decades

Microsoft believed it would take decades to have a useful quantum computer. Majorana 2 just pushed that deadline to 2029

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Finding the Majorana particle would be the best thing that could happen to them. quantum computers. The Italian physicist Ettore Majorana mathematically described its existence in 1937, and since then many researchers have become obsessed with it because it has a characteristic that makes it unique: it is both a particle and its own antiparticle. What makes it very attractive for quantum computing is that, when it appears, it does so in pairs and its topological nature gives it a resistance to external noise that conventional qubits do not have. This distribution of information at two separate points means that local errors triggered by vibrations, temperature or radiation cannot easily erase it. The coincidence of this duplicity and its stability suggests that these particles could be used to make qubits that are more stable and less prone to external perturbations than the qubits used in current quantum computers. Or that, at least, is what Microsoft is pursuing, although with an important nuance: it sounds very good, but after the cold water of 2021 physicists are extraordinarily careful when dealing with them. Microsoft promises to have a functional quantum computer in 2029 Microsoft does not work with Majorana fermions in the strict sense of the elementary particle predicted by Ettore Majorana. What you are looking for are Majorana modes or Majorana quasiparticles: collective excitations that emerge in certain topological superconducting materials and that behave as if they were Majorana fermions. They are not fundamental particles; They are emerging phenomena in the field of condensed matter. This strategy allowed Microsoft officially present in February 2025 Majorana 1, the first topological quantum processor. However, the scientific community received it with skepticism. And it did so because the Redmond company claimed to have created a state of matter in silicon that until then it only existed in theory. His proposal was to use Majorana modes as a basis for more stable quantum computing. Majorana 2 has been developed with the help of Discovery artificial intelligence The problem is that Microsoft had tried to demonstrate something similar before, in 2018, and the scientific article that supported it ended up being retracted by Nature three years later. Majorana 1 was, in that sense, both a technical advance and an attempt to regain credibility. And now Majorana 2 arrives. Microsoft has confirmed that this new quantum processor has been developed with the help of its artificial intelligence (IA) Discovery, and has also explained that it incorporates new materials with the purpose of accelerating the arrival of an error-resistant, and therefore fully functional, quantum computer. Chetan Nayak, CTO and Corporate Vice President of Quantum Hardware, has explained that the Microsoft Quantum team has improved the materials stack used in Majorana 1 for the purpose of create a more stable topological phase. Majorana 2 replaces aluminum with lead, and upgrades the semiconducting active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide-antimonide. This change in materials has triggered, according to Microsoftsignificant performance improvements. And it also helps protect the fragile qubits of cosmic disturbances that can destabilize them. Be that as it may, this statement from Nayak summarizes the impact that Microsoft believes Majorana 2 will have on its roadmap: “Based on this rapid progress, we are accelerating our plan toward a scalable and practical quantum computer: we have cut our schedule in half and now aim to reach this goal in 2029.” It is an ambitious promise. And with Microsoft’s track record in quantum computing, the scientific community has reason to continue to be demanding when evaluating it. Image | Microsoft More information | Microsoft In Xataka | 38% of AI experts in the US have been trained in China. They are essential to sustain your leadership

Antimatter has a property that has taken physicists decades to measure. CERN just did it a hundred times better than anyone else

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Antimatter is fascinating not only because of its essence; It is also due to the still enigmatic role he played in the origin of the universe. Scientists still do not have the necessary tools to understand with any precision the role of this form of matter in the formation of the cosmos and the mechanisms that govern the tenuous line that delimits the imbalance between matter and antimatter. Fortunately, what they do know are its constituent elements and some of its properties. Understand what is antimatter It’s not difficult. And we can observe it as an exotic type of matter that is made up of antiparticles, which are particles with the same mass and spin as the particles we are familiar with, but with the opposite electrical charge. In this way the antiparticle of the electron is the positron or antielectron. And the antiparticle of the proton is the antiproton. Antimatter has a surprising property: when it comes into direct contact with matter, both annihilate, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of high-energy photons, as well as other possible particle-antiparticle pairs. It is currently being studied in many of the most important research centers specialized in particle physics in the world with the hope that knowing it better will help us understand some of the mysteries of the cosmos that remain out of our reach. The hyperfine cleavage of antihydrogen has been revealed CERN’s antimatter factory produces this form of matter by firing high-energy protons from an adjacent synchrotron at a metal block. This process generates a cascade of secondary particles, and among them antiprotons arise. These latter particles can then be cooled to be used in the facility’s experiments. ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus or antihydrogen laser physics apparatus), which is one of them, is specialized in producing antihydrogen by fusing antiprotons with positrons. Researchers then use magnetic fields to trap the antihydrogen for further study. An antihydrogen atom is composed of an antiproton in its nucleus and a positron orbiting around it, in the same way that a hydrogen atom contains a proton around which an electron orbits. Deuterium and tritium, the two isotopes of hydrogen, also have one or two neutrons in the nucleus respectively. The researchers of the ALPHA experiment have achieved something amazing: have measured hyperfine division of the ground state of the antihydrogen atom with a precision of 4 parts per million, improving the previous result by two orders of magnitude. This milestone is very important because it allows very rigorous tests to be carried out in the field of quantum electrodynamics. Hyperfine splitting of the ground state of the antihydrogen atom is the small splitting of the lowest energy state of the atom due to the magnetic interaction between the antiproton and the positron. According to the fundamental symmetries of nature, this measurement should be identical to the equivalent effect observed in hydrogen. Be that as it may, this milestone is very important because it allows very rigorous tests to be carried out in the field of quantum electrodynamics, which is the most precise theory that explains the interactions that occur between charged particles and light. Jeffrey Hangst, the spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment, explains that “the hyperfine splitting of the ground state of hydrogen is the origin of the so-called 21 centimeter lineso prized by radio astronomers and researchers searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (…) When the antimatter factory was conceived in the 1990s, the hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen was one of the key measurement objectives justifying the construction of the facility.” “The current measurement represents the culmination of many years of effort,” Hangst pointed out. “We have pursued the precise determination of the hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen since we demonstrated how to trap antimatter atoms in 2010. And now another group in the antimatter factory, the ASACUSA collaboration, is also trying to study this very important transition. Their technique, if demonstrated, has the potential to achieve even greater precision.” Thanks to ALPHA’s high level of precision, the measurement of hyperfine cleavage is sensitive to the effects of the internal structure of the antiproton at the center of the antihydrogen atom. In any case, this result is a very important step in the effort to further explore the nature of antimatter. Image | CERN More information | CERN In Xataka | European science gets serious: EUROfusion and CERN will work together on nuclear fusion and new colliders

Dark matter has been a mystery for decades. A strange event from 2019 could be the evidence we were looking for to unravel it

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December 18, 2019. A star of the great Magellanic cloud increases its brightness. It does so in a way that is intense enough not to go unnoticed by scientists analyzing the data from the Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Inter-American Observatory of Cerro Tololo (Chile), but not so intense that it corresponds to an explosion. Rather, it is a gentle increase in brightness, followed by a symmetrical decrease in brightness. The entire process lasts 1 hour and baffles scientists, who baptize the object causing this phenomenon as Phoebe. Since then, Phoebe’s origin has been a mystery. Now, the same scientists who made the discovery they have answers that point to what would be one of the oldest objects that have ever been detected. Phoebe’s origin. There are three hypotheses for Phoebe’s origin. For one thing, it could be a free floating planet in the Milky Way. That is, a planet that was expelled from its solar system and now wanders through our galaxy. It could also be exactly the same, but in the Large Magellanic Cloud instead of the Milky Way. Finally, it could be a primordial black hole. That is, a very small black hole that, instead of being formed by the collapse of a star, was caused by fluctuations in the density of matter in the cosmos during the first seconds of the Big Bang. The authors of the study that has just been published have calculated the probabilities of each hypothesis and the third one beats the rest by a factor of 100,000. A gravitational microlens. While Phoebe’s origin has been a mystery all this time, it didn’t take long for scientists to understand the phenomenon that had caused the star’s brightness to fluctuate in 2019. It must have been gravitational microlensing. This is a phenomenon which is formed when a very massive object is placed between our telescopes and another object. The mass of the central object is so great that its gravity is capable of bending space-time, forming a kind of lens that magnifies the image of what is behind it. On the other hand, if what is behind it is a very distant star, what is magnified is its brightness. That is why this increase in brightness occurred, because Phoebe was passing between the star and the telescopes of the Chilean observatory. The key is in the duration. Previous studies with gravitational lensing show that the duration of the event can give us an idea of ​​the mass of the body that causes the lens to form. The lighter the object, the faster it moves and the shorter the increase in brightness lasts. In this case, the phenomenon lasted an hour. It may seem like a lot to us, but in cosmic terms it is quite little. In fact, it is just above the detectable limit. This tells us that the object that caused this increase in brightness must have been very light. According to calculations made by scientists at Swinburne University taking into account fluctuations in brightness, it would have approximately the mass equivalent to three moons. A winning option. Black holes that form from stars usually have at least the mass of about 5 suns. 3 moons is much less. It is also too small an object to correspond to a planet wandering in the Milky Way or the large Magellanic cloud. This, together with the geometry of the event and the expected spatial distribution, has led the probability calculation to lean so clearly towards the primordial black hole. Primordial black holes Big news about something very small. Primordial black holes are theoretical phenomena. It is believed plausible that could have formed in the first seconds of the Big Bang, when fluctuations in the density of matter in the cosmos caused an accumulation of matter dense enough to collapse. Most of them would be very small. They would have most of the characteristics of a black hole, but radically smaller in size. They would form before there were stars or matter as we know it, but they could be related to one of the greatest mysteries of astrophysics: dark matter. Only 5% of the cosmos is made up of “normal” atoms. The rest is unknown. One part is known as dark matter and another as dark energy. It is not known what they are, but one of the hypotheses about dark matter is that it could be composed in part of primordial black holes. Therefore, if it is shown that Phoebe is really a primordial black hole, we would perhaps be facing one of the first demonstrations of the composition of dark matter. And now what? Logically, this is just the beginning. We will have to continue looking for more objects like Phoebe to be able to prove that these scientists are right. For this, You have to know well where to point the telescopes. To begin with, not any of them will do. They need to be sensitive enough to detect gentle changes in the brightness of stars. They also need to be able to focus on large fields of vision. And, if possible, focus on places with a large concentration of stars, since it is easier for the gravitational lensing phenomenon to occur there. It is expected that some observatories, such as the Vera Rubin, will provide interesting data in this regard. Now we will have to analyze them and look for points in common with Phoebe. That December 18, 2019, a pandemic was brewing on Earth, but in space the clue could be jumping that would resolve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of astrophysics. Image |Martin Bernardi |NASA In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury

Researchers solve a problem that has been stuck for decades

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A team from Monash University in Australia has developed an ultrathin membrane able to operate hydrogen fuel cells at 250 °C and, most surprisingly, without the need for water. This is a wall in which technology has been crossing for a long time and the discovery has been published in the journal Science Advances. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Why is it important. Hydrogen cells are one of the great promises to decarbonize transportation, heavy industry and sectors where batteries fall short. They only emit water and heat, they recharge quickly and offer autonomy comparable to gasoline. The problem is that current membranes, such as those based on Nafion (a synthetic resin), they need to be permanently hydrated so that the protons can circulate. And that forces us to operate below 80-100 °C, because at higher temperatures the water evaporates and the entire system collapses. In detail. The team, led by researchers Huanting Wang and Kaiqiang He, has built atomic-thick nanosheets made of graphene and boron nitride. Between those layers they have introduced phosphoric acid in a state that researchers call nanoconfined, where the acid is trapped in tiny spaces from which it cannot escape or evaporate, even at 250 ° C. The result It is a membrane of just 50 micrometers, named GBP, that acts as a dry highway through which protons move at high speed without depending on a single drop of water. How it works. Wang, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Monash, account that “by combining proton-conducting nanosheets with nanoconfined phosphoric acid, we have developed a membrane that maintains rapid proton transport without water.” The trick is in a mechanism that the authors define as synergistic, in which protons directly pass through the hexagonal rings of graphene and boron nitride and, at the same time, jump along the network of hydrogen bonds that forms the acid confined between layers. On the other hand, He adds that this combination is what gives the membrane high conductivity and stability in dry and high temperature conditions. The figures. In laboratory tests GBP achieved a proton conductivity of 166 mS cm⁻¹ at 250 °C and a power density of 1,011 mW cm⁻² in a hydrogen-oxygen stack, well above industry reference membranes. In addition, the team kept it running for 150 hours straight at that temperature without signs of degradation. Between the lines. Working at 250°C is a game-changer on several fronts. One: The water management and humidification systems are eliminated, which in current hydrogen cars are heavy, bulky and expensive. Two: at that temperature the platinum catalyst tolerates impurities better such as carbon monoxide, which opens the door to using less pure hydrogen and, therefore, cheaper to produce. Three– Cooling the system becomes much easier, allowing for smaller radiators and lighter vehicles. Beyond the car. Although we usually focus on the hydrogen cars When we talk about this type of technology, the truth is that the potential applications go much further. GBP was also tested in direct methanol cells and performed at 502 mW cm⁻² with 16 M concentrated methanol at 250 °C. This suggests that it could be used for portable systems where hydrogen is difficult to store. In addition, the authors point to uses in data centersplanes, trains, factories and hospitals as energy backup, and other electrochemical processes such as the separation of water molecules, the reduction of carbon dioxide or the synthesis of ammonia. And now what. The next step is the usual one. And when a laboratory announces an advance like this, we have to wait until it ends up coming to fruition and its commercialization on an industrial scale is viable. If they succeed, the combination of cheaper batteries, less pure hydrogen and simpler systems could accelerate the arrival of this technology in sectors where electrification with batteries does not quite fit. Cover image | CARMAN and Monash University In Xataka | The world depends on gas to produce food. Paraguay believes it has the definitive solution thanks to the Itaipú dam

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

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