changed

In 2004, 15 driverless cars competed in the desert for a million dollars. None of them ended, but they changed the industry forever

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On March 13, 2004, at dawn, fifteen vehicles left Barstow, California, heading for the Mojave Desert. They did not have a driver. Their mission was to travel more than 200 kilometers of hostile terrain to Primm, Nevada, without anyone at the wheel or remote control in between. The first to do it would win a million dollars. No one got it. Objective: operate without a driver. The DARPA Grand Challenge It was a competition organized by the United States Advanced Defense Projects Agency, the same organization that once laid the foundations for the Internet. Congress had set a goal that, by 2015, one-third of military ground vehicles could operate without drivers, thereby reducing the risk to soldiers on resupply and transportation missions in war zones. To accelerate that research, DARPA decided to open the door to anyone, whether they were universities, hobbyists, or independent engineers. It was enough to present a vehicle capable of driving itself. In detail. Twenty-one candidates passed the previous qualifying tests, held at the California Speedway circuit, and fifteen vehicles arrived at the starting line of the desert. There was everything from SUVs, to pickup trucks, and even modified motorcycles with computers, radar, cameras, and GPS receivers to “see” the terrain and decide for themselves how to navigate it. The route, about 228 kilometers, was not revealed until two hours before departure, precisely to check that the systems were capable of interpreting the environment in real time and not memorizing a route in advance. ORAn almost comical disaster. one of the cars it capsized as soon as it started and had to withdraw before the official start. Two others did not even start the test. Three hours into the race, out of a limit of ten, only four vehicles were still running. The rest fell due to mechanical failures, blocked brakes, broken axles or navigation systems that lost direction. According to collect the specialized magazine IEEE Spectrum, the image offered by the exit was “the most diverse collection of vehicles gathered in one place since the filming of Mad Max 2.” Who went further. The vehicle that advanced the most It was Sandstorm.a 1986 Humvee modified by Carnegie Mellon University’s Red Team. It traveled 11.9 kilometers before getting stranded on a slope in the terrain after exiting a horseshoe curve, according to the university itself. The impact broke front axles and burst wheels, and fuel began to spill from the tank. Its manager, robotics professor William “Red” Whittaker, acknowledged that the car arrived “injured” to the test, as it had overturned during a test the previous week and the team barely had time to fully repair it. Shortly after, another of the vehicles, nicknamed DAD (Digital Auto Drive), became immobilized. and it caught fire before those responsible for the event deactivated it remotely. No team exceeded 12 kilometers of a route that was supposed to exceed 200. It wasn’t entirely a failure.. Although the million dollars remained without an owner, DARPA considered that the experiment had fulfilled its real function: to demonstrate that there was a community of engineers, students and programmers willing to solve a problem that until then seemed like something out of science fiction. The day after the disaster in the desert, the agency announced that it would repeat the test a year and a half later, this time with two million dollars. And the revenge arrived. On October 8, 2005, in a new edition on a 212-kilometer route, five vehicles completed the route for the first time in history. The winner was Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg by the Stanford University team led by German engineer Sebastian Thrun, who crossed the finish line in 6 hours and 53 minutes. Sandstorm itself, now repaired, came second. The real impact came later. That race through the desert ended up being the seed of the autonomous car industry as we know it today. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin They came in disguise to witness the 2005 test and, shortly after, Thrun was hired to lead Google X, the company’s experimental projects laboratory. There, along with other DARPA test veterans such as Anthony Levandowski, Chris Urmson and Mike Montemerlo, Thrun launched in 2009 the secret project that would eventually become Waymo, today one of the main autonomous car companies in the world. Stanley itself, the 2005 winning car, is currently preserved in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. And now what. Two decades after that first failed test in the desert, driverless cars They are already circulating through the streets from cities like San Francisco, Phoenix or Shanghai, and companies like Waymo or Tesla are committed to autonomous taxis becoming commonplace. In Spain we will briefly see some doing tests this year in Madrid. Although the really curious thing was that, a test in which most of the cars made fools of themselves, ended up being the real starting point of a technology that today moves billions of dollars. Cover image | Lemonodor In Xataka | China has an amazing 10-kilometer underwater tunnel and 200,000 LED lights with one goal: to keep you from falling asleep

This is what the SEPE has changed as of July 16, 22026

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Let’s tell you What things has the SEPE changed? to be able apply for unemployment online. Over the years we have seen how the process is being digitalized, having a virtual simulator to calculate what corresponds to you and being able seal the unemployment by mobile. There are two types of changes that come into effect from now on. One has to do with the methods with which you can identify yourself online, and the other with the way you can sign online procedures to give your confirmation without having to go to an office to sign by hand. Two new identification methods According to has been published in the BOEfrom July 16, 2026 The options to identify yourself are expanded when carrying out any procedure online or by phone related to unemployment benefits or unemployment benefits. Until now, to carry out these procedures you could identify yourself with your digital certificateincluding the FNMT certificate and that of DNIe to verify your identity with the cl@ve system. But now, two new options have been added to identify you: Single-use code (SMS or email): A quick key will be sent to the mobile number or email that you have configured in your account. Contrast data: You will be asked for personal information or information from other requests that only you know, such as the number of a letter that has arrived or security questions, among others. Two new confirmation methods Two new methods have also been added to confirm requests without having to physically go to sign a paper at the SEPE office. They are the following two: Web form: When you fill out your application, you can sign easily, accepting the terms and entering a temporary code that will be sent to you by SMS to your mobile or email. By phone: If you carry out a procedure by phone with the SEPE, you can confirm your signature by telling the agent a temporary code that they will send you by phone. You can also confirm your consent with the official SEPE mobile app or the website while calling. The entire process will be recorded and registered in your file so that no one can impersonate your identity. The procedure will have the same legal validity as a physical signature. Furthermore, the standard applies to everything related to unemployment benefits and subsidiessuch as requesting unemployment benefits, providing documentation that has been requested, canceling aid, etc. In Xataka Basics | How to know how much unemployment you have left if you lose your job with the SEPE simulator

we have also changed the axis of rotation

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A couple of decades ago, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab they estimated that the filling of the Three Gorges Dam, China’s massive hydroelectric project, involved the movement of a mass of water so vast that it was capable of lengthening 0.06 microseconds Earth day. The Chinese dam is a unique case due to its magnitude, but it is just one of the tens of thousands of reservoirs that populate our planet. The overall impact of these reservoirs has now come under study. Shifting the poles. A new study has found evidence of the geological impacts that the construction of dams can have on a global scale. They observed that the construction of dams had caused a slight shift of the geographic poles of the planet, Geographic poles? As children we were probably taught that the geographic poles and magnetic poles of our planet were located at different points in their respective polar circles. Surely they would teach us that the magnetic poles tend to move slowly over time while the geographic poles remain static, forming the Earth’s axis of rotation. This is more or less true, but not entirely precise: geographic poles can also move. The reason is in the very structure of the Earth. Our planet is not a uniform block of rock but is made up of several concentric layers. While the outer layer is essentially solid, the inner ones are not. As if it were a mat on a swimming pool, the Earth’s crust “floats” on the mantle, which implies that it can move more or less independently, displaced by the physical forces applied in each case. Redistributing the mass. Forces that in turn depend in part on the distribution of the masses that we find in this superficial part of the planet, a distribution that is altered every time we introduce changes in the geography of our planet. These changes include the displacement of large masses of water into the swamps, water that under “normal” conditions would have returned to the ocean carried by the rivers on which we build dams. “As we trap water behind dams, we not only remove water from the oceans, lowering sea levels, we also distribute mass differently around the world,” explained in a press release Natasha Valencic, co-author of the study. 6,862 reservoirs. The team responsible for the study analyzed the impact of the accumulation of water in 6,862 reservoirs, an accumulation of water that represents twice the volume of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The team observed that between 1835 and 2011 this accumulation of water could be responsible for almost a meter of displacement in the Earth’s axis of rotation with respect to the planet’s surface. The displacement would be divided into two stages. The first between 1835 and 1954, in which the pole would have moved 20.5 cm towards the 103rd eastern meridian as a result of the construction of dams in Europe and North America. The second, between 1954 and 2011, would have been dominated by construction in Asia and East Africa, moving the pole 57 centimeters towards the 117th meridian west. Details of the study were published in an article in the magazine Geophysical Research Letters. More than reservoirs. The implications of these geographical changes are not extreme: after all, the tectonic plates do not stop moving at our feet despite the fact that their rhythms are usually slower. However, knowing these small movements can help us understand some of the geological dynamics and the impact of humans on them. “We are not going to fall into a new ice age because the pole has changed by around one meter in total, but it does have implications for sea level,” Valencic clarified. In Xataka | China is building an unprecedented dam where millions of people live. The problem is seismic activity Image | Ali Madad Sakhirani

“My urine spills everywhere.” How a viral phrase has changed the life of the man with the smallest penis in the world

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In 2014, a team of South African surgeons achieved the first penis transplant with history success. That intervention marked a before and after in the reconstructive medicine and recalled the extent to which problems related to this organ can affect much more than a patient’s sexual life. The viral that changed the conversation. “My urine spills everywhere.” That was the descriptive phrase with which Michael Phillips has ended up getting thousands of people to stop seeing his case as a simple Internet curiosity and begin to understand the medical problem behind a micropenis. In fact, what seemed like another statement destined to go viral hid a much deeper reality. less striking: that of the difficulties in doing something as everyday as urinating, a practically impossible sex life and a profound psychological impact. The challenge that went around the world. I counted the weekend Guardian that Phillips rose to fame after publicly challenge anyone to prove that he didn’t have “the smallest penis in the world.” That provocation quickly attracted the attention of media outlets around the world and generated an enormous debate on social networks. However, Phillips always insisted that his goal was not to gain notoriety, far from it, but to make visible an extremely rare medical condition and the consequences it has for those who suffer from it. Behind the size there was a medical problem. Because Phillips’ diagnosis does not respond to a subjective perception, but to a micropenis clinically diagnosed as such. As explainedeven when erect his member barely reaches 0.97 centimeters in length, very much below the medical threshold used to define this condition. That situation, accountaffects such basic aspects as going to the bathroom to urinate or having penetrative sexual relations, two problems that marked a good part of his adult life. The surprise. Be that as it may, the public exhibition has ended up causing an effect that not even he himself expected. After launching a financing campaign collectively to finance an intervention aimed at partially improving their quality of life, donations began to multiply. “I never thought anyone would care to help,” Phillips acknowledged.which ended up raising nearly $13,000 thanks to more than 250 people and confessed to feeling “really grateful and surprised” by the support received. Virality changing destiny. The impact was so great that even a well-known Beverly Hills plastic surgeon publicly offered to operate on him. for free. Finally, Phillips decided to undergo the intervention at a center closer to his home, where he hopes to increase the thickness of his penis to alleviate, at least in part, the functional problems derived from his condition. The procedure will not resolve all your limitations, but it does aim to improve everyday aspects that affect your quality of life. From stigma to vindication. The case has also brought to light the stigma surrounding to the micropenis. Phillips has acknowledged that his diagnosis practically ended his love life and that he even had to prove to a British television program that he really suffered from this condition before being interviewed. He has also endured ridicule and doubts about the veracity of his story, although he has turned that exhibition in a tool to demand that the micropenis stop being treated as a simple reason for jokes or ridicule. It started with morbidity, it ended with health. If you also want, the story of the American Michael Phillips went viral because it revolved around a striking figure and a diagnosis that was almost impossible to verify. However, the story itself ended up moving towards another terrain much more relevant. Curiously, the phrases that they generated more impact They were not those related to size, but those that described how a medical condition could turn such normal actions as going to the bathroom or having an intimate relationship into a daily problem. And it was precisely those confessions that ended up changing his life. Image | YouTube, Wikimedia In Xataka | Science has been measuring whether size matters for years. A study with 3D simulation has the most complete answer In Xataka | Millions of men wake up every morning with an erection. This is excellent news for them.

This is how the map of comings and goings has changed

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The photography of migration in Spain has taken a turn in less than four decades: it has gone from being a state that exports people to becoming one of the main migratory destinations on the continent. Thus, in the Spanish state in 1990, more Spaniards lived outside (1.4 million) than inside. In 2024, that proportion has reversed: 8.9 million people born outside the state’s borders reside in Spain, while there are 1.6 million Spanish people in diaspora. A brutal structural change that has its explanation in economic, demographic and geopolitical transformations. This trend was reversed approximately in 1995 (1.3 million immigrants vs. 1.2 million emigrants), it has been growing and does not seem to be stopping. The Spanish state is one of those places doomed to severe demographic contraction because its replacement rate is in the red. According to the INEfertility in Spain is 1.12 children per woman, well below the established threshold of 2.1 by the OECD at Society at a Glance 2024. Migration is essential to maintain the welfare state. The graph you see below these lines is an interactive tool called “Where do migrants live, and where were they born?” which allows us to see, for any state in the world, where the people who live there without being born there come from and where the people born there who live outside go. Both flows are concentrated in a graph where it is possible to filter by sex and move in time from 1990 to 2024. An important detail: the map does not show how many people arrived in a specific year, but rather how much is there in total accumulated. That is to say, if in 2024 there are 1.1 million people of Moroccan origin in the Spanish state, that is the sum of decades of arrivals, not the arrival of a million people at once. Where immigrants in Spain were born, and where their emigrants lived in 2024. Our World In data This Sankey diagram interactive is the work of Our World in Data, a non-profit organization linked to the University of Oxford that is responsible for publishing data visually. The information on which these graphs of bilateral flows between states are based comes from the UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024which publishes an exhaustive and rigorous count of people living outside their country of birth for 233 countries. For those countries where censuses have not been done recently, the numbers are an estimate and not a direct measurement. 35 years of migration, in a very complete graph Debates about migration are often full of wrong perceptions and even selective amnesia: Without going any further, many people in Spain forget that the Spanish state has historically been a land of emigration and, in fact, has been recently. This Harvard study shows that people in rich countries overestimate how many immigrants there are and the resources they consume, so having access to this information in such a clear and intuitive way is essential to change that perception, or at least, to combat it with data. But this visualization is also relevant because it helps to see Spain’s connection with other countries and why: People do not migrate at random, but follow already established networks. Where immigrants in Malaysia were born, and where their emigrants lived in 1990. Our World in data It was difficult for Spain to become a destinationbut when it did it came dizzyingly quickly: the economic growth of the 1990s and 2000s required a lot of labor that the state did not have. Thus, it has been one of the most rapid demographic changes of Europe in peacetime: according to the INE Migration Statisticsin 2023 the migration balance was more than 642,000 people, one of the highest in the last twenty years. In that time, Spain has faced the challenge of managing its borders, a bureaucracy that the graph does not show, just as it does not visualize another structural problem: integration and the real conditions in which these people live once inside. From 1990 to 2024 the graph has changed a lot. Almost 40 years ago there were more Spaniards abroad than foreigners inside and the few people who went to Spain to stay came mainly from France, Morocco and Germany. Spanish people in diaspora lived mainly in France and Argentina, a legacy of Francoism and exile. Between 1990 and 2005 the number of immigrants quintupled and countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Romania emerged strongly as countries of origin. In 2024 the number of immigrants is 9 million people, with Morocco first, Colombia second and copper going to Venezuela, an origin that barely existed in the 90s. Where immigrants in Spain were born, and where their emigrants lived in 2005. Our World in data Although these interactive graphics allow us to know at a glance origins, destinations and accumulated quantities, they are insufficient to understand migration phenomena in depth. They do not distinguish between radically different profiles: a person refugee, a student, a temporary worker or an expat with an international contract they count equally in the stock, when their conditions, rights and vulnerabilities are incomparable. Nor do they include irregular migration, a particularly significant phenomenon in the Spanish state. And, above all, they reduce people to numbers, showing the result but not the causes. It is also worth remembering that this flow is not just about people: the remittances that they send to their countries of origin represent one of the largest movements of capital towards the global south, in many cases exceeding official development aid. In Xataka | The great Iberian divide: the map that divides Spain in two through its two large hydrographic basins In Xataka | The two types of countries in the world, on a map: those that are becoming demographically extinct and those that are not Cover | Our World in Data

a group of scientists just changed it

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Predict a solar flare it’s not simple. What is normally done is to use high-resolution instruments to follow the propagation of a coronal mass ejection that has already occurred and thus decide whether precautions should be taken on Earth. Unfortunately, there is not always time to design an action plan. Therefore, the ideal would be to predict the solar flare before it occurs. Until now, this has not been possible. However, last May a team of scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology discovered a series of changes in the atmosphere of the sun that could be the prelude to a solar flare. Three parameters. These scientists they observed that in the three hours before a solar flare, very specific changes occurred in three parameters of the plasma that makes up the solar atmosphere. Brightness, movement towards or against the observer and non-thermal speed. The latter measures certain turbulent changes and low-scale motions in the plasma. It was seen that, during the indicated period, all these parameters increase. But, in addition, within this increase, there are also regular cycles that last between 18 and 21 minutes. At the moment it has only been observed before a solar eruption, but if it is observed in others it could be the prediction we have been waiting for for so long. The right place at the right time. The authors of this study worked with the help of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) from NASA, whose mission is to concisely analyze very narrow fragments of the solar atmosphere. They used it to analyze a region of the Sun in which several solar flares had been detected in recent days. This meant that It was a very active regionalthough it could not be known for sure that another solar flare would occur. However, they were fortunate that they did indeed have the right instruments in the right place at the right time. The risks. Solar flares are explosions of electromagnetic radiation that occur in the solar atmosphere. They are often followed by solar flares, in which, in addition to radiation, powerful bursts of plasma are produced. That is, a large number of electrically charged particles are shot from the Sun. When these gusts When they impact the Earth’s magnetosphere, they can be deflected or penetrate through it and reach the atmosphere of our planet. If that happens, phenomena as beautiful as auroras or as dangerous as geomagnetic storms can occur. These generally do not pose a risk to humans, but they do alter our telecommunications infrastructureswith everything that entails. We will have to investigate more. At the moment, it is not known why these changes in the plasma occur just before a solar flare. In fact, further research will be necessary to verify whether these changes in the plasma also occur with other solar flares. If so, astrophysicists might finally have tools to predict geomagnetic storms well in advance. There would be no need to wait for the flare, time could be gained. In cases like this, time is money. Image | POT In Xataka | A sunspot 17 times larger than Earth caused red auroras across half the world. It is a very rare event

The teacher from Cartagena who asked the Beatles to print their lyrics and changed how we listen to music

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In 1966, Juan Carrión traveled from Cartagena to Almería with a notebook full of gaps. They were not incomplete notes: they were very specific gaps, the fragments of Beatles lyrics that I had not been able to decipher listening to them on the radio and on their records. He went to ask John Lennon to help him complete them. A request that would result in an editorial decision that the recording industry would retain for decades. Who is Juan? Juan Carrión Gañán was born in Madrid in 1924. He became a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture before resigning to go to London as a Spanish teacher at the Language Center associated with the British Embassy. When he returned to Spain, he settled in Cartagena, where he was offered a position at the Tentegorra military base, and set up his own academy. At that time, no one followed this system of teaching English with song lyrics, but it was a tricky job: I transcribed them in real time while listening to them on the radio, leaving blank the fragments that he could not decipher. A pioneer. Let’s remember that in 1966 there was no convenient way to access the lyrics of a song. Singles occasionally included it on their back cover, and LPs rarely did. The fact is that Carrión’s pedagogical method was effective and pioneering, according to describes the writer Javier Adolfo Iglesiasauthor of the book ‘Juan and John, the professor and Lennon in Almería forever’. Carrión was a “pioneer in the use of multimedia resources, cinema, BBC news and Beatles songs” to teach English. But still, there were fragments that escaped him. To the meeting. When Carrión found out that John Lennon was coming to Spain in October 1966 to film ‘How I Won the War!’ Under the orders of Richard Lester, he took the bus to Almería. He stayed there for a week even though he didn’t have much money: first he made friends with Les Anthony, his driver and bodyguard, and through him he sent him the notebooks. They finally met in person. He had a very specific request: that the Beatles include printed lyrics on their albums to make his job easier. Apparently, Lennon promised him that it would be done on the next album. Curiously, Lennon’s relationship with his colleagues was not going through the best moment, and he was considering leaving the Beatles. In those same days in Almería he would compose ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, a song that the Beatles would record at the end of 1966 and publish as a single in February 1967. Against Sgt. Pepper’s. The LP that the Beatles released after the meeting was ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in 1967. And according to it is saidwas the first rock LP to include all lyrics printed on its back cover. Curiously, many sources specialized in the history of the Beatles document the fact, but Carrión is never mentioned. And yet, the importance of the Beatles’ decision was very significant: what the band did on ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ became standard practice in the industry. To the cinema. In 2013, director David Trueba adapted Carrión’s story in ‘Living is easy with your eyes closed’, with Javier Cámara in the role of the professor. At the 2014 Goya Awards, the film won six awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Leading Actor. It was the Spanish candidacy for the Oscars that year. Carrión died on August 30, 2017 in Cartagena and Trueba lament having “met very late in life, especially in his.” In Xataka | The shock of an era: this was the murky breakup of the Beatles seen 50 years later

The nuclear explosion that changed the world also created a material that exists nowhere else in the known universe

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On July 16, 1945, the first detonation of an atomic bomb—known as the trinity test— changed the course of history and left an indelible mark on the New Mexico desert. The explosion of the plutonium device released energy equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, enough to vaporize the 30-meter test tower, the kilometers of copper cables connecting the recording instruments, and the desert sand itself. All this material, carried by the immense fireball, rained down in the form of molten glassy fragments, creating a unique form of matter known today as trinite. The vast majority of this trinite is a classic green color, but there is a much rarer variant called “red trinite,” whose color is attributed to the presence of copper oxide formed when transmission lines vaporized in the explosion. It is precisely inside this rare variant where scientists have discovered unprecedented crystalline structures. The violent conditions of the detonation subjected the materials to temperatures of around 1,500 °C and extreme pressures of 5 to 8 gigapascals. The matter vaporized, mixed, and cooled so extremely quickly—in a matter of seconds—that the atoms did not have time to organize themselves into stable structures, forging forms of matter that had never existed on our planet. An unprecedented find. Almost 80 years after that first nuclear explosion, an international research team led by Luca Bindi, a geologist at the University of Florence, has managed to identify a new material hidden in these samples. As the research explainsit is a “clathrate”: a cage-shaped chemical network that traps other atoms inside. This new crystal is built with 12- and 14-sided silicon cages that enclose atoms of calcium, copper, and small amounts of iron. It represents the first time that the presence of a clathrate among the solid products of a nuclear explosion has been crystallographically confirmed. That this discovery comes now, in 2026, is no coincidence. Samples of red trinitite are extremely rare and difficult to obtain, and only recent advances in mining techniques x-ray diffraction At a nanoscopic scale, they have made it possible to identify such tiny structures within metallic microdroplets embedded in glass. The technology simply was not up to par with the material before. The quasicrystal that arrived first. The story becomes even more fascinating because this discovery joins another monumental find made by the same team in 2021: the identification of a quasicrystal in the same little red trinity. Unlike ordinary crystals—such as salt or quartz, which have a precisely repeating atomic pattern—quasicrystals break the rules of classical crystallography. Its atoms are ordered, but without periodically repeating themselves, which generates symmetries that are prohibited in a conventional crystal. The one found at Trinity exhibits five-fold icosahedral symmetry and is composed of silicon, copper, calcium and iron. It is not only the quasicrystal created by the oldest known human being: has the incredible property that its exact moment of creation was indelibly recorded in historical records. The decisive role of copper. The most elegant thing about the new study is the mechanism that explains why two such different structures were formed in the same explosion. The key was the concentration of copper available during cooling. In the microzones where copper levels were low —about 10 to 11%— conditions allowed the clathrate cage structure to stabilize. Where there was more copper, that same structure collapsed and the atoms rearranged themselves in the forbidden geometry of the quasicrystal. Two radically different destinies, separated by a microscopic difference in chemical composition, at the same time and in the same place. The power of natural laboratories. Discovering these architectures on a microscopic scale is revolutionary because, as Terry C. Wallace explainsdirector emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the quasicrystal research, these structures require extreme environments that rarely exist on Earth: colossal shocks, temperatures and pressures, comparable only to the hypervelocity impacts of meteorites or nuclear detonations themselves. Destructive events that, paradoxically, act as laboratories capable of producing what no conventional laboratory can replicate. A tool for global security. Beyond materials science, this type of research has direct applications in the field of nuclear nonproliferation. Understanding the design of other countries’ nuclear weapons programs is an enormous forensic challenge. Scientists often track radioactive gases and waste in test areas, but those signatures inevitably decay over time. The crystals formed at the site of the explosion, on the other hand, are practically eternal. The red trinitite samples still preserve radioactive isotopes that allow variables such as the exact distance to the hypocenter of the explosion to be calculated with great precision. Wallace sums it up clearly: If science can establish a precise thermodynamic explanation for how these crystals form, a complete picture of the bomb and the materials used could be obtained, giving the world a new tool to monitor illicit nuclear explosions. A timestamp that cannot be falsified or deleted. The paradoxical legacy of Trinity. The study of trinitite demonstrates how matter is capable of reorganizing itself in astonishing ways under unimaginably hostile conditions. It is an almost poetic paradox that an event designed for destruction has left, 80 years later, a hidden legacy of microscopic geometric perfection that is useful today for the human future. This discovery is not only a window into the creation of cutting-edge energy materials and technologies, but it functions as a compass for future research. As the experts conclude in his academic publicationexamine the remains of other extreme and fleeting natural phenomena, such as fulgurites forged by lightning strikes or rocks subjected to meteorite craters, could continue to reveal unusual configurations of matter. Even today, hidden beneath the scars of destruction, structures await that continue to challenge our fundamental understanding of the universe. Image | PNAS and Unsplash Xataka | Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

The time since 1940 has changed a lot. We finally have a time machine to see it on an interactive map

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I was born on a Monday in September at noon and, obeying the tradition of the San Miguel summer, the weather was mild and sunny even though October was just around the corner. I know this because my mother has told me a lot of times, but today I also just confirmed it. And be careful, finding out the weather of a day in the 80s was not a priori as easy as knowing what it was last year: it normally involved resorting to scientific databases or finding paper records, which are already old. The good news is that there is a free tool, accessible from any browser and moderately intuitive so that anyone can know what the weather was like on any day (and any time!) from today until 1940, from your date of birth to your wedding or a trip. The not so good news is that it is the best test to see how time is changing due to climate change. His name is Weather Replay and in a few words it works like a meteorological time machine in the form of a weather visualization web application. Behind this website there are two top-level European projects: on the one hand Copernicus Climate Change Serviceintegrated into the EU space program and with the aim of offering rigorous climate data available to everyone. On the other hand, ECMWF, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, the world reference body for numerical weather prediction. Weather Replay Home Screen The climate time machine starts in 1940 The first screen says roughly what it does: you choose a date and time, use the box at the bottom left to write a location and from there you can see a 48-hour animation where the atmospheric conditions of that specific moment are reproduced: temperature, wind, precipitation, pressure and a few other variables. Everything is very visual and available in a few seconds, without installing anything or registering. Layers are a key element to learn more information. Weather Replay Although there is an initial tutorial that may be interesting to follow, the buttons and their function and the legend are easy to understand and despite its simple appearance, it is quite powerful and with practical options to only have what interests us such as zooming, modifying colors and levels or layers. An especially interesting function is being able to compare the time on two specific dates. Swipe left and right to see what the weather was like on two days from 1940 to today. Weather Replay Under the hood of this comprehensive interactive map is ERA5, the ECMWF global atmospheric reanalysis that continuously reconstructs the state of the atmosphere using real data from satellites, sounding balloons, ocean buoys and weather stations with high-resolution numerical models. Thus, it covers the entire Earth with a mesh of about 31 kilometers and 137 vertical layers up to 80 kilometers in altitude. Despite the huge amount of data it handles, the simulations and management are agile thanks to the fact that it is in the cloud DANA Floods of 2024. Weather Replay Beyond tinkering and satisfying curiosity, this tool means that anyone has access to 80 years of atmospheric data in an intuitive and graphic way to see with your own eyes how phenomena have evolved such as heat waves, extreme rain events or wind patterns in the regions you know best. In short: that everyone can see climate change. At a teaching or journalistic level, it constitutes a magnificent resource to contextualize meteorology. For example, reproducing how the tragic Valencia DANA of 2024 began. In Xataka | This is how rain has changed in Spain in the last 30 years, on maps: the result is clear, alarming and there is no turning back In Xataka | The temperature your city will have in 2080, simulated on this disturbing interactive map Cover | Weather Replay

Blue Origin had a plan of 12 launches for this year. A fireball at Cape Canaveral just changed everything

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Bad news for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company. And his New Glenn rocket It exploded this morning into a huge fireball while conducting a ground test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The accident, which fortunately left no injuries, is a good blow for the company in his race to compete with SpaceXjust when this was going to be his definitive breakout year. That has passed. Around 9:00 p.m. local time (3:00 a.m. on Friday on the Spanish peninsula), the New Glenn exploded during a ‘hotfire’, a test in which the rocket engines are turned on while the vehicle remains anchored to the platform, without taking off. The objective of this test is to check the operation of the engines before a launch. Blue Origin itself He spoke on his X account of an “anomaly” and confirmed that all personnel were located and safe. According to collect The Guardian, the fireball destroyed the platform and the orange glow was seen more than 180 kilometers away, while residents of nearby towns noticed tremors in their homes. A year that was going to be the year of takeoff. The blow is especially hard because of the moment it arrives. Blue Origin had marked 2026 as the year to finally gain pace. Its CEO, Dave Limp, even stated in an interview with Ars Technica that the company could reach double digits in launches this year, until matching its production rate of 12 rockets, and even considering reaching 24 if manufacturing continued to improve. They also mentioned the 12 launches in their request to the FAA to operate from Cape Canaveral. The problem is that it was more of an ambitious goal than a realistic forecast, since the New Glenn has started the year without having flown again since November and experiencing several setbacks. The explosion has now turned that goal into a chimera. Bezos’ reaction. The founder of Blue Origin took the drama out of the matter, counting in Elon Musk also reacted to the event briefly: “Very unfortunate. Rockets are difficult.” Why it is important. The New Glenn It is the key piece with which the company wants to confront the dominance of SpaceX, and it is also called to play a central role in NASA’s Artemis programwhich seeks to return astronauts to the Moon. Just a few days before the explosion, the agency had awarded Blue Origin a contract to participate in the construction of a lunar base. The moment could not have been worse. A streak of setbacks. Blue Origin has accumulated a series of catastrophic misfortunes. On its third flight, in April, the rocket managed to land its reusable booster on a barge at sea, but its upper stage failed and failed to place the satellite it was transporting for AST SpaceMobile into orbit, which ended up falling and disintegrating in the atmosphere. That failure sparked an investigation by the FAA, the US air regulator, which just last week had given the rocket the green light to fly again. Thursday’s test was precisely the preparation of its fourth mission, in which it was going to deploy satellites of the network Leo from Amazona direct competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon clarified that none of those satellites were on board at the time of the explosion. Damage assessment. Both the FAA and NASA spoke out quickly. The regulator pointed out that the test was outside the activities it licenses and that it did not affect air traffic. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, on the other hand counted that “spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing a new heavy-lift capability is extraordinarily difficult.” The agency promised to support a thorough investigation and, above all, to evaluate how what happened affects its lunar programs. And now what. What we will now see is how Blue Origin rewrites its calendar. NASA was counting on New Glenn to launch the first missions to its lunar base this year, and the agency itself has acknowledged that they still do not know how this accident will affect the mission with Artemis. On the other hand, SpaceX has its own problems with the Starship, also under review by the FAAwhile preparing a historic IPO. The terrain is quite hot. Cover image | NASA Space Flight In Xataka | SpaceX seemed unreachable in its race to the Moon. Blue Origin is proving that anything is possible

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