Blue

We know it as “the red planet”, but 3.37 billion years ago Mars was almost as blue as Earth

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The mystery of Mars and water has a new chapter. The missions like Curiosity in the Gale crater they show clear evidence for the existence of liquid water lakes for thousands or millions of years. That climate models show that the early Mars It was a cold place. with temperatures significantly below the freezing point, it was elucidated with seasonal ice shields. However, among the pending subjects of Mars astronomy is knowing how much there was water and when was there. Mars was (half) blue. A recent study published in the scientific journal npj Space Exploration echoes the discovery of a “tide line” that explains that there was once an interconnected water system. Ignatius Argadestya, the lead author of the study, explains that although today Mars is a dry and reddish planet: “our results show that in the past it was a blue planet similar to Earth.” In fact, they have been able to demonstrate the existence of the deepest and most extensive ocean that has existed on Mars to date, account the scientist that half the red planet was once blue: “an ocean that extended across the planet’s northern hemisphere.” Valles Marineris in Hi-Res The “deltas” of Mars. More specifically, they have investigated geological formations called deposits with steep front located in the region of Valles Marineristhe largest canyon system in the solar system. Using very high resolution images from Cassis of the European Space Agency and the CTX and HiRISE from NASA (the latter provides a maximum resolution of about 25 to 30 centimeters per pixel), have been able to identify these deposits with identical morphology to the river deltas that we see in rivers such as the Ebro or the Danube when they flow into the sea. Thus, on Mars there was a time when water flowed from the mountains through branching channels until it reached a kind of lake or sea, where sediments were deposited. These deltas end in an abrupt step that is located at exactly the same altitude at different points on the planet, between -3750 and -3650 meters with respect to the reference level of Mars. About 3.37 billion years ago. This is not a geological coincidence, it is that at one time there was a body of water like a sea that maintained a stable level for a long time: it is a mark of the shore of a primeval Mars, since these deposits were formed between the Late Hesperian and Early Amazonian periods. According to the research team, that was the time in the history of Mars with the greatest availability of liquid water on its surface. Why is it important. Already had applied previously the existence and size of this Martian ocean, but its conclusions come with more precise and direct evidence. In addition, they have been able to determine when the water peak occurred on Mars. The deltas found constitute a magnificent base to study their sediments in depth in search of traces of life because where there is water, there could be life. On the other hand, among the next steps is to understand how Mars went from having an ocean that occupied half the planet to being a frozen desert. In fact, there are already clues: the research team detected desiccation cracks and dunes on these channels, which indicates that after this aquatic period, there was a progressive drying until they became arid. In Xataka | Mars has just entered the exclusive club of planets with rays. This is discouraging news for NASA. In Xataka | We had been wondering for decades how Mars could have water, cold and life. Today we finally have an answer Cover | Javier Miranda

Blue Origin’s space tourism numbers have been leaked and they are crazy

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A few years ago I saw a Spanish civilian cross the Kármán line leaving our planet was a generational event. Today, space tourism is about to normalize what was extraordinary and we have the clearest example in Alberto Gutierreza 42-year-old businessman from Valladolid and founder of the platform Civitatis who this Thursday managed to be the fourth Spaniard to theoretically reach space. His story. He did it on board the NS-38 mission from Blue Origina flight of just ten minutes that takes off and lands in Texas, but which represents another milestone in the private space race and consolidates the profile of the “tourist-astronaut” with a high heritage behind him. Because the truth is that it is not something very economical. 10 minutes. Takeoff took place at 10:26 CST (16:26 Spanish peninsular time) from the Blue Origin Launch Site One in Van Horn, Texas. The ship used was, once again, the reusable New Shepard system, a rocket designed specifically for suborbital tourism. All this with a plan that has followed the “Swiss clock” script to which we are accustomed in these missions. At the moment of launch the ship’s engine accelerated until it exceeded the March speed 3, and when it was already at a good altitude, the capsule was undocked and continued to ascend up to 106 kilometers above sea level, exceeding the Kárman line which is located at 100 km altitude. Weightlessness. But the experience sought with this type of attraction is to experience the phenomenon of weightlessness for a few minutes. Specifically, there were 3 minutes in which Gutiérrez was able to unhook himself from his seat belt to observe the curvature of the Earth while he was literally floating in space. It hasn’t been cheap. Although Blue Origin maintains official secrecy about the dynamic prices of its tickets, the sector has quite clear figures. And to enjoy these three minutes of weightlessness you only have to pay $150,000 just for admission to reserve your seat. But it does not logically stop here, since industry sources and leaks Previous estimates place the total cost of the ticket at around one million dollars. A price that not only pays for experience, but also for status. More and more difficult. With this type of space excursions aimed at the richest on our planet, the truth is that an interesting debate opens up about the label of “astronaut.” Although technically the Kármán line has been crossed with this trip, the FAA modified its criteria in 2021 to narrow it down much more. In this case, it no longer provides commercial astronaut wings to space tourists, but opts for a simple registration on its website. That is why for the agency, being a passenger is not the same as being an operational crew, although surely for all those who participate here it is a great life experience that is undoubtedly spatial. It’s not the first. As we have said, with this flight, Alberto Gutiérrez puts his name on a very short list. Before him, only three Spaniards had crossed the space border: Pedro Duque, Michael López-Alegría and Jesús Calleja. Although it is clear that this is an experience that is quite limited to those people who have a large wealth and decide to invest it in a unique experience. Last minute surprise. The NS-38 mission has not been without logistical setbacks. The original crew of six underwent a change just three days before launch, as Andrew Yaffe had to retire due to illness on January 19, being replaced by Dr. Laura Stiles. And there was luck with this replacement, since its inclusion allowed the launch date to be maintained, which had a very limited launch window, in order to guarantee its safety. Images | POT In Xataka | Manufacturing materials to produce chips in space is not science fiction. It is a very real plan that is already underway

TeraWave, Blue Origin’s satellite internet, is born

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Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has announced this Wednesday the deployment of 5,408 satellites to create TeraWave, a satellite communications network that will compete directly with starlink from SpaceX. But there is a crucial difference: it is not intended for you or me. What Blue Origin proposes. TeraWave promises speeds of up to 6 terabits per second, both upload and download, anywhere on the planet, according to the company. Deployment will begin at the end of 2027 with a constellation that will combine satellites in low and medium Earth orbit, connected by optical links. The network is designed to serve a maximum of approximately 100,000 customers, not millions like its competitors. The big difference with Starlink. While the service deployed by Elon Musk’s company, with more than 9,000 satellites in orbit and some 9 million customers, focuses on offering internet to individual consumers, companies and governments alike, TeraWave is committed to an exclusively business approach. Blue Origin has made clear that its network is “designed specifically for enterprise customers,” targeting data centers, governments and enterprises that require reliable connectivity for critical operations. Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin and former head of Amazon devices, confirmed in the statement that this is an “enterprise grade” service. An increasingly saturated market. Bezos is not only competing with Musk, but also with his own creature: Amazon. The e-commerce company Leo is deploying (formerly Project Kuiper), a network of 3,236 satellites of which there are already 180 in orbit. Unlike TeraWave, Leo does target both businesses, consumers and governments, competing more directly with Starlink. In addition, several Chinese companies are rapidly developing similar constellations with low-cost reusable rockets, following the strategy that SpaceX established with your Falcon 9. Why do they aim so high in speed?. Those 6 terabits per second that TeraWave promises are extreme even by current enterprise standards, well above what rival commercial services offer. So yes, indeed, Blue Origin aims to meet the demand for data centers for AI. And the TeraWave announcement coincides with a career in the space industry for building data centers in space that can meet the growing demand for large-scale AI processing. Musk has already expressed his desire to build these space centers complementing Starlink, while Bezos already predicted that will be common in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The logistical challenge. To put 5,408 satellites into orbit you need a reliable and economical launch machine. This is where Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket comes in, which although it has completed two launches, has not yet reached the necessary flight rate. Last November, the company achieved an important milestone upon successful landing the New Glenn booster after the launch of two NASA spacecraft, becoming the second company, after SpaceX, to achieve this feat. Bezos’s commitment to space. The founder of Amazon has been preaching about the potential of Blue Origin for years. In 2024, during an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos stated who believes Blue Origin “will be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it will take time.” Founded in 2000, the company has been primarily known for its tourist flights to the edge of space. Last year he also took both his current wife, Lauren Sánchez, and to the singer Katy Perry or to our national survivor, Jesus Calleja. Cover image | Jeff Bezos In Xataka | SpaceX has made sending things to space very cheap. The problem is that now space is full of things

In Spain we are used to the signs on highways and highways being blue. In other countries not

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If you have ever had to drive or pass near a highway in Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and many other countries in Europe, you will have noticed something curious: the road signs are not blue, but green. This is something that I was always curious to know why a few years ago, and there is more to the story than it seems. And it is the result of a series of historical and cultural decisions that each country made separately when developing its high-capacity road network. The origin of the “problem.” Europe has had a common road signaling system since 1968, when the Vienna Convention on Road Signs. This treaty unified the shapes, symbols and many traffic rules, but left each country free to choose the colors of the orientation signs. The agreement establishes that road markings can be white or yellow, and that pictograms must be internationally recognizable, but does not impose a single color for highways. Therefore, even if you drive throughout Europe under more or less similar rules, the colors of the signs change depending on the country. Image: Maps Interlude Why Spain chose blue. When Spain began to develop its network of highways and highways in the 1970s, it decided to use blue for high-capacity roads and white for conventional roads. This choice responds to a series of practical criteria: blue offered good night visibility with the reflective materials available at that time. Just like Spain, other countries also decided to opt for this color. The green in other countries in Europe. Many other European countries opted for green for their highways. Belgium, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, Ukraine, and many other countries have green signage on their highways. The decision has roots in the continent’s early highway systems. The first two major highway networks were the germans (Autobahnen) and the Italian ones (Autostrade), which used blue and green signals respectively. The Italian choice of green probably influenced other Mediterranean and Eastern European countries, while the German scheme remained very consolidated and was imitated directly or indirectly by countries close to or with strong German technical influence. Image: Luigi Chiesa Nor is there one color better than another. Although you might want to start a war and choose sides between countries that use blue or green on their road signs, none is really better than the other. In fact, the main reason why both colors coexist on the continent is because they have not been standardized at the European level. In this sense, both colors fulfill their function perfectly if they are applied consistently within each country. Blue stands out well at night, while green is very legible during the day and is psychologically associated with progress and continuity. As long as each driver can quickly identify what type of road they are using and it can be read clearly and without problem, all good. What is unified. Although the colors vary, the Vienna Convention guarantees that a driver perfectly understands the signs whether he is in one country or another, because the pictograms, shapes and logic of the system are common. Triangles warn of dangers, circles prohibit or oblige, and rectangles inform. This harmonization is what really makes it possible to drive around Europe without having to study every national code. If there are changes, it will not be in the colors. In 2025, the Global Forum for Road Traffic Safety launched a proposed amendment which could completely modify the text of the Vienna Convention, including new numbering for all signs. What will not change are the colors on the road signs, so each country will continue to have free rein to maintain its tradition. First because it works, and second because we are already used to it and that on the road means saving a lot of time. Cover image | Google Maps In Xataka | Madrid has committed to having an F1 circuit in September: at the moment it has an open field and four streets of a PAU

The cosmos has sent us a series of blue flashes for more than a decade. We now have a clue as to what they really are.

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For more than a decade, the cosmos has been sending us mysterious flashes of ultra-bright blue light that appear out of nowhere and disappear in a matter of days. This phenomenon has a strange little name, but they are known as ‘luminous fast blue optical transients’ (LFBOTs), and have baffled astronomers since its discovery. Now, thanks to the analysis of one that has become the brightest ever detected, scientists believe they have solved the enigma: they are black holes devouring companion stars, and the process is extremely violent. The discovery. The team led by researchers from the University of California at Berkeley analyzed a LFBOT discovered in 2024 and named ‘AT 2024wpp’. The phenomenon turned out to be between five and ten times more luminous than any other of its kind previously observed. Astronomers used a range of space and ground-based telescopes (including Chandra, Swift, NuSTAR, ALMA, and the Keck and Gemini observatories) to study it at multiple wavelengths, from X-ray to radio. The data revealed that the energy released by AT 2024wpp was 100 times greater than that of a normal supernova. As Natalie LeBaron, a graduate student at Berkeley and first author of one of the studies, explains, “the absolute amount of energy radiated by these bursts is so large that you can’t feed them with the collapse and explosion of a massive star, or with any other type of normal stellar explosion.” An extreme cosmic feast. The researchers they propose that these flashes are produced by what they call “extreme tidal disruption.” This process occurs when a black hole (with a mass up to 100 times that of our Sun) completely destroys its companion star in a matter of days. According to the team’s reconstructions, the black hole had been absorbing material from its companion for a long time, surrounding itself with a halo of gas. In the case studied, the scientists report that, when the star got too close and was torn apart, the new material violently collided with the pre-existing gas as it fell towards the black hole, generating the intense blue and ultraviolet light characteristic of LFBOTs. According to account Robert Sanders, a researcher at the University of Berkeley, Some of the gas was ejected in jets from the poles of the black hole at about 40% of the speed of light, producing the radio emissions that scientists later detected. Intermediate mass black holes, a separate enigma. The black hole’s inferred mass places these objects in a particularly interesting category: intermediate-mass black holes. Although experiments like LIGO Black hole mergers of more than 100 solar masses have been detected, they have never been directly observed and their formation process remains a mystery. “Theorists have proposed many ways to explain how we get these large black holes,” points out Raffaella Margutti, associate professor of astronomy and physics at Berkeley and lead author of both studies. “LFBOTs allow us to approach this question from a completely different angle. They also allow us to characterize the precise location where these things occur within their host galaxy, which adds more context to trying to understand how we ended up with this configuration: a very large black hole and a companion.” A family of phenomena with curious nicknames. The first LFBOT with sufficient data for analysis was detected in 2018 and received the official designation ‘AT 2018cow’. His name led researchers to nickname him “the Cow”, a tradition that continued with later events: the Koala, the Tasmanian Devil and the Finch. AT 2024wpp, the subject of this study, has already been informally named the Woodpecker. To date, just over a dozen of these events have been identified, all located in galaxies with active star formation at distances of hundreds of millions and billions of light years. The companion star destroyed in AT 2024wpp was more than 10 times the mass of the Sun and could have been a Wolf-Rayet starthat is, very hot and evolved objects that have already consumed much of their hydrogen. TO hunting for LFBOTs. Researchers hope that the upcoming ultraviolet space telescopes, ULTRASAT and UVEX, scheduled to launch in the coming years, will revolutionize the detection of these phenomena. “Right now we find only one LFBOT a year or so. But once we have UV telescopes in space, finding LFBOTs will become routine, like detecting gamma ray bursts today,” explains Nayana AJ, researcher at Berkeley and first author of X-ray and radio analysis. In Xataka | When nuclear energy orbited the Earth: the day a Soviet satellite with a reactor fell in Canada and sparked a crisis

Jeff Bezos fired the CEO of Blue Origin two years ago. In retrospect, it was the best decision he could have made.

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The most surprising fact about Blue Origin is that it was founded before SpaceX. Obsessed with space since childhood, Jeff Bezos saw the potential the aerospace industry would have and began selling thousands of Amazon shares to build a rocket company. He founded Blue Origin in 2000, when his net worth was around $6.1 billion. Two years later, a young Elon Musk obsessed with the conquest of Mars invested $100 million (more than half of what he had from the sale of PayPal) in founding SpaceX. Who would suspect that the company that would end up revolutionizing the sector would be that of the eccentric South African businessman and not that of the CEO of Amazon, who multiplied his assets by 30. The sleeping giant The Blue Origin coat of arms For almost two decades, Blue Origin was the butt of jokes in the sector: a company financed with infinite funds that sold 15-minute suborbital trips to millionaires, but when it came time to reach orbit it only produced powerpoints and legal lawsuits to stop its opponents. Blue Origin was aware of its apparent slowness in the face of SpaceX, to the point of deliberately adopting it as its motto. The company’s coat of arms includes two turtles and a Latin phrase that Jeff Bezos has publicly defended with pride: Gradatim Ferociter“step by step, fiercely.” But although projects such as the powerful BE-4 engines and the reusable New Glenn rocket had been in development for years, the reality is that Blue Origin did not step on the accelerator until the end of 2023, when Bezos said enough and caused a CEO change that has been like night and day. The Dave Limp Effect The first stage of the New Glenn rocket returning to the factory A little context. By 2023, under the leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin had become a bottleneck for US national security. The new Vulcan rocket from ULA (the company that had a monopoly on government launches until the arrival of SpaceX) depended on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, which kept falling behind schedule. At the end of that year, Jeff Bezos made the decision to remove Bob Smith and entrust the company to the executive who had led Amazon’s devices division during the creation of Alexa or Kindle: Dave Limp. Today, the engine crisis is more than resolved. Blue Origin has celebrated the delivery of the 30th engine to ULA, which will allow its partner to meet its launch obligations for the Space Force. But it has not been the only thing that Dave Limp has managed to channel as the company’s new CEO. Under old management, Blue Origin operated with a crippling risk aversion. He sought perfection on the first try, which translated into eternal development cycles. Limp arrived with the Amazon system under its arm: Blue Origin went from being an R&D company to becoming a real rocket factory willing to take risks. The internal culture had already begun to improve when, in February 2025, Limp laid off 10% of the workforce. “We grew too fast and lost focus,” he explained. But the effect was immediate: Blue Origin has become a company that is agile in decision-making. Instead of having a single rocket that’s scary to break, they’re a real rocket factory. So when the New Glenn finally took off, crashing on the landing attempt, it was not a single prototype: there were other stages of the rocket already on the production line. From New Glenn to Super New Glenn New Glenn vs Saturn V vs New Glenn 9×4 If anyone had doubts about Limp’s management, the events of this last year have dispelled them. Blue Origin has successfully completed two orbital launches that have completely changed the narrative, and which have soon been overshadowed by the company’s roadmap. He maiden flight of the New Glenn It was a partial success. The rocket reached orbit (and there are few rockets that can say that on the first try), but the first stage disintegrated while trying to land. Far from stopping to investigate the failure for a year, Blue Origin analyzed the data, adjusted the software and moved forward with the second attempt, as SpaceX would have done. In November, the second New Glenn successfully launched NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, two probes that were placed at the L2 Lagrange point awaiting gravitational assistance to travel toward Mars. But even a Martian mission can take a backseat when, against all odds, the first stage of the rocket landed on the Jacklyn maritime platform in the Atlantic Ocean. Blue Origin is only the second company to achieve the propulsive landing of a rocket. For the first time, SpaceX has a real competitor capable of recovering orbital-class boosters. One that uses methane for cleaner and cheaper combustion, and that promises to carry up to 45 tons to low Earth orbit. Shortly after the launch, taking advantage of the momentum of success, Blue Origin announced an improved version of the BE-4 engine and a new variant of the rocket: the New Glenn 9×4, which instead of seven engines in the first stage and two in the second, carries nine and four. In addition to a larger 8.7 meter diameter canopy, to launch larger space stations, telescopes and satellites. What does this mean? That Blue Origin is going for the “Super Heavy” category, in which SpaceX competes with the Falcon Heavy and the gigantic Starship, still in development. This variant of the New Glenn will be able to carry 70 tons to low orbit, which with Starship’s permission surpasses almost everything else on the market and, most importantly, with an architecture that has already flown and landed. To conquer the orbit and the Moon With the New Glenn 9×4 scheduled for 2027, Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp’s attention is now focused on scaling the rocket’s manufacturing and reusability capacity to reach 24 launches per year between now and then. SpaceX continues to play in its own league with 160 launches … Read more

Japan is the only country in the world where the green traffic lights are blue. And the reason is called “aoshingō”

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Red, amber and green. The three colors of traffic lights around the world. All over the world? No, some particular Japanese traffic lights resist today and forever… the Vienna Convention on Traffic Signs and Signals to which more than 50 States are adhered. Although there are curious absences in it, such as those of the United States or, of course, Japan. This regulatory framework was signed for the first time in 1968promoted by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The text reviewed previous regulations with the aim of homogenizing traffic in as many countries as possible. The last review, in fact, is from 2003 and it addressed the modernization of some signs or the priority rules on roundabouts. The intention is that what we understand in Spain as a Stop is also the same in France or Germany. And so it is, in fact, because all of Europe subscribes to said text. But the most striking absences, such as that of Japan, give rise to curious anecdotes. Like finding traffic lights where the priority of passage is not granted with green, it is applied when the light turns blue. Blue, I love you blue And if you travel to Japan and plan to drive, there is one detail that you should not overlook (beyond the fact that you drive on the left, remember): the green light on some traffic lights is blue. Or turquoise, more accurately. The origin must be found in the language itself. The Japanese did not have a specific word to refer to green. To mention it they referred to the word “Ao”. The problem is that “Ao” It refers to a wide spectrum of colors and among them, as you can imagine, blue or greenish blue or turquoise. Some sources suggest that the word “Midori”, which refers specifically to the color green, became popular during World War II for a purely practical matter when it comes to differentiating both colors. However, a good part of society continued to refer to green as “Ao” and, in fact, it continues to be part of words that are applied exclusively to define green objects, such as aoshingō…which is actually the official word for the green traffic light even though it doesn’t specifically mean green. In 1960, Japan signed its own Traffic Law where this term was collected to talk about the traffic light. This law is, therefore, prior to the aforementioned Vienna Convention and remained intact until 1973 when a ministerial order ended up specifying that the traffic light It had to be as blue as possible within the greenas a compromise measure between maintaining the traffic lights that were already installed and approaching international conventions. The result is that the oldest traffic lights have a more intense blue and the most modern ones have a green tone with slight blue nuances that can remind us of turquoise. However, they are not exactly green because the term “Ao” works, as we said, for both blue and green. Photo | Yuya Sekiguchi and Derch In Xataka | Japan needs solutions to its great demographic drama. He is looking for them on a bus

The only photo you need to understand the scale of what Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ company, has just done

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In the absence of bananas, there is nothing like having five human operators in the photo to understand the scale of the New Glenn rocket, whose first stage is 57 meters high and seven meters in diameter. landed successfully on a barge in the Atlantic. SpaceX has company. So far, the club of companies capable of landing their orbital-class rockets so they can be reused had only one partner: SpaceX. For a decade now, Elon Musk’s company has single-handedly dominated the reuse game, landing and taking off again up to 500 times with the Falcon 9 thanks to a reliability that is now more than routine. What you see in this photo is the breaking of that monopoly. The first successful landing of the enormous New Glenn rocket, achieved on only its second flight, demonstrates that orbital reuse is no longer a matter of a single company. Although Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, is far behind SpaceX, it has just taken a giant leap that Bezos summarized with a Latin expression: Gradatim Ferociter (“step by step, fiercely”). As large as graceful. Unlike the Falcon 9, which measures 70 meters and can put about 22 tons of cargo into low orbit, the New Glenn stands out with 98 meters in height and a planned capacity of 45 tons. If we had not seen SpaceX catch the Super Heavy (the first stage of Starship) three times with the arms of the launch tower, it would seem more unlikely to us that a rocket like the New Glenn would be able to land gracefully in the center of a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. And without getting covered in soot. There is another fundamental detail in the photo: the rocket fuselage is clean. Unlike the Falcon 9 boosters, which return covered in the characteristic black soot caused by kerosene combustion, the New Glenn appears almost pristine. The reason is that its seven powerful BE-4 engines use methane and liquid oxygen (a combination of cryogenic propellants known as methalox). This fuel is not only more efficient and cheaper, but it burns much cleaner, facilitating inspection and reconditioning tasks for the next flight. With this landing, the New Glenn has become the first methalox rocket to successfully recover a first stage from an orbital flight, ahead of the Zhuque 3 from the Chinese company Landspace (and with permission from Starship, which also uses methalox, but has never reached orbit). Things are coming. Blue Origin’s sweet moment begins now. In an interview with Ars Technicathe company’s CEO, Dave Limp, has confirmed that the aggressive 2026 goal is to complete between 12 and 24 missions. The company has announced a launch price of about $70 million, a figure almost identical to what SpaceX charges for a Falcon 9. But the New Glenn not only competes with the Falcon 9, but also threatens to burst the market by competing directly in the league of the Falcon Heavy, but with the advantage of a unique and fully reusable first stage. As for the rocket that has landed, its next payload will not be a probe or a satellite, but the Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar module, which the company plans to launch in the first quarter of 2026 to demonstrate to NASA They are ready for the moon race. Image | Jeff BezosBlue Origin In Xataka | Blue Origin now has a golden opportunity to overtake SpaceX on trips to the Moon. And he is taking advantage of it

Wearing glasses against “blue light” is a thing of the past. The future is anti-recognition glasses

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Facial recognition has been on our phones for years and is increasingly being implemented in more places. Airports, police investigations and even apps that want to implement it to prove that we are human. More and more systems they want to see our faces and concerns about privacy are increasing. The first invention to protect us from mass surveillance is here and comes in the form of glasses. ID Guard. It is the name that Zennia company that sells glasses online, has put its new lenses. They have a pink coating that reflects the infrared light used by many facial recognition systems like Apple’s FaceID. When we try to unlock the iPhone with them on, the eyes darken and that means the system is not able to verify the user. The problem. They count in 404media The problem with this technology is that it only works with systems that use infrared light. That is, we can still be identified through a normal photo. Most facial recognition systems that we can find on the street, for example those at airports or those used by the police, use normal cameras. New concern. We have been using biometric data to access mobile phones for years. However, unlike the fingerprint, our face is much more accessible and with the emergence of AI, Recognizing each other is easier than ever. There are services like PimEyes or Lenso.ai that recognize faces in just seconds simply from an image. Zenni’s glasses are a response to this new concern, although perhaps they arrive too soon, and they still have to solve the problem of recognition with normal cameras. Doxing. It is a type of attack in which a person’s private information is revealed. When we talk about mass surveillance we think of systems run by governments and authorities, but it goes beyond that. A “doxing“It is when, for example, someone records you, uploads the video to the networks and identifies you only from your image. We have recent cases such as the infidelity that was revealed by the kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert or that of that man who stole a child’s cap during the US Open. Video surveillance. There are many countries that have implemented massive video surveillance systems. The country that comes to mind before this mass surveillance thing is Chinabut there are many more places in the world full of cameras. In Europe we have the case of London, which has almost a million cameras installed in its streets. In United States, police are using facial recognition to arrest suspects (and making mistakes) and in The European Union approved the use of facial recognition in 2024 by the authorities. Image | Karola G, Pexels In Xataka | To what extent is it legal to use smart glasses like Facebook’s and record everything and everyone on the street?

The blue eyes were about to disappear under the Roman Empire. Now we know why

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About 35,000 years ago, in Buran-Kayato the north of the mountains of Crimea, the first person who knows that he had blue eyes died. Since then, the story of the Iris clear has been complex, violent and very interesting. Today, thanks to the improvement of genetic analysis techniques, we know many things. In recent years, it has been said that effectively The Vikings had blue eyesthat the eyes of the steppe peoples were surprisingly dark and that, during the Roman Empire, the clear eyes almost disappeared. How do we know all this? Davide Piffer used 4,133 old genomes (They covered 44,000 years) to explain when the blue eyes arose, how they were selected generation after generation and why today there are people who still have them. Why do we have blue eyes? At the genetic level, which is what interests us in this case, the explanation is simple: As Piffer himself explained“Blue eyes genetics focuses on two neighboring genes on chromosome 15: OCA2 that controls the production of melanin in the iris, and Herc2 which contains a regulatory element “. In the case of brown eyes, “Herc2 ‘active’ OCA2 effectively to produce enough pigment.” With blue eyes, the situation is different: a mutation in RS12913832 weakens HERC2 control and the least amount of melanin is perceived as bluish or greenish eyes. That is, there is a genetic ‘trace’ that allows us to dive in ancient DNA to know how (with a certain degree of variability) the eyes of our ancestors. What did you discover? This is how Piffer confirmed That the Vikings had mostly blue eyes, the steppe peoples had them darker than expected and that the current prevalence of clear eyes is due to fairly recent factors. He also discovered something curious: that the story of Rome is much more complicated than it seems. While in ancient Rome the blue eyes appear in 22.2%of the population and in medieval Rome in 21.4%, during the empire that figure fell 4.2%. What happened here? The best known explanation. For Pifferthis agrees with the increase in European northwestern descent during those periods. During the first period, although the genetic base is mostly anatolia, there was a high influence of Yamnas groups. During the last one, the arrival of Germanic groups “such as longobardos and ostrogods” would change the general genetic mix. On the other hand, during the years of Roman hegemony, the most purely Latin features had disproportionate prestige that caused a boom of brown eyes. For years, this has been part of the consensus of populations genetics. However, it is not so clear. The demograph Lyman Stone He analyzed exhaustively The Roman genomes of those 4,133 samples to determine if we really had sufficient data to talk about the eyes of the Romans. Their conclusions, between failures in dating and historical confusion, are that we do not have them. According to Stone, there are reasons to think that in the metropolitan area of ​​Rome the blue eyes were reduced (as a consequence of the increase in immigration). In the same way, it is very likely that in the empire there were more people with brown eyes in 200 d. C. that in 300 d. C. (After all, the Empire grew hugely). This is true even if Bologna’s genetics did not change at all. What about blue eyes, then? It is a question that, for the first time, we have technology to answer. However, we have no samples to do so. As Lyman saidold DNA is a fantastic tool, but it is still difficult to interpret correctly. So the answer to the initial question (why (do we believe) the Romans did not have blue eyes?) It is simple: because we do not have enough data. And this configures our world vision much more often than we are willing to admit. Image | Amanda Dalbjörn | Clemens van Lay In Xataka | Every time you think about everything the Romans managed to do, remember that they did it intoxicated with lead

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