decades

We have been searching for extraterrestrial life for decades. According to these astrobiologists, we have been doing it wrong all this time

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We are very used to hearing that someone has found possible signs of life in space. Then life is never found, but the trail seems to be there. All of these findings often end up being false positives, something astrobiologists are more than familiar with. However, According to a study just published in Nature Astronomy, They could be overlooking false negatives and that would be serious. Pass life long. What the authors of this study point out is that false negatives could be more common than we think. That is to say, many of the times when it is clearly concluded that there is no life in a place in space, it could be that it did exist, but it had been passed by without being detected. The causes. There could be three reasons why these false negatives occur. On the one hand, no traces of life are preserved. That is, it exists or has existed, but has not left a detectable trace. It could also be that this fingerprint is difficult to detect. Or, perhaps, that the methods used to detect it have limitations. Along these lines, the authors of the study give an example. Let’s imagine that there is a living being that, through its metabolic reactions, generates some gas that is understood as a trace of life. Maybe oxygen or methane. But let’s also imagine that there is a geological activity in that place that captures that gas from the environment. I wouldn’t have time to measure it. Therefore, the detection of life would have to be covered from other points. The risks. There are two main risks of not paying attention to false negatives. On the one hand, instruments that would help find even more traces of life would be deprioritized. If we do not find anything that justifies its development, we limit the possibilities of continuing searching. On the other hand, if life is not adequately searched for, resources from other planets where such life is found could be exploited. We would destroy it before we even knew it existed. Solutions. These scientists believe that searching for patterns using artificial intelligence could be an option. If the usual methods have not worked so far, perhaps we should ask an algorithm to detect patterns that have gone unnoticed to find new search paths. Along the same lines, it would also be necessary to study the terrain better and pay attention to anomalies. For example, if an unconventional type of oxidation is detected on a planet, inexplicable with what we know on Earth, it could be that it was associated with some form of life. It may not look like the oxidation carried out by terrestrial living beings, but who says it has to be the same? You have to think outside the box. Combine different types of work. In short, these scientists consider that to adequately search for life it is necessary to combine laboratory experiments with modeling and field work. But, above all, it is important to change the questions we ask ourselves. What if it has already been found? In 2019, a former NASA scientist told in an article for Scientific American that, according to himhis agency found life on Mars, but accidentally destroyed it. Supposedly, it all happened in the 1970s, in an experiment that was part of the Viking mission. This consisted of depositing nutrients in the soil and checking if gases typical of microbial decomposition were produced. Then, to ensure that it was not a coincidence, they would repeat the process, but adding a substance lethal to living organisms to the soil. In that case, gases should not be produced. And no, they were not produced, so there was something alive generating the gases. It was great news, but NASA did not publish that result, because when trying to replicate the experiment it came back negative. In science it is very important to replicate the results, so they concluded that it must have been a false positive. However, this former member of NASA, Gilbert V. Levin, believes that they destroyed life unintentionally and that is why they could not replicate it. This is no longer an anecdote. Most likely, they would not have found life. However, this story shows that we are always more predisposed to false positive than false negative. The focus would have to be changed a little. Maybe then we will finally find some life beyond our own planet. Images | Eric Erbe and Christopher Pooley (illustrative image of E.coliit has nothing to do with the study)/ Brett Ritchie (Unsplash) In Xataka | Life on Earth underwent a spectacular change 540 million years ago. We have a new explanation why

We have spent decades ignoring an organ because we believed it was useless. Now they have seen that it is crucial in our longevity

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In the center of the chest, just behind the breastbone, hides a small gland that has been systematically ignored by medicine when it comes to adult health: the thymus. Textbooks have long taught that this organ is vital in childhood to develop the immune system, but that It subsequently atrophies and turns into fat when we grow. But its role in the long run It’s not as irrelevant as we thought.. A turnaround. The paradigm that we were all taught at school has taken a big turn through a publication in Nature that has shown that the health of the thymus in adulthood not only matters, but is a determining factor in predicting how long we will live, the state of our cardiovascular health and also how we will respond to cancer. How it has been seen. The premise of this interesting study lies in a simple observation about people who did not have a thymus because it had been removed and the increase in mortality from all causes compared to those who have a healthy thymus. From here, a research team wanted to understand the true impact of a “sleeping” organ through different CT scans to calculate the thymic health of different people. The system analyzed the images of numerous people, including data from the National Lung Screening Trialwhich had more than 25,000 patients. By crossing the status of the thymus with the medical history and longevity of each individual, the results were so overwhelming that the researchers themselves they confessed It was the first time they had seen such spectacular results, since no one expected such a small organ to have such a clinical impact. Reduces mortality. This study has intensively analyzed the function of this gland in large groups of adults to discover that maintaining good thymic health is directly associated with lower overall mortality. But surprisingly, the study links having a healthy thymus with a lower incidence of cardiovascular mortality In oncology. This is where the finding takes on a revolutionary clinical dimension, since the data show a clear correlation between a healthy thymus and a lower incidence of lung cancer. But we can go further by pointing out that patients who undergo immunotherapy and have a healthy thymus respond greatly to the treatment, and even have a lower risk of suffering from cancer again. Preventive medicine. With this evidence, “thymic health” is positioned to become a very important parameter in the field of personalized medicine to gain insight into how a patient may accept a treatment. But in addition, monitoring its degradation could allow medicine to anticipate autoimmune diseases in those people who already have a higher risk. Images | kjpargeter in Magnific In Xataka | There are people who are 100 years old, but have an immune system of 30: a new study reveals how they manage to avoid cancer

Benicio del Toro and James Cameron have been obsessed with adapting a “cursed” work for decades: ‘Prometheus’

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In March 2011, Guillermo del Toro resigned. He sent an email to his team announcing that the project to which they had dedicated years of work was definitively cancelled. Behind them were more than three hundred pieces of conceptual art, a script they had worked on for almost a decade, James Cameron as producer and Tom Cruise as star. The novel that inspired it, a classic of literary horror, is still waiting to be adapted ninety years after its original publication. Foundational text. HP Lovecraft He published ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ in 1936 in installments in the magazine ‘Weird Tales’. The story follows a team of researchers who travel to Antarctica and discover, within a colossal mountain system, the remains of a civilization that predated humanity. Its builders, known as “the Ancients” are organisms whose existence makes it clear that humanity does not occupy any special place in the universe, as happens in so many other stories by the author. It is a scheme that laid the foundations (after multiple experiments in the form of stories) of the cosmic horrorand its influence on cinema is obvious in movies like ‘Alien’ or ‘The Thing’. Marked at eleven years old. Guillermo del Toro discovered the short novel as a child in Mexico and it became an obsession that stayed with him for decades. In 2002 he began working on an adaptation with Matthew Robbins, screenwriter and frequent collaborator of the director on projects such as ‘Mimic’ or ‘Pinocchio’. They completed a script but difficulties began when they tried to finance it: Warner Bros. rejected the project, and Del Toro chained films while the project returned again and again to the drawer: ‘Hellboy’, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘The Hobbit’… Ready. In 2010 the project took a little more shape, for the first time in its eventful career. James Cameron, fresh off the success of ‘Avatar‘, came in as a producer and Tom Cruise began talks to play the protagonist. The film would be shot in native 3D and distributed by Universal. In 2011, Del Toro was hurriedly working on a new version of the script to shoot that summer, but before that, in March, Universal archived the project. The reason was, mainly, the exorbitant budget of 150 million for a horror film for adults in which Del Toro did not want to reduce the violence. Curiously, Universal next financed ‘Pacific Rim’, which cost $190 million but, yes, had much less exaggerated violence. The coup de grace: ‘Prometheus’. In April 2012, del Toro published in the forums of their official website a text that related ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ with ‘Prometheus’, the feature film by Ridley Scott. According to the director, they had an identical premise, very similar scenes and an absolutely parallel final revelation. That is: explorers of unknown places discover an ancient alien civilization and realize something devastating about their own origins. More attempts. Despite the disappointment of ‘Prometheus’, Del Toro did not completely abandon the project. When he joined Legendary Pictures, he considered the possibility of making a PG-13 film, that is, with less violence. When he later signed a contract with Netflix in 2020, he submitted the project to the platform, but it was not accepted. In November 2022posted on Instagram 25 seconds of CGI footage prepared by Industrial Light & Magic for the 2011 version. The clip showed the Ancients in spectacular fidelity to Lovecraft’s description. Later would recognize than a feature film stop motion could be a viable format for the project. At the end of 2025, del Toro released ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix, another project he had been wanting to do for decades. The film was a success in the awards season (nominated for nine Oscars and won three), with audiences and critics. Perhaps it is also, without us knowing it, an open door for one of the most deservedly legendary projects of modern fantasy cinema. In Xataka | HP Lovecraft wrote 75,000 letters in his entire life. And they give a definitive insight into all its secrets

We have been going to the Moon the wrong way for decades if what we want is to save fuel

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When you travel to the same place many times, little by little you learn which are the best routes. You don’t just need to know the shortest path. It is also good to locate the one with the most gas stations, the best road or the most beautiful landscapes. It all depends on your tastes and needs. If the trip is made in space, it is important to find the shortest path; but, above all, the main need is to locate the one that represents a greater fuel savings. We hope that in the future humans will be able to travel regularly to the Moon, but it would be very expensive and unviable to wait until then to find the best path through trial and error. Therefore, an international team of scientists has developed the formula that calculates the ideal path. Spoiler: it is not any of the ones that have been seen so far. Biggest savings so far. The study, carried out by an international team of scientists and directed from the University of Coimbra, points to a saving in delta-v of 58.80 m/s. This measure refers to the amount of effort necessary to carry out an orbital maneuver. In other words, the total change in speed needed to carry out said maneuver. The lower the delta-v, the better, since a high gear change means more fuel consumption. In the case of the complete trip from Earth to the Moon, the delta-v is 3,342.96 m/s. It may seem that reducing that figure by less than 60 meters per second is not much, but we must keep in mind that A single meter per second already represents a great waste of fuel. Therefore, the results obtained in this study are very positive. Theory of functional connections. When you are going to calculate the trajectory between the Earth and the Moon you need to leave the Earth’s orbit, with a certain speed and position and reach that of the Moon, also with specific characteristics. All those specific parameters are restrictions. When we are in a place as wide as space, there can be many different paths. An infinite number of them. Therefore, to locate them, simulations must be carried out. The problem is that, no matter how powerful the simulators are, if the restrictions are not reduced a little, the possibilities remain endless. This is where the theory of functional connections comes into play. This, basically, consists in changing the approach of the formulas so that the conditions are already included. Said with a more earthly analogy, if we want to find the best route from Madrid to Barcelona, ​​we can analyze absolutely all the roads in Spain or look only for the best option among the roads that start in Madrid and end in Barcelona. With this theory of functional connections you achieve just that. The restrictions are not eliminated, but are included directly in the mathematical approach. With Artemis II there was a moment when connections were lost Much fewer simulations. By changing that approach, more simulations can be done. No time is wasted simulating paths that do not leave Madrid and end in Barcelona. For this reason, the authors of this study have managed to go from 280,000 simulations to more than 30 million. This makes it easier to find an optimal route. A stop along the way. The optimal route includes a stop along the way, right at the Lagrange point L1, a place between the Earth and the Moon in which the gravitational attraction of both objects is compensated, so that the effect is similar to the absence of gravity. The ships could remain there as long as necessary without losing communication with Earth. In the case of Artemis II, for example, there was a point where connections were lost. That wouldn’t happen here. Finally, once everything is ready and the orbits are aligned correctly, the second part of the trip could be carried out, heading to lunar orbit. Better near the Moon. Previous simulations that looked similar to this one included entering this trajectory on a near-Earth branch. However, with this research it has been seen that fuel savings are better if done on the opposite side, closer to the Moon. The cheapest way so far, but not the cheapest possible. The authors of the study acknowledge that this is the cheapest path that has been calculated so far between the Earth and the Moon, but not the cheapest possible. And, in their calculations, they have taken into account the gravitational attraction of the Moon and the Earth, but not that of the Sun. If this were added, savings could also be improved, but the launch window would be restricted. That is, there would be fewer possible days to carry out the launches. That would make logistics difficult, so for now, the cheapest option so far has been chosen, but not the cheapest possible. That alone is a great advance. Image |Rfassbind In Xataka | We have not yet colonized the Moon and we have already filled it with garbage: there are even abandoned golf balls

Andalusia has been buying and burying garbage from the rest of Europe for decades. And now he has said “enough”

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Four years ago, 40,000 tons of contaminated soil and stones were blocked at the doors of the Nerva landfill in Huelva. They came from Montenegro and no, it is not an isolated event. During the last 25 years, Andalusia has been a massive recipient of hazardous waste. More than 100,000 tons traveled kilometers and kilometers each year to be buried south of Sierra Morena. That just ended. It’s good news and a huge problem. What has happened? On April 26, 2026, the last authorizations that still allowed companies from outside Andalusia to discharge hazardous waste into Andalusian landfills expired. Three years after the approval of the Andalusian Circular Economy Lawthe restriction on sending hazardous waste whose final destination is the landfill is now complete. It is not an absolute moratorium, of course. The entry of dangerous substances is still allowed for ‘recovery’: if waste from outside is recycled, regenerated or thermally treated on Andalusian soil, it can continue to be introduced into the community. That, according to the Association of Waste and Special Resources Management Companieshas left more than 100,000 annual tons of hazardous waste in the air that until April had been managed (‘burying’) in Andalusia. Hence the problem. Because hazardous waste landfills are rare and very expensive infrastructures; as they explained in Civio“any reordering of flows has an immediate impact on the economic viability of the plants.” These months are critical for the industry. However, the Andalusian movement is not well understood without some context: the Andalusian decision begins in the same place as this article, in Nerva. What exactly is Nerva? He Andalusia Environmental Complex, in the Río Tinto basin, has operated since 1995 and for decades it has received hazardous waste from the Huelva Chemical Pole, Campo de Gibraltar, the rest of Spain and abroad. It is, as a consequence of this and before this, a dangerous place. In Huelva, the main public health problems they associate to prolonged exposure to heavy metals and toxic compounds derived from decades of industrial activity (and from storing hazardous waste from other places). In fact, the two main focuses are the phosphogypsum ponds (about 500 meters from the city) and the Nerva landfill. I have to correct myself: they are not associated with that. Technically yes, health wise yes: but, in reality, the main public health problems are associated with the negligence of administrations, the lack of management and the recklessness that comes with just worrying about money. The Andalusian ban was necessary. Because, despite the legal tension (the fact of facing community law), at some point the administration had to assume its own responsibilities. This does not solve Nerva’s problem, as is evident. But it forces the industry to take charge of everything that has been going on for years without anyone watching. Image | Joe Patres In Xataka | China was the world’s dumping ground, today its problem is different: it does not have enough garbage to burn

Gibraltar has never had a wastewater treatment plant. So they have been throwing them into the sea for decades

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In 1999, after centuries of dumping its sewage into the bay of Algeciras, Gibraltar transposed Directive 91/271/EEC urban wastewater treatment. It was something historic, something unprecedented, something that would mark the future of the region. Immediately afterwards, the Government of the Rock did something totally unexpected: absolutely nothing. Now, an investigation by Rachel Salvidge for The Guardian has revealed something that everyone in the area knew: that a few months after the entry into force of the EU-United Kingdom Treaty, the city is not prepared to comply with European environmental obligations. Nor does it seem like it will be. Wait, how come it doesn’t have a purifier? That is to say, how is it possible that a strategic point as important as Gibraltar does not have a basic infrastructure that any European municipality of 40,000 inhabitants would have more than resolved? The answer is curious. On the one hand, due to technical problems: unlike any standard infrastructure, the flat network use sea water for toilets and toilets. It is not the only place where this occurs (places like Hong Kong or the Californian island of Santa Catalina also do it), but the reality is that it complicates biological treatment quite a bit. On the other hand, it’s not like they haven’t tried. In the last 25 years, Gibraltar tried to put in place two awards that failed to be executed. Furthermore, as if that were not enough, the last attempt (financed by the European Investment Bank) coincided with Brexit and left the project without funds. Furthermore, the problems are not limited to Gibraltar. In fact, the Commission also has opened files along the Línea de la Concepción, making it clear that the waste management problem was on both sides of the fence. However, Spanish efforts have improved the situation on this side: Gibraltar, beyond a screening and roughing system, has not been able to. And all this is worrying because the impact is concentrated in one of the most unique areas of the western Mediterranean: the only corridor with the Atlantic, an irreplaceable habitat for common dolphins, bottlenose and common porpoises and a key seasonal migratory route for marine ecology. And there is no solution? As of June 2025, another project is underway, but the company had five years to get it started. In other words, in the best of cases the systems are not even close to being operational: and no one has any idea if, with the entry into force of stricter European regulationsthe plant will be able to meet the standards. Meanwhile, Punta de Europa will continue as before: being a natural paradise that hides a pipe full of waste from more than 30,000 people. The race against the clock, in reality, has just begun. Image | Michael Mrozek In Xataka | If the Strait of Hormuz is a conflict, imagine that of Gibraltar: Spain has found 134 shipwrecks off Cádiz

Three decades of innovation in lithium batteries and a 99% drop in price, in an illuminating graph

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The world has been immersed for years in two essential transitions to leave fossil fuels behind: energy and mobility. But for both to be possible, it is an essential requirement that a technology continue to improve and also drop in price: that of batteries, one of the main components of electric cars and the one responsible for storing excess energy in times of energy surpluses, for example in wind and solar energy. And in fact, this is what he has done: In the last 35 years the price of lithium batteries has plummeted 99%. In 1991, a lithium ion battery cost $9,210 per kWh (in constant 2024 dollars). In 2023, that same kilowatt-hour cost $111: we are talking about a drop of almost 99% in almost three decades. To make it tangible, Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado of Our World in Data gives an example applied to car batteries: the battery of a current standard electric car with a range of 350 to 400 kilometers today costs about $5,000. A decade ago the same component would have cost more than $20,000. In 1991, almost $600,000. There is a strategic threshold that we have surpassed recently: 100 dollars/hWh, considered historically the point of economic parity with the internal combustion vehicle, but At the end of 2025 we will already overcome the barrier reaching 84 dollars/kWh. First of all, let’s start with the presentations: the graphics are from Our World in Dataa project of the Global Change Data Lab linked to the University of Oxford. And the primary source is a data series updated by Rupert Way, built on the original work by Ziegler and Trancik and completed with data from BloombergNEF and Avicenne Energy. All data is expressed in constant 2024 dollars. The price of lithium batteries has fallen 99% in 35 years The first graph shows the evolution of the price of lithium ion cells between 1991 and 2024, in constant 2024 dollars per kWh on a logarithmic axis. The line declines continuously and sharply throughout the series of years without any signs of stabilization until ending around $50-60/kWh in 2024. Evolution of the price of lithium ion batteries: 1991 – 2024. Our World in Data The second graph combines price with global accumulated production and uses a double logarithmic scale: it starts from an installed capacity of 130 kWh in 1991 and reaches 3,510 GWh in 2023. That the line remains straight for more than three decades, in two different graphs and with data from different sources, confirms that The price drop is not a coincidence or a streak. It is a stable mathematical pattern that allows you to project where prices will go. This trend is more important than the fall itself. Every time global cumulative production doubles, battery prices have fallen by 19%. Our World in Data This second chart shows that every time global cumulative lithium-ion battery production doubled, the price fell by 19%. That is the learning rate known as Wright’s Law. The learning curve remains stable for more than thirty years, regardless of financial crises, supply problems and even a pandemic. Behind that graph is that enormous jump from the 130 kWh installed in 1991 to 3,510 GWh in 2023. That is 27 million times more capacity in three decades and each doubling along the way led to a 19% reduction in price. With the current rate of installation, these duplications occur in less and less time, which implies that the curve is not going to slow down due to inertia. These graphs do not describe the past: they are a projection of the future. A stable learning rate of 19% per capacity doubling is a planning tool: it helps the industry and its actors to reliably estimate when storage will reach cost thresholds that make the electricity grid viable with high renewable penetration. According to IRENAthe cost of solar energy fell by 90% between 2010 and 2023 following the same logic. That the threshold has fallen below $100/kWh already has consequences: the European Commission estimates that the EU will need between 200 and 600 GWh of storage by 2030 and precisely this trajectory means that Europe will get the bills for its energy transition. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the graphs show the average cell price of the different types of lithium ion batteries, which have very different profiles of cost, life cycles or energy density. That doesn’t appear on the graph. Nor that battery cost is not everythingsince it has associated costs, such as installation or replacement. Likewise, it does not touch on the structural risks of the supply chain: lithium, cobalt or nickel are geographically concentrated and vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, such as warns the International Energy Agency. And although they are becoming cheaper, their weight and volume are still a handicap for some scenarios such as aviation or heavy trucks. In Xataka | The last piece of the renewable puzzle now fits: the price of storage batteries has reached its minimum In Xataka | China dominates the world of renewable energy, but it has an Achilles heel: it depends on the West more than it admits Cover | Our World in data

We have been thinking about a single path to Mars for decades. A group of scientists has just found a “shortcut”

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If you travel to the Moon It’s quite a challengethe next step is only for the brave. To date, no one has traveled to Mars and even unmanned trips encounter multiple drawbacks. The first of them is the duration of the trip itself, since it can extend up to 8.5 months, one way. Almost nine months of space route, with all the inconveniences that may arise during it. That is why the shortcut that a team of scientists from the State University of Rio Janeiro has just proposed is so interesting. With it, the trip could be shortened to 153 days, round trip. The key is in the asteroids. The authors of this study They have looked for shortcuts on the route to Mars in a quite interesting way: by noticing other travelers. After studying the trajectories of several asteroids, they have focused on those whose orbit intersects both that of Mars and that of Earth. Until now, the trajectories are designed from the Earth’s orbital plane. If the orbital plane of one of these asteroids, specifically 2001 CA21, is also taken into account, new paths are opened, which were hidden from our planet. One of those paths, according to the study, would drastically reduce the duration of trips to Mars. The asteroid is not a vehicle. It is important to note that this study does not propose using asteroids as a vehicle to Mars. They simply use them to open horizons to other trajectories. We from Earth see only a few “roads”, but asteroids like this have other options. By looking for connection points between the Earth’s orbital plane and that of these asteroids, it can be linked to these other routes, some of which turn out to be more direct. Traditional tours. Normally, to travel from Earth to Mars something known as the Hohmann trajectory is used. This consists of beginning to make a turn around the Sun in our own elliptical orbit; to, when the time comes, take advantage of its gravitational pull and extend the ellipse to the Martian orbit. Broadly speaking, the ship does not go in a straight line to where the destination planet is, but rather travels to where it will be at a given time. It is not a short trip, but with it, by taking advantage of the gravitational pull, fuel consumption is greatly reduced. Planned trajectory for ESA’s ExoMars For this to be carried out, launch windows must be taken advantage of in which the Earth, the Sun and Mars are properly aligned. All this lengthens trips a lot. A change of plane. The orbits of the different objects that revolve around each other are not all in the same plane. Each one has its own plan. Like a sheet of paper that is spinning. The Earth’s plane is not exactly the same as that of Marsbut very similar. That of the asteroid in this study, however, is very different and is much more inclined. That is why it allows us to open the window to new trajectories. As explained in Wired, It is something like opening a secondary window in a video game to see a scenario that we do not see in the main one. Multiple launch windows. Taking into account the need to have a proper alignment between the Earth, the Sun and Mars, there are soon three interesting launch windows to travel to the red planet: 2027, 2029 and 2031. By studying them one by one, the authors of this study saw that it is in 2031 when the best alignment with the plane of the asteroid occurs and, therefore, a much faster opportunity for travel. In the best case, Mars could be reached in 33 days. The complete trip would be 153 days, although in less optimistic cases it could be 226 days. Be that as it may, it is still much less than those 9 months, one way, that it takes now. Other asteroids. Although the study has been carried out with specific data from a single asteroid, these scientists believe that, in reality, the orbital planes of others could be taken whose trajectories also intersect with Earth and Mars. Basically, the key is to look outside the box. Or, much more literally, out of shot. There are many interesting routes out there. More powerful propulsion systems. All this sounds beautiful, but there is a big drawback that we must take into account. And, in order to carry out this process, much more energy is needed. Therefore, it would be necessary to resort to practically unfeasible quantities of fuel or to new, more powerful propulsion systems. Today this is not possible, so advances in this regard should go in parallel with the development of advances in propulsion systems. Many examples are already being investigated, such as the use of nuclear energy. Even has been proposed use lasers, although it is a project that is very much in its infancy. There is still a long way to go, never better said, but if the future is in these short and alternative trajectories it must also be in new propulsion systems that leave traditional ones behind. Image | NASA | THAT In Xataka | ExoMars, this is Europe’s most ambitious mission to Mars

For decades we believed that extreme nausea during pregnancy was caused by “hormones.” A large study found the real culprit

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The beginning of pregnancy for many is associated with horrible nausea and vomiting that have become almost an inevitable and deeply annoying toll in pregnancy and that many women fear. And the reality is that, for a percentage of these women, nausea becomes a big problem and evolves into a very serious form called hyperemesis gravidarum. What was believed. At first, the most classic reviews They pointed squarely at the ‘hormonal dance’ that pregnant women experience while the placenta is forming. Here the peaks of human chorionic gonadotropin (which is the hormone that pregnancy tests detect), along with estrogens and progesterone, were the main responsible for this discomfort. However, in clinical practice, the exact cause remained uncertain, since it was not understood why some women only felt mild morning sickness and others ended up hospitalized due to the severe dehydration caused by vomiting. And the answer was in the DNA. A great study. Here science has dotted the i’s with an article published in Nature which has analyzed the data of almost 11,000 cases of hyperemesis gravidarum and contrasted it with more than 420,000 women who did not have this problem. The result. He targeted ten genes associated with this severe form of extreme nausea, but among all of them the GDF15 gene emerged as the main culprit. And here the different experts point out that the developing fetus and the placenta produce the hormone GDF15, which is produced from the gene that we mentioned before and sends it directly to the blood, causing this nausea. Although the key is not just how much hormone is produced, but the degree of prior exposure the mother had to this hormone before pregnancy. In this way, women who had low levels of GDF15 before becoming pregnant turn out to be much more sensitive to the sudden surge of this hormone from the fetus, which triggers the most severe symptoms of nausea and vomiting. A discovery with evidence. Despite the forcefulness that accompanies this evidence, the study suggests that the gene GDF15 It is the main cause, but not the only one. The fact that there are other genes involved demonstrates that hyperemesis gravidarum is a multifactorial condition so calling it the “sole cause” would be scientifically inaccurate, but classifying it as the most determining genetic factor is, today, a fact supported by the best peer-reviewed literature. What does it mean? Identifying GDF15 as the main biological switch of this problem is undoubtedly the first step to be able to apply a treatment that can help these future mothers who suffer from significant vomiting during pregnancy, and especially in the first trimester. Although it is true that this does not explain many other symptoms of pregnancy, such as heartburn or that some things begin to feel bad ‘just because’. Although there is still a lot of research ahead to discover them. Images | tirachardz on Freepik In Xataka | We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

two decades of success with the most stable audiences on television

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The same week in April 2006 that La Sexta premiered broadcasts, ‘El Intermedio’ began its career as one of the channel’s flagship programs and Antena 3 launched the current stage of ‘La roulette de laluck’. Two decades later, both programs celebrate their anniversary (one with special panels, the other with Pedro Sánchez wearing borrowed suspenders) and stand out as true anomalies on a grid in eternal motion. The luck of roulette. ‘The roulette of luck’, a word guessing contest broadcast at two in the afternoon, manages to almost double the share of its own network. In the 2025-2026 season The program presented by Jorge Fernández registers a 21.6% screen share, with an average of 1,564,000 viewers and more than 3.1 million unique viewers. Antena 3, as a network, has averaged 12.4% of share. Its main rivals in that range, ‘Mañaneros 360’, is around 12%, and ‘El Precio Justo’ is timidly approaching 9%. It is not punctual: the format has four consecutive years above 20% and maintains a uninterrupted monthly leadership since May 2020. Poor beginnings. When the current stage of the contest started in 2006, it returned to the small screen with a 26.9% share and 1,318,000 viewers: promising figures that deteriorated in the following years. However, its number of viewers skyrocketed when it began to occupy the 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. slot that ‘The Simpsons’ had until then had, where television consumption is significantly higher. Curiously, ‘La roulette’ has seen its viewer base decrease since the 2020/2021 season, but the share has gone up. The explanation is that linear television as a whole loses audience, but ‘La roulette’ loses it less than its rivals. Not just business days. The robustness of the format also extends to weekends. Since 2020, Antena 3 has been broadcasting reruns of the contest on Saturdays and Sundays, and the program also leads in that slot: in the current season it reaches a 17.8% share and 1,258,000 viewers. All for a proposal that, born in the United States, has had some 60 international versions since 1975, and that arrived in Spain in 1990 with the birth of Antena 3, living a brief stage in Telecinco between 1993 and 1997 and a subsequent hiatus until Jorge Fernández took over the baton in his current stage. The ‘El Intermedio’ case. The satirical news program draws a different, but equally striking curve. In 2026, it averages about 848,000 viewers and reaches between 6% and 7% share (common data in the modest Access Prime Time of La Sexta). All this with specific increases such as the 20th anniversary special broadcast last Thursday, April 16, with which it scored its best quota since February 2022 (10.2%), in an unusually long delivery of more than two hours, and which brought together active politicians (several ministers, Gabriel Rufián or Pedro Sánchez himself) and musicians such as Kiko Veneno, Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel. A complicated hour. ‘El Intermedio’, unlike ‘La roulette’, has never moved from its original space, perhaps the most hostile strip of the entire schedule: the moment in which the viewer chooses where to spend the night. It has ‘El Hormiguero’ on Antena 3 and ‘La Revuelta’ on La 1 as its last direct competitors, but Wyoming has been resisting for two decades. According to a analysis of Barlovento Comunicaciónin 2012 La Sexta designed a strategic positioning of “vertical programming” focused on political and social news. The programs created then (‘The Intermediate’, ‘Al Rojo Vivo’, ‘Better Late’ or ‘Saved’) had the objective of providing street-level information about current events. The Atresmedia umbrella. The two programs share something more than the year of birth: both are from Atresmedia, and both operate in time slots where at least part of the competition cannot find alternatives. In the case of ‘El Intermedio’, the Wyoning program has seen in these twenty years how ‘El Hormiguero’ went from competitor to ally‘First Dates’ on Cuatro took shape as a more stable competitor during the last decade and finally, ‘La revuelta’ appeared, which notably politicized the strip. The numbers. Atresmedia closed 2025 with revenue of 1,002 million euros and maintained its hegemony on television for the fourth consecutive year, with a screen share of 26.1% and a historical advantage of 1.7 points about Mediaset. Antena 3 was once again the most watched channel of the year. These two anniversaries are indicators that the strategy of cheap programs, with rigid structures and a loyal audience continues to be profitable. ‘La roulette’ produces five days a week with a small team and ‘El Intermedio’ works with daily news as raw material, which reduces content development costs. And two decades of holding on. In Xataka | The “audience war” with ‘La Revuelta’ has been very good for ‘El Hormiguero’. Eight million euros of good

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