CSIC Archives - usatoday24

The rain in Seville is wonderful and now it is also converted into energy with the new CSIC solar panels

March 7, 2026 by usatoday24

If there is a renewable energy that has emerged in recent years, it is solar, as can be seen in this graph of the International Energy Agency. However, solar energy still has its limitations: it requires space (hence there are projects in lakes and in the open sea) and of course, it depends on whether there is sun. Yes, putting batteries can cushion that irregular supply (here Spain is a powerhouse), but a research team from the University of Seville with the CSIC has given a twist to classic photovoltaic panels and now can generate electricity with rain. Context. Solar panels lose effectiveness when full sun does not fall on them, either because there are clouds or it rains. Therefore, the ideal scenario is midday on a sunny day, but spoiler: this happens less times than you need to plug something in. Not to mention devices that need continuous and autonomous energy supply, no matter what happens in the electrical grid. The battery option allows us to satisfy the supply on demand and although now They are at their minimum pricestill involves purchasing another component, considering its useful life and its management as waste. The invention. As explains the CSIChave developed a hybrid device that allows capturing energy from both the sun and rain, and also doing so at the same time. As? With a sheet thinner than a human hair (100 nanometers) superimposed on the solar cells. It works on two fronts at the same time: on the one hand as a protective encapsulant for perovskite solar cells, improving their durability in adverse conditions. On the other hand, as a triboelectric nanogenerator: it converts the impact of raindrops into electricity due to friction. Thus, it is capable of producing up to 110 volts, enough to light LEDs or power sensors. Why is it important. Because if this technology is commercialized, it will open the doors for completely autonomous electronic devices to function without batteries or plugs. This is the case of the implementation of IoT outdoors or in remote areas without access to the electrical grid. It serves as an example of use in applications in rural infrastructure or agriculture, such as environmental sensors, weather stations, urban signage or auxiliary lighting. The innovation is not only generating energy from rain, but integrating it all into a single thin layer that solves the main Achilles heel of perovskite: its environmental degradation. In fact, science had already proven with taurine from octopuses. How have they done it. To carry out this device, they used plasma technology to deposit plasma technology in a similar way to that implemented in mobile screens. For the base, perovskite cells, a material with better efficiency and lower cost than traditional silicon, but fragile under conditions such as humidity. The use of triboelectric materials is not new: a research team from the University of Hong Kong a few years ago something similar occurred to him: the generation of electricity by the simple friction of droplets upon impact, such as static electricity generated by rubbing a balloon. Yes, but. Although technically speaking they have generated electricity, the reality is that it is high voltage but low intensity, which in practice is not even useful for charging a mobile phone. And although the perovskite is reinforced with this sheet, in the long term it is still less durable than silicon, so it still has pending issues. Likewise, there remains the great challenge of leaving the laboratory and validating these experiments in real environments. If production can be scaled to an industrial level, another challenge would arise: keeping costs low. In Xataka | Europe produces more clean electricity than fossil electricity for the first time. The hard part starts now In Xataka | Solar panels have an invisible and very brief moment in which they do not work. And solving it is key to your future Cover | Lara John

Between Tenerife and Gran Canaria hides an underwater volcano called ‘Enmedio’. The CSIC has just detected activity for the first time

March 5, 2026 by usatoday24

Under the waters of the Atlantic, about 80 kilometers southwest of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, hides a colossus that we often forget about. Is called ‘Enmedio’, a name that has quite a joke behind it, but which is nothing more than an underwater volcano with a base of 3.5 kilometers and whose summit is 1,625 meters deep. And although it has been there for a long time, now a scientific team has detected for the first time signs of hydrothermal activity in its depths. A decade. It has not happened overnight, since the team of geologists has spent almost ten years collecting multidisciplinary data driven mainly through the VULCANA project. And the results of the measurements made between 2015 and 2024 now have ended up published in the magazine Bulletin of Volcanology. Here, through oceanographic campaigns that combine high-resolution bathymetry, seismic and geochemistry, scientists they have managed to confirm what until now was only a suspicion: the volcano has an active circulatory system. What have they found? What the team has confirmed with all this information is that there is low-temperature hydrothermal activity at this location. In simple terms, we can now see that the volcano is releasing fluids through a series of fractures and a depression that is in your franc. Although this does not mean that it will erupt in the next few hours. In order to make estimates, it was decided to analyze the water in the vicinity of the volcano, and here the instruments recorded thermal anomalies of up to 0.5 ºC above normal. That is, the water around the volcano was hotter and was also loaded with nutrients such as ammonium or iron oxide, which causes biological alterations in the rocks in the area. There is no rash. Logically, when we read ‘volcanic activity’ and ‘Canary Islands’ in the same sentence, it is inevitable to think about volcanic eruptions such as that of Cumbre Vieja in La Palma, and even more so taking into account the recent earthquakes in the area. However, the CSIC has been quite categorical in this regard, pointing out that this detection does not indicate an imminent eruption and has no relationship with the recent seismic swarms recorded in the area around Teide. A paradise. In this way it is an endemic and latent process. In fact, these hydrothermal vents are excellent news for deep ocean biodiversity. To understand it, we can look back to see how the Tagoro volcano ended up fertilizing the post-eruptive marine ecosystem. Now, Enmedio’s fluids act as a chemical engine that influences the composition of the local ocean and feeds communities of microorganisms that thrive in the most extreme conditions of the seafloor. And although the Enmedio volcano is not a new discovery, this first evidence that it “breathes” marks a before and after in volcanic monitoring in Spain. It demonstrates that under water, more than a kilometer and a half deep, the Canary Islands continue to be an incomparable natural laboratory that, thanks to science, we are beginning to understand better than ever. Images | CSIC In Xataka | The last time Mount Fuji erupted was 318 years ago. The Japanese government has turned to AI in case it happens again

TIA agents are better ambassadors for the CSIC than we suspected

December 2, 2025 by usatoday24

If we think about Mortadelo and Filemónwe also immediately think of all the outrages that the TIA agents have to suffer because of the inventions of Professor Bacterio, the translation into the Carpetovetonic language of the iconic mad doctor which is a foundational part of the science fiction imagination. But there is more: a traveling exhibition traces the history of science in the last half century through the creations of Ibáñez. What does it consist of? The Higher Council for Scientific Research has premiered the exhibition ‘The science of Mortadelo and Filemón‘, which will remain open until February 15 before beginning its tour of various Spanish cities. The exhibition brings together 39 covers published between 1975 and 2018, organized into five thematic blocks that examine everything from Bacterio’s chaotic inventions to climate crises and epidemics. Pura Fernández, vice president of Scientific Culture of the CSIC, highlights in ‘El País’ that Ibáñez turned research into an everyday occurrence through humor. The sections. The exhibition structures its 39 covers into five thematic blocks that document the evolution of Spanish scientific thought and that link to CSIC research through QR codes for visitors: ‘A world in motion under the magnifying glass of science’ examines natural phenomena: from glacial retreat to epidemiological crises, including agricultural innovations. ‘Technological innovations incorporated by the TIA’ satirizes inventions that generate more chaos than solutions, questioning whether technology responds to real needs or commercial impulses. Professor Bacterio stars in his own section as the archetype of the researcher isolated from the world: in ‘Bacterio’s laboratory, successes and accidents’ his failed experiments raise dilemmas about ethics and safety in laboratories. ‘Science in the social mirror’ addresses information manipulation, pseudoscience and responsible communication. ‘Emergency science for troubled times’ talks about climate change, air pollution, invasive species such as the tiger mosquito, and Saharan dust intrusions. How it works. Francisco Ibáñez built a visual archive of Spanish scientific development over six decades. What began in 1958 as detective adventures evolved into a satirical chronicle of Spainwhich included technological modernization. Starting in the seventies, with Spain in full transformation, its covers captured real milestones: the takeoff of the space race in ‘El cocoa spatial’, genetic engineering in ‘The people copying machine’ or the phenomenon of drones in ‘Drones matones’, until reaching the climate alerts of the 21st century. His method was far from the anticipatory rigor of Franco-Belgian comic icons such as Hergé (who consulted the zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans and the astronautics expert Alexandre Ananoff in the Tintin album ‘Target: The Moon’) or the historical accuracy of Goscinny in Asterix. His territory was immediate parody: he transformed scientific headlines into slapstick visual, turning Bacterio’s laboratory into a distorting mirror of contemporary research. The CSIC and pop culture. The public body trusted for years in Spanish graphic humor to democratize knowledge. Fernando del Blanco, head of the library of the CSIC Research and Development Center, inaugurated ‘Science according to Forges’ in 2019, bringing together 66 cartoons by the cartoonist published in ‘El País’ between 1995 and 2018. With this one by Mortadelo he shared a methodology: transforming recognizable cultural figures into bridges to complex scientific concepts. Humor allows us to address everything from the Higgs boson to budget cuts in science. Science versus parody. As Pura Fernández comments in the aforementioned ‘El País’ article, Mortadelo and Filemón manage to discredit practices without delegitimizing the need for knowledge. Bacterio embodies a poor application of science: isolation, lack of peer review, continuous risks… However, his inventions address real phenomena. In this way, he emphasizes, the public understands the reading that Ibáñez proposes: Bacterio satirizes malpractice, not science itself. In Xataka | When Ibáñez lost the rights to Mortadelo in 1985, he created a new magazine where they would have another name: ‘Yo y yo’

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