard the famous formula from Einstein’s theory of relativity: E = mc². Since c is a constant, if there is energy, there must also be mass and, therefore, if energy is lost, for the constant to be maintained, mass must also be lost. That means that every time a black hole loses energy it is also losing mass. They are very massive objects, they would take a long time to turn off, but they finally do. The paradox arrives. Initially, many colleagues saw Hawking’s hypothesis as nonsense. However, today it is much more accepted. However, it is undeniable that it poses problems, such as the black hole information paradox. Where does the information go? Twisting space-time. The solution to the mystery has been possible by putting aside the theory of general relativity and analyze the problem with a somewhat more complex one: the Einstein-Cartan theory. The first points out that mass and energy can curve space-time. On the other hand, the second points out that it can also twist. For scales that are not excessively small there is no difference. However, when moving to tiny scales and therefore very high densities, This torsion plays an important role. A 7D model. Quantum physics models are often made in 4 dimensions: the three we all know and time. However, the authors of the recently published study took three more into account, so that the effects of the Einstein-Cartan torsion could be analyzed. Thus, they saw that when the matter of a black hole collapses its density increases greatly and, therefore, the twisting of space-time is detected. This gives rise to a repulsive effect, which counteracts the gravitational attraction that would normally take place in the engrossing hole. As a result, the evaporation of the black hole stops, which remains in a stable state, generating a remnant with a mass of 9×10⁻⁴¹ kg. A remnant with a lot of information. This tiny remnant is capable of storing all the information of the matter that the black hole contained. Specifically, these scientists’ models suggest that the remnant of a black hole the size of the Sun could store up to 1,515 × 10⁷⁷ qubits of information. Therefore, Hawking’s hypotheses are still valid and there is not even a paradox that dismantles them. At least this is not the lost information. Image | ESO (Wikimedia Commons) | ASA/Paul Alers (Wikimedia Commons) In Xataka | In 2009 Stephen Hawking hosted “the party of the century.” No one came precisely because Stephen Hawking organized it

We thought that the heart of the Milky Way was an immense black hole. Mathematics has changed this idea for us

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Science advances, and this also means rewriting what we believed to be ‘absolute truth’ within different fields of knowledge. For example, for decades the scientific consensus has been unwavering in pointing out that in the heart of the Milky Way, about 27,000 light years from Earth, there is a huge supermassive black hole. But now this is not so clear thanks to a new study who has “seen” something even more interesting in this location. Breaking rules. It has been a study published this year the one who has proposed that the “monster” that governs our galaxy is not a black hole, but an ultradense core of dark matter. A compact object of almost four million solar masses that a priori would be composed entirely of fermionic dark matter. How do they know it? To support this bold claim, researchers have used the RAR model. This is very important, since, unlike the classical theory, which separates the central black hole from the halo of dark matter that surrounds the galaxy, this new approach unifies both concepts into one. In this way, it is proposed that dark matter particles are highly concentrated in the galactic center, forming a compact and massive nucleus, while on the outskirts they are diluted, forming the well-known and extensive dark halo. The big question. If it’s not a black hole, why does it “look” like one? And it is something normal that passes through our minds, especially after the year 2022 when the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) gave us the first “photograph” of Sgr A* where a bright ring could be seen surrounding a deep central darkness. And although this could be definitive proof that there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy, this is not the case. This is where previous key work published in 2024 comes into play, which pointed out that a dense core of fermions illuminated by an accretion disk generates a “shadow” visually indistinguishable from that cast by a classical black hole. That is, this dark matter is disguised to be able to deceive our telescopes when taking different measurements. Mathematical tests. In addition to this interesting theory, the scientific team has subjected it to a rigorous statistical examination using complex simulations and Bayesian analyzes to verify its robustness. Here they have shown that this dark matter core perfectly explains, for example, the orbits of the S stars that orbit the galactic center. But this unified model also fits precisely with the most recent data on the galaxy’s outer rotation curve provided by the Gaia DR3 mission. You have to look better. Although the mathematics add up and the model passes the statistical tests with flying colors, dethroning a supermassive black hole from the scientific imagination is not an easy task. And it is somewhat relevant, since the dark matter core lacks an event horizon, which is the absolute gravitational boundary of no return from which any element would be absorbed by the black hole. To know once and for all whether we are dealing with a black hole or a giant ball of dark matter, astronomers are aiming for the next generation of observations. We need to track what happens a little closer to the absolute center and future data of the GRAVITY interferometer (installed on the Very Large Telescope) will be key to detecting the subtle orbital deviations in the closest stars that would end the debate. Images | Dns Dgn BoliviaIntelligent In Xataka | We have a serious problem in our plans to colonize Mars: the astronauts’ blood is mutating

The 2026 Minotaur Prize takes a turn towards dark fantasy in Ancient Egypt with ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’

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This year the Prize celebrates a very special edition: twenty years since what has ended up becoming the most important award for fantasy literature in the Spanish language began to be awarded. This year the winner has been Africa Vázquez, who proposes with his novelto ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’ a dark fantasy story set in pharaonic Egypt that will go on sale next March 25. 216 manuscripts have competed for this edition of the award, mostly from Spain, in search of the 6,000 euro prize of which the award consists. The Minotaur is an award of international scope and this year proposals have come from countries throughout Latin America, especially Argentina and Mexico. Even so, the winner África Vázquez is from Zaragoza. She is not new to literary awards: her first novel already won, when she was only 17 years old, the Jordi Sierra i Fabra Prize. Since then he has published more than thirty books between Spain and Latin America, and has won various literary awards, including the Kelvin 505 at the Celsius 232 festival. In this work he has opted for travel to the remote past, with the story of a embalmer embarked on revenge which will take her to places as inhospitable as Waset, City of a Hundred Gates and capital of the Ta-Mri, with the intention of infiltrating the court of Pharaoh Nekht-en-sen. In ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’ you will discover that the secrets hidden in the heart of the Nile will not only shake the foundations of an empire. The earth rots, plagues come, and the secret behind it all seems to lie beyond the land of the living, in the depths of the Underworld. We are facing an epic and dark mythological fantasy story in a reinvented Egypt, where a priestess of the goddess Isis will plot revenge of ancient proportions. A dazzling journey The jury, made up of Sabino Cabeza (winner of the previous year), Laura Díaz (literary popularizer and writer), Fernando Bonete (university professor, author and prescriber), Judit Bertran (cultural journalist and editor of El Periódico) and Francesc Gascó (doctor in Paleontology and cultural popularizer) have praised Vázquez’s book. According to the jury, it offers a “millennial Egypt So carefully detailed you can even smell the embalmers’ ointment and the perfume of the lotuses of the Nile” Vázquez stated upon receiving the award that “in my novel I have poured all the passion I have felt for Ancient Egypt since my parents, at the age of thirteen, gave me the immense gift of taking me and my older sister to discover the wonders of the Nile. Later, when I had turned twenty-seven, I returned to sail through those ancient waters to receive another gift that would change my destiny.” The author assures that “perhaps that is why in ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’, a novel in which death and darkness are so present, there continues to be a light and a life that refuses to go out.” In Xataka | Conan has become an archetype and has survived for decades thanks to an unusual strategy: refusing to evolve

Mining Bitcoin has always been an energetic black hole. Someone wants to turn it into your home heating

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The CES 2026 that has just closed its doors has confirmed an inescapable reality: Artificial Intelligence is everywhere, even where it seems to make no sense. From electronic LEGO bricks and wearables with roll-up screens, to more questionable devices like AI hair clippers that adjust the cut dynamically or digital frames that generate art by voice using GPT Image 1.5. Among this tide of “AI even in the soup”, a proposal has emerged that breaks with that trend and has surprised by its pragmatism: is it possible to get hot by mining Bitcoins? The answer is a resounding yes, and this year technology has shown that what was once a nuisance thermal waste is now a valuable household resource. ANDl income generating water heater. The American startup Superheat captured everyone’s attention with the presentation of its Superheat H1a water heater that uses ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) chips to heat a 190-liter tank while processing Bitcoin transactions. Unlike traditional electric water heaters, the H1 has an approximate price of $2,000, placing it 30-40% above the conventional market. However, as detailed in CNETwill be able to generate about $1,000 annually in passive income, always depending on the value of Bitcoin and the difficulty of the network. The science of “thermal reuse”. To understand this phenomenon, you have to turn to basic physics. The mining process requires intensive computational calculations (proof-of-work) that generate a massive amount of heat. Traditionally, this heat was expelled into the air using fans, but companies like Superheat have turned it around: mining is now the primary function and hot water is the secondary benefit. From the user’s point of view, the experience is seamless. The manual for devices like the Heatbit Trio reveals a control system sophisticated where the user can navigate the panel like a professional: Eco Mode: Heats exclusively by mining, limiting consumption to 400W. Target Mode: Combines the mining plate with a conventional heating element to maintain the desired temperature. Air purification: These devices not only heat, but act as purifiers with HEPA filters and air quality sensors (PM 2.5). Europe at the forefront. In the old continent, the proposal focuses on design and structural integration. From Austria, the company 21energy presents the Ofen 2a minimalist design radiator made of steel and aluminum. Unlike industrial miners that emit 75 decibels, this model is around 32-35 dB, being almost inaudible to the human ear. Furthermore, with a consumption of 1000 watts, it generates up to 40 TH/s of mining power, allowing users to recover part of their electricity bill while heating rooms of up to 50 m². On the other hand, in Switzerland, the company RY3T has marked a historic milestone. The RY3T ONE system has already been installed as the main heat source in a single-family house in the canton of Sankt Gallen. According to the companythis system can be more environmentally friendly than a conventional heat pump, as it reuses a computing power necessary for the global financial network instead of requiring additional electricity exclusively to generate thermal friction. A good idea or a technological chimera? Despite the enthusiasm, a report from Interesting Engineering raises critical questions that the consumer should consider: Obsolescence: What happens when mining hardware becomes obsolete? Will the entire heater or radiator have to be replaced? Network Cost: Even though heat is “free,” electricity for Bitcoin mining is often more expensive than natural gas in many countries. Regulation: If a country decided to ban Bitcoin mining, the user’s heating system could be legally compromised. From mining coins to processing Artificial Intelligence. As this report began, AI is the main protagonist of the moment, and its evolution will continue to be talked about far beyond cryptocurrencies. Julie Xu, COO of Superheat, explained at CES that the ultimate goal is to use this network of appliances for cloud solutions and AI inference. Instead of building gigantic data centers that stress the power grid and require massive cooling, homes could house small distributed computing units. However, this future poses a new dilemma: privacy. Experts from iFixit and Consumer Reports They already warn at this CES that “you don’t want a camera in front of your refrigerator watching you all the time” or a constant internet connection on simple devices, since it makes them more expensive to repair and prone to failure. The challenge will, therefore, be to balance the profitability of heating the home with the security of our private data. Image | freepik and heatbit Xataka | The bitcoin business cools down, but some miners have found a new vein: AI fever

Europe is months away from registering a demographic milestone that has not occurred since the Black Death: it is literally shrinking

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In June the latest Eurostat data putting the EU median age at 44.7 years (and growing). The reading then seemed more or less clear. Europe’s demographic collapse was bringing it closer to an invisible threshold that was once unthinkable: the Middle Ages. 50 years old. Half a year later, the data has not improved. Historical contraction. Yes, Europe is heading towards a demographic turning point unprecedented since the black plague from the 14th century. After decades of sustained decline in birth rates, the population of the European Union will reach its maximum next year and it will start after a prolonged fallthe first of its kind in centuries. This is not a temporary adjustment, but rather a deep structural change that threatens to redefine the economy, the welfare state and the social balance of the continent. The alarm does not arise only from the total number of inhabitants, but from the aging speed and the thinning of the working-age population, on which the pension, health and care systems built over generations rest. Political panic and a race. counted the Washington Post that, given this panorama, governments of all ideological stripes have entered into a race against time to see if a combination of economic incentives, public policies and cultural messages can reverse (or at least stop) the decline in birth rates. In the Nordic countries, for decades exhibited as a model of conciliation and well-being, commissions of experts have been created to understand why their systems did not prevent the collapse of fertility. In France, the discourse has acquired a almost military tonewith calls for “demographic rearmament” after a drop of 18% in births in just ten years. In the east and south of the continent, especially in countries governed by nationalist forces, the response has been more direct: money, tax advantages and an explicit exaltation of the traditional family as a pillar of the nation. Incentives and results. Italy offers bonuses to working mothers with two or more children. Poland has increased notably the monthly transfers per child and has expanded tax breaks for large families. On paper, these policies seem compelling, even enviable from countries like the United States, where the cost of raising children is systematically cited as the main brake to birth. However, the European experience shows a repeated pattern: even the most ambitious programs barely succeed in slowing the decline, don’t invest it. The problem is not the lack of public effort, but the magnitude of the phenomenon they face. Hungary, the laboratory. No country better embodies the ambitions and limits of this strategy than Hungary. For more than a decade, the government has deployed a support system of a generosity comparable to that of Scandinavia, allocating around 5% of its GDP to family policies, a higher proportion than the United States dedicates to defense. The range of measures it’s wide: leave for grandparents, subsidized mortgages for young married couples, loans of up to $30,000 that become subsidies if the family has three or more children, and lifetime tax exemptions for women with three children, extended to mothers of two children under 40 starting next year. The message is clear: having children is not only desirable, it is a matter of national survival. Initial successes. They remembered in the post that for a time, the data seemed to prove this bet right. Hungary’s fertility rate went from one of the lowest levels in Europe to figures that suggested a sustained recovery. But the relief was short-lived. In recent years, the trend has been reversed and the country has practically returned to the European average. For some demographers, the program did not generate new births, but rather advanced decisions by those who were already planning to have children. Others point out that, although the impact on fertility is limited, the policies have coincided with an increase in marriage, a reduction in child poverty and greater female labor participation. The key question is whether these collateral benefits justify the enormous public spending. State limits. Beyond the checks and exemptions prosecutors, the decision to have children remains deeply personal and increasingly complex. The rise in housing prices, persistent inflation and job insecurity they weigh as much or more than any incentive. Added to this is a factor that is rarely recognized in the political debate: many of the drivers of the decline in birth rates are social advances that no one wants to reverse. Widespread access to contraception, decline in teen pregnancy, and increased education and career opportunities for women have transformed motherhood and fatherhood in a late choice, carefully calculated and, for many, expendable. Modernity as a trap. The fertility drop has spread so widely that many experts interpret it as a consequence inherent to modernity. Parenthood is delayed until one’s thirties, when one has achieved job and economic stability that comes later and later. Social media idealizes a life focused on the individual, travel, and personal freedom. dating apps multiply apparent options, but they make lasting commitment difficult. And a generation raised in small families has less daily contact with babies and children, fueling overly negative perceptions about the sacrifice involved in raising children. A politicized debate. Not everyone considers the population decline to be a tragedy. Some defend assuming it as a gradual transition towards more sustainable societies, questioning apocalyptic visions who talk about “demographic collapse.” In the long term, even in the most pessimistic scenarios, Europe would still have hundreds of millions of inhabitants. But these global figures hide a much more immediate structural problem: the imbalance between workers and retirees. In just a few decades, the ratio of people of working age to each elderly person will increase. will have drastically reducedputting under strain systems designed for a demographic pyramid that no longer exists. The fragility of immigration. For years, immigration has been presented as Europe’s demographic lifeline. However, this option is becomes more uncertain as fertility falls across almost the entire planet. Even countries that until now were large demographic reserves … Read more

a supermassive black hole ejected from its galaxy at 3.4 million km/h

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Until now, we thought about supermassive black holes like the immovable anchors of galaxies, being gravitational giants that keep everything in order from the center. But we were quite wrong, since the James Webb Space Telescope us has confirmed that, sometimes, these anchors break and are shot through intergalactic space as if they were real gun bullets. The study. A team led by astronomer Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University has presented the first observational confirmation of a wandering supermassive black hole. It is called RBH-1 and its existence is the result of one of the most violent events that physics allows: being “kicked” out of your home by gravitational waves. A scar. Detecting this is not easy, since black holes They cannot be seen with the naked eye, but the destruction they leave in their wake is analyzed. This is precisely what JWST saw when it detected a massive linear structure about 200,000 light years long (twice the diameter of the Milky Way), which connects a distant galaxy with a bright, fuzzy spot. After trying to analyze this destruction in more detail, the telescope itself has revealed that it is a discontinuity. In layman’s terms: there is something extremely massive moving at an absurd speed of 954 km/s, which is equivalent to 3.4 million kilometers per hour. A speed that would allow us to travel from the Earth to the Moon in less than seven minutes. How do we know? The question in this case seems obligatory: How do we know that it is a black hole and not a simple star formation? The answer lies in everything it leaves in its wake, since by moving at this type of high speed, the black hole It compresses the gas so violently that it generates a trail of hot plasma that can be measured, as well as the formation of new stars. And now science has been able to confirm that this gas is not heated by the light emitted by stars, but by the brutal collision of a target that has at least 10 million times the mass of the Sun. Why is he running away? The theory behind this phenomenon is not new, but has been predicted by general relativity for 50 years. But in order to understand what has happened here, we can see it in three different steps: The first thing that happened was the merger of two galaxies and their respective supermassive black holes that began to orbit each other. After this, a third galaxy arrives to join this party and its black hole interacts with the binary system formed before. Finally, a cosmic “kick” is given. In this case, the interaction of three bodies generates a great asymmetry in the gravitational waves that results in a black hole shooting out of the galaxy at a high speed. It’s not the first. We already knew about wandering “stellar mass” black holes (a few times the mass of the Sun) roaming our own Milky Way, detected by gravitational microlensing effects by Hubble or the Gaia mission. However, finding a supermassive, what is the type of object that usually lives in the heart of galaxies, is a milestone on a different scale. Why this matters. The confirmation of RBH-1 is not a simple curiosity for physicists, but validates models of galactic evolution that suggest that the universe is full of these ‘exiles’. And this shows that if supermassive black holes can be ejected so easily, it means that many galaxies could be “orphaned” of their central core, affecting how they grow and form stars. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | China is launching more rockets into space than ever before. And the reason is very simple: not to depend on Starlink

November has been a black month for consoles. They no longer compete against each other, but against TikTok

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November 2025 is a month that many video game lovers have “celebrated” as the twentieth anniversary of Xbox 360. Pure nostalgiabecause beyond memory, November 2025 will be remembered by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft as a black month. The reason? It is the worst November for console sales since, precisely, November 2005. In the recent report from Circana we can see a figure very striking: 27%. That is how much spending by American consumers – the largest market for video games – has fallen during November of this year compared to November 2024. Another fact: with 1.6 million consoles sold that month, it is the worst November since 1995, the year of launch of PlayStation. It is relevant because it was released a year ago PS5 Pro and this month of may nintendo switch 2but the high prices of both machines and video games, which have experienced a rise in recent months, have not been able to convince players. Not even on Black Friday. And the key here may not be that thousands of video games are released every month or the price of the console itself. The key may be that the console war has ended and a very different one has begun: the attention war. Console war? War of attention At Xataka we have discussed the topic on more than one occasion. Our ability to focus is broken. in a task due to the enormous amount of stimuli to which we are subjected. Everything competes for our attention. Matt Booty, one of the Xbox heavyweights, said A few months ago Xbox’s competition was not PlayStation. Neither does Nintendo. The competition was TikTok. It was not a mistake, since Satya Nadella, absolute boss of the American company, also stated that “the competition of video games is not other video games, but short format video.” The interesting thing is that it is not an unreasonable statement. To Netflix, especially as a result of the final season of ‘Stranger Things’you are being accusing of producing empty series so that people have them in the background because they assume that they will be consuming short videos on their mobile phones while watching the series. That’s why there are short dialogues and a long opening exposition at the beginning of the season so you can “forget” about having to follow anything else. We are in a moment in which we spend the day unfocused, without being able look at your phone every 15 minutes as a reflex act and where we have to look for strategies so that multitasking and division of attention does not affect us. Matthew Bell, one of the most influential analysts of the video game market, already told it a few months ago in his book ‘The State of Video Gaming 2025‘. In your radiographypointed out how the video game industry no longer competes against itself, but against a tremendously fragmented digital entertainment ecosystem. Our time is finite. If we take away the hours of work, rest, transportation and food, we have little time for the rest. In the United States, there are studies who do not agree on how much time an average user spends on TikTok. The data varies between 58 minutes and 95, but whatever it is, then there is YouTube, Instagram or Facebook. This, in addition, is having cognitive consequences: have less attention span than a fish has. If in 2020 the average human attention span was twelve seconds, now it is eight. A fish pays attention for nine seconds, and you have to pay attention to a video game. And the threat of TikTok? The AI There are those who are catching this situation on the fly and that is why microdramas have appeared. At first, the fever of series with one-minute episodes occurred in Chinabut is climbing. And it is logical that you think: if the competition for consoles is TikTok, who is TikTok’s competition? The answer is also easy: artificial intelligence. Those minutes in which users They use ChatGPT as if it were their psychologista virtual friend or even a coupleare minutes that are not spent on TikTok. It is still something as accessible as opening an app, exactly the same as on TikTok, but perhaps waiting for that response from an AI that is characterized by being tremendously flattering is more comforting for our brain than the umpteenth quick video created with… AI –the slope-. Because they are social networks, video platforms, consoles, artificial intelligence and even the metaverse – someday, if that -, the objective is the same: to keep us glued to the screen. And we cannot attend to everything. In Xataka | An unknown console has overtaken Xbox in sales: it is just the beginning of more ambitious plans

The Black Death continued to hide an enigma almost seven centuries later. The answer was in some trees in the Pyrenees

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There are few episodes in the history of humanity more famous, studied and debated than that of the Black Deaththe epidemic that spread death across Europe between 1347 and 1353. However, there remained an enigma to solve, one as basic as it was relevant: Why the hell did the epidemic break out when, where and how did it do so? Why did this wave of death break out in the 14th century and not before or after? Solving a puzzle. This mystery is what Martin Bauch and Ulf Büntgen, from the GWZO and the University of Cambridge respectively, have wanted to solve in a study just published in Communications Earth & Environment. With it they not only want to shed light on one of the darkest episodes in Europe. They also show that, almost seven centuries later, the “black death” continues to be one of the chapters that most fascinates the world. Nothing surprising if one bears in mind that between 1347 and 1353 it took millions of lives in Europe, reaching mortality rates that in some regions they touched 60%. Searching in the Pyrenees. Perhaps the most curious thing about Bauch and Büntgen’s study is that it does not start in historical archives. Or that wasn’t at least his main place of work. The key to his research is in the Spanish Pyrenees, more specifically in the secular pines that they found there. When studying the interior of their trunks in search of clues about the medieval climate of Europe, they found something unexpected: a succession of “blue rings”. For most, that detail would go unnoticed, but Bauch and Büntgen saw something in it: evidence of a chain of colder, wetter summers than usual. “Unusual summers”. When the tempera falls, the trees cannot properly lignify their cells, which in turn leaves a bluish mark in the ring register of the trunk. In the Pyrenean pines, researchers found such marks that suggest that much of southern Europe must have experienced “unusually cold and wet summers” in 1345, 1346 and 1347. What’s more, when digging through libraries and written sources they found clues that point in exactly the same direction: a period marked by “unusual cloudiness and dark lunar eclipses.” The next question is… What caused this change in climate? And why is it important? The power of an eruption. Regarding the first question, researchers have few doubts. In his opinion, the drop in temperatures in summer was caused by a volcanic eruption (or even a chain of them) recorded around the year 1345 and which triggered a fatal domino effect: a considerable expulsion of ash and volcanic gases that generated a layer and caused a drop in temperatures, just as happened in other episodes throughout history. Climate, agriculture… Hunger. For the next question, why is it important that a volcano began releasing gases and ash almost seven centuries ago, the answer is simple: agriculture. The changes in climate not only left their mark on the centuries-old trunks of the central Pyrenees, they also punished the fields of the Mediterranean region, reducing crops and generating losses that threatened to lead to famine… and social instability. Against this backdrop, the powerful maritime republics of Italy did the most logical thing: chartered ships to import grain from the east, from the Black Sea area, more specifically from the Golden Hordein the Sea of ​​Azov region. It didn’t matter that Genoa and Venice were at war with the Mongols. Hunger was pressing, the threat of riots loomed and European diplomacy did its job. Already late in 1347, ships with grain began to arrive in Europe, unloading their precious merchandise in Mediterranean ports. More than grain. The problem is that in the holds of the ships mobilized by Venice and Genoa, the same ones that were supposed to prevent Europe from being besieged by famine, there were not only tons of grain. On board they brought fleas infected with Yersinia pestisthe bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague. “The exact origin of this deadly bacteria is still unknown, but ancient DNA suggests that a natural reservoir may have existed in wild gerbils somewhere in central Asia,” they explain from the University of Cambridge. The result: grain ships suddenly became vectors of a fatal disease, the bacteria jumped from rodents to humans, and the Black Death soon spread across Europe, with something much worse than famine. The ships of the black death. The rest is known history. Between 1347 and 1353 the disease killed millions of people. It is often said that the plague took the lives of 60% of the European population, a percentage that some raise to 65%, although in recent years some studies They have warned that the calculation is overstated and there were regions in which the registry was maintained. “Evidence of the Black Death can be found in many European cities almost 800 years later,” Büntgen and Bauch explain. “We were also able to show that many Italian cities, such as Milan or Rome, were probably not affected, because they did not need to import grain after 1345.” Why is it important? The study is interesting for several reasons. The main one, because it sheds new light on an aspect as basic as until now enigmatic about the Black Death. We knew about the role of Yersinia pestisabout the ships, about the role played by rodents, we knew the tragic death toll, its impact on the society, culture and economy of Europe… But we did not know why the epidemic broke out just when it did and not before or after. The succession of factors is so fascinating that researchers speak of a “perfect storm” in which climatic, agricultural, social and economic factors were added. A cocktail that, they insist, does not only speak to us about the Middle Ages. “Although this coincidence seems unusual, the probability of zoonotic diseases emerging due to climate change and resulting in pandemics is likely to grow in a globalized world,” Buntgen adds.. “It is … Read more

We knew almost nothing about the “black box” of life, the initial moment of fertilization: that is over

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In biology, human development, from the fertilization of an egg to the formation of the complete baby, has a large area called ‘black box’because we don’t know what happens there. We have a lot of data about what happens in the first days after fertilization and also during the last months thanks to ultrasounds. Worse, there is an area between the second and fourth weeks of development that is terra incognita. The ethics. It is without a doubt the great wall of developmental biology right now, since to see what happens to an embryo in these weeks we would have to have it in a culture dish for more than 14 days. But this is something that ethics does not allow, since after those days the embryo must be inside a uterus or destroyed. The change. Now science is working to find exactly how to see the embryo in this time window, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona achieved it. Specifically, it has achieved cultivate macaque embryoids which are embryo models derived from stem cells until day 25. In this way, processes that until now were hidden have emerged. A team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona has managed to cultivate macaque embryoids (embryo models derived from stem cells) until day 25, revealing processes that until now remained hidden. And this has already given us data about how our body is formed. Gastrulation. Lewis Wolpert, a famous biologistused to say that “the most important moment in your life is not birth, nor marriage, nor death, but gastrulation.” And he was right. To understand this importance, you must know that during gastrulation the embryo stops being a simple sphere of equal cells and transforms into a complex structure with three different layers that will give rise to all the organs of the body. But it is also essential to be able to define the axes of the body, that is, knowing where the head will be, the tail and what is right and left. Something that until now was impossible to see because previous models of primate embryos ended up collapsing after day 17. The solution. The research has therefore used a new system of 3D suspension culture which has enabled macaque embryonic stem cells to self-organize and develop complex structures until day 25 outside the uterus. What they have seen. What researchers have observed in these “embryoids” is fascinating because of its similarity to natural embryos. As detailed in the paper from Nature, these models have recapitulated key events of the late gastrulation. Among this, the formation of the central nervous system stands out, the precursor of the digestive system, the first blood cells or even those that in the future will give rise to eggs and sperm. The most surprising thing is that the transcriptomic analysis (the study of which genes are active cell by cell) revealed that differentiation trajectories were similar to those found in natural monkey embryos during this stage. At last. This means that we have, for the first time, a reliable simulator to study human development. Since we share a large part of our biology with macaques, this model allows us to investigate the causes of abortions early spontaneous and congenital malformations without crossing the ethical red lines of experimentation with human embryos. They are not real embryos. This is something fundamental for the limits that ethics imposes on us that we mentioned at the beginning. What has been cultured in this case are not real embryos, but models derived from stem cells where neither eggs nor sperm were involved. This has the aspect that it can never become a viable living being if it is implanted in a uterus and its usefulness is limited only to laboratories to analyze how we are developing and revealing critical points where an embryo can be aborted. In Xataka | There are more and more men obsessed with one thing: donating their semen

Hunting Bargains after Black Friday with offers on the new Poco mobile, the best-selling V16 beacon, the Nintendo Switch 2 and more

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Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday will be over, but stores have not stopped launching the most interesting offers. Once again we return with a Hunting Bargains full of discounts on computers, consoles, mobile phones and much more. nintendo switch 2 by 499.90 eurosthe console with a new pack that El Corte Inglés has put together. Poco F8 Pro by 449.99 euros By using the coupon, the new Xiaomi mobile with a good discount. MacBook Air M4 by 849 eurosa tighter price on Apple’s laptop. Blink Mini by 24.99 eurosa pack of two very complete surveillance cameras. Help Flash IoT+ by 38.50 eurosthe best-selling V16 beacon with a good number of candles and app compatibility. nintendo switch 2 If you didn’t get to take advantage of the offer nintendo switch 2 which was available during Black Friday, be careful because El Corte Inglés has put together its own pack that includes the nintendo switch 2 along with the two games’Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2‘. It can be purchased for a price of 499.90 eurosand to do so you have to add both the console and the games to the shopping cart. Nintendo Switch 2 + Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Poco F8 Pro Xiaomi launched the new Poco phones during Black Friday and they are still on sale. He Poco F8 Pro in your settings 512GB right now you can buy it for 449.99 euros using the coupon that appears in the Amazon store itself, just below the mobile. It is a fairly complete mobile phone that incorporates the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, Its speakers are signed by Bose and its battery is 6,210 mAh. Xiaomi Poco F8 Pro (12GB, 512GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links MacBook Air M4 PcComponentes continues with its Cyber ​​Week by launching very good discounts. One of them has fallen into the MacBook Air M4: If added to cart, you can purchase by 849 eurosone of the best prices we have seen to date. It is an ideal laptop for working or studying, it weighs only 1.24 kg, comes with Apple’s M4 chip and Its theoretical autonomy is up to 18 hours of video playback. MacBook Air M4 (16GB, 256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Blink Mini If during the next Christmas holidays you want to have your house more protected, this pack Blink Mini Includes two indoor surveillance cameras. Each of them offers two-way communication, night visionmotion detection, Alexa compatibility and HD resolution. All this for only 24.99 euros. Blink Mini (pack of two cameras) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Help Flash IoT+ If you have not yet purchased the V16 beacon that will be mandatory starting next January 1, Amazon once again has units of the Help Flash IoT+one of the most interesting that can be bought for 38.50 euros. It stands out mainly because it offers 290 candles (a good figure to have more visibility) and allows you to connect to the myIncidence app to quickly contact insurance and emergencies. 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 | Nintendo, Xiaomi, Apple, Blink, Netun Solutions In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2025), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best surveillance cameras: which one to buy and 11 recommended models for indoors, outdoors, babies and pets

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