discovered

In 1970 Japan built homes of the future where each capsule would be replaceable. Half a century later he discovered that no one knew how to repair them

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In 1970, during the Osaka World Expomillions of people lined up to enter pavilions where Japan showed how it imagined the 21st century: domestic video calls, automated cities, assistant robots and modular homes capable of changing over time. That event was so impressive that many visitors came away convinced that the future was going to arrive much sooner than expected. The spaceship that Japan wanted. In 1972, in the heart of Tokyo, a building appears that seemed to have landed from the future. The Nakagin Capsule Tower It was unlike anything of its time: two concrete towers covered by 140 metal capsules with circular windows, like a stack of futuristic washing machines or a block of space modules suspended over Ginza. The architect Kisho Kurokawa He imagined those capsules as replaceable homes that could be removed and replaced every 25 years, just as an organism renews its cells. The idea perfectly summed up the Japanese postwar optimism: mutable cities, living architecture and a future where houses would function more as interchangeable pieces than as permanent buildings. Half a century later, Japan discovered something much more uncomfortable: no one really knew how to repair that vision of the future. Nakagin Capsule Tower The metabolic dream. The Nakagin was born within the Metabolist movementa Japanese architectural movement obsessed with constant change. After the destruction of World War II, architects like Kurokawa wanted break with the western idea of eternal buildings of stone and brick. Japan lived with earthquakes, fires and permanent reconstructions. For them, the city had to behave like a living being capable of growing, adapting and transforming. The capsules were the perfect symbol of that philosophy. Each module It measured just ten square meters and included a bed, folding desk, compact bathroom, Sony television and even a tape player. They were aimed at typical Tokyo office workers who wanted a small urban retreat during the week, avoiding hours of travel to the suburbs. Kurokawa saw those capsules as the beginning of a new way of ultramobile life where people would change their homes just as they change their technology. Interior of one of the capsules The problem: the future cannot be dismantled. The great irony of the Nakagin is that the central element of its design it never worked. The capsules had to be periodically undocked and replaced with more modern versions, allowing the building to survive for centuries. On paper it seemed brilliant, but in practice It was almost impossible. Individual capsules could not be removed without disassembling all those that were on top, the costs were gigantic and the system hid structural problems that worsened over time. The joints began to rust, constant leaks appeared, and asbestos complicated any serious attempt at renovation. As Tokyo continued to move towards the 21st century, that supposed architecture of tomorrow began to look an aged relic from an old science fiction. The capsules that were supposed to be renovated like Lego pieces ended up converted into small corroded boxes where there were hardly any permanent residents left. Entrance to the Tower From futuristic utopia to cult ruin. As the decades passed, Nakagin stopped functioning as a residential experiment and began to transform into something else: a work of worship. Architects, photographers, designers and tourists arrived fascinated by that impossible building that continued to resist in the middle of Ginza like a time capsule from the 70s. Many apartments were used as creative studioswarehouses or simple occasional shelters. The community that formed around the building ended up being almost more important than its original use. Some residents organized guided tours, parties and campaigns to save the tower as the deterioration continued. In fact, Francis Ford Coppola, Keanu Reeves and numerous international artists They visited the complex attracted by that strange mix of decadence and futurism. What had failed as a practical solution survived as a cultural icon. Demolishing a utopian future. In 2022 it finally started the disassembly of the Nakagin Capsule Tower. The images were almost poetic: cranes tearing off the capsules one by one, as if they were dismantling an abandoned space station. Most were destroyed, but a small group of owners and preservationists managed to save 23 modules. Some have been completely restored with their original televisions, telephones and furniture, others have ended up in museums, galleries, hotels or exhibitions spread across Japan, Europe and the United States. Paradoxically, Kurokawa’s idea ended up being fulfilled otherwise: The capsules did end up separating and traveling around the world, although not as part of a living city, but as fossils from a future that never came to exist. The failure that changed architecture. The Nakagin It failed as a building, but triumphed as an idea. It inspired capsule hotels, modular architecture, and much of the contemporary obsession with micro-apartments and flexible spaces. Furthermore, its influence can be traced in high-tech projects later and even in current debates on sustainability and compact housing. What is fascinating is that the building simultaneously demonstrated two opposite things: that futuristic architecture can be decades ahead of its time… and that a vision that is too advanced can also become impossible to maintain in the real world. Japan dreamed of housing where each apartment would be replaceable and adaptable forever, and in the end he discovered that he had built something much stranger: a masterpiece of the future condemned to age before the future itself. Image | David Meenagh, Jordy Meow, Kestrel, Dick Thomas Johnson In Xataka | The incredible story of the tallest building on the planet that ended up becoming the largest swimming pool in the Soviet Union In Xataka | After the Guggenheim fever in Bilbao, Alcorcón wanted to replicate its success with a megaproject in 2004. It ended very badly.

Japanese scientists have discovered what the clouds of Venus have to do with your kitchen sink

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In 2016, the Japanese Akatsuki mission detected a massive disturbance on Venus which left scientists baffled. For a long time, its origin has been a mystery. However, now a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has found the answer. An answer that, curiously, has a lot to do with your kitchen sink. Simulations. Through atmospheric simulations and fluid dynamics models, scientists at the University of Tokyo have discovered that a phenomenon takes place in the atmosphere of Venus, called hydraulic jump, which also happens in your sink every time you turn on the tap. You have surely noticed that, right at the point where the water hits the sink, it moves quickly and in a very thin layer. However, a circle is formed whose outer layers are thicker and move much more slowly. In other words, rapidly flowing liquid abruptly slows down and increases in height. The reasons. Initially, when water falls into the sink, its speed is greater than the local speed of the waves that are generated. However, friction with the sink surface slows down the waterso just the opposite happens. As a result, water begins to accumulate, forming a deeper layer that also moves more unstablely. What was seen on Venus. In 2016, a massive disturbance was detected moving 6,000 kilometers wide around the equator of Venus. This, in addition, was moving through the clouds, leaving behind a dark patch of denser clouds. These images taken on August 18 (left) and August 27 (right), 2016, by the near-infrared camera of Japan’s Akatsuki Venus probe, show the clear line of denser (darker) clouds moving across the planet. Special clouds. The clouds of Venuscomposed mostly of sulfuric acid, are an interesting mystery. They are known to rotate very quickly, with a speed 60 times greater than the planet’s own rotation. This, as explained in Universe Todaywould be more or less equivalent to a Formula 1 car circling a bicycle. They are made up of 3 layers, of which only the outermost one is well known. The two innermost ones harbor many mysteries, which is why these scientists have searched there. An unstable wave. In one of these internal layers, something known as a Kelvin wave is formed. It moves east very quickly, but there comes a time when it becomes periodically unstable. At that point, the wind speed slows down, like tap water, and the atmosphere builds up into a thicker layer, like water over a sink. This drastic change causes a powerful upward current of air, which pushes sulfuric acid vapor into the atmosphere, where it condenses and forms that broad wall of clouds that was detected in 2016. other planets. This is the largest hydraulic jump that has been detected in the solar system. However, these scientists believe that, using similar models, perhaps something similar could be detected on other planets. For example, they believe that Mars is a good candidate to host this phenomenon. It would be interesting to check, since Venus is too inhospitable a planet to colonize, but science Yes, he has his sights set on colonizing Mars in the future. Knowing perfectly the mysteries that its sky houses is necessary for the success of this type of missions. Image | MIT/Zeimusu | T. Imamura, Y. Maejima, K. Sugiyama et al., 2026 In Xataka | A green beam illuminated Venus in the night sky. It is not an unknown phenomenon, but it is very difficult to see

The history of writing seemed untouchable. Until researchers discovered a tablet on Easter Island

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Easter Island is known above all for the moaienormous head-shaped sculptures that natives carved from volcanic tuff and have fascinated scientists for decades. On the Polynesian island there is, however, another archaeological enigma that is much less visible but equally (or even more) important for humanity: the rongo rongothe pictographic writing system used by the Rapa Nui people. Linguists have not yet been able to decipher its signs, but above all they are concerned about one question: When was it invented? It may seem anecdotal, but the answer would be a milestone that would transcend Polynesia and help us better understand how humanity gave birth to one of the inventions that has most influenced history: writing. One word: rongo rongo. It is not nearly as well known as the moai, but the rongo rongo is one of the most fascinating treasures that we owe to the Rapa Nuithe Polynesian natives of Easter Island. It basically consists of a writing system based on pictograms that is preserved in a series of tablets spread around the world. Experts estimate that it is made up of 400 charactersalthough its meaning and logic remains surrounded by unknowns. The experts they have not been able to decipher it Still, something understandable if two pieces of information are taken into account. First, although rongo rongo has centuries of history, Europeans were not interested in it until the 19th. We owe much of the credit to the French missionary Eugene Eyraudwho shortly before dying described the symbols that covered wooden tablets and staffs located on the Polynesian island. The second fact is that we keep a fairly limited number of engraved boards, pieces that are also distributed in places like Rome, Honolulu or New York. The great mystery. A few years ago Silvia Ferrara, professor at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna, explained to the BBC why the challenge is so complicated: “No one has reconstructed the systematic correspondence between each sign and the sounds it registers.” At first glance, the glyphs seem to represent silhouettes of animals, plants, people, artifacts and geometric designs, but understanding them requires clarifying such basic questions as whether two signs similar to each other, with slight variations, represent the same sound. The curious thing is that, as complex as this challenge is, it is not what experts are most fascinated by. There is another question that worries them even more: When and how was the rongo rongo created? Was it something that the natives of Easter Island came up with or did it develop after the arrival of the first European navigators, to beginning of the 17th century? The key is no longer so much to understand what the pictograms say as to clarify who, when, how and under what influence created the system. Is it so important? Yes. And the reason is very simple. There are many languages ​​(very many), but writing systems developed from scratch, independently, there are very few (very few). “For many, writing represents an essential quality of civilization. There are four cases and places in human history where writing was invented from scratch without any prior knowledge,” explained in 2010 Christopher Woods, of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. This ‘miracle’ basically occurred in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. “It is likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems,” detailed the expert If rongo rongo developed on Easter Island basically after the arrival of Europeans, in the 17th century, that ‘photo’ would not change. It would be a valuable creation, although not ‘independent’. Its origin would be explained by external influences. But… What if it was the Rapa Nui who devised the system completely autonomously? After all, it is known that, despite being a remote island in the middle of Polynesia, the natives arrived there several centuries before than the Dutch sailors. Solving the unknown. Convinced that this is the great enigma of Easter Island (with the permission of the majority), a few years ago Ferrara tried to clarify the chronology of the rongo rongo writing. The study, carried out together with other colleagues and whose conclusions were collected in Scientific Reportsfocused on four engraved tablets preserved in Rome. To find out what era they were from, the researchers subjected them to radiocarbon dating and asked a botanist to analyze their materials. What did they find out? That three of the tablets appear to have been used in the 19th century, after the arrival of Europeans to the island. The fourth, however, reserved a surprise: it points to a period between between 1493 and 1509. “It stands out as an anomaly in our chronological model, since it shows an antiquity before the arrival of the Europeans,” reveals Professor Sahra Talamo, also from the University of Bologna. This discovery opens a fascinating horizon that contradicts the version that the rongo rongo flourished under the influence of Western navigators. “The common narrative has always been one in which the local population was exposed to writing when Europeans arrived on the island starting in 1722 and this was what drove the creation of writing, as a kind of result of a transmission, of exposure to a pre-existing writing system,” comment Ferrara to the BBC. His work opens another door: he suggests that rongo rongo was an “original invention, an innovation that happened because the brains of local people took them in that direction.” Way to go. Although Ferrara and Talamo’s research is fascinating and sheds light on the origins of Rapa Nui writing, the truth is that it does not settle the debate. Not at least definitively. Radiocarbon analysis concluded that a tablet can be dated between late 15th century and early 16th centurybut that, admits the teacher herself, does not necessarily mean that the engraving it contains is from the same period. That is, the inscription may also have been made in the 19th century, except that its author decided … Read more

When the fathers of quantum physics discovered the fundamental ideas of reality, they discovered that a Jesuit had already been there 200 years before.

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The story is a classic of popular science: 200 years before the birth of quantum physics, the Jesuit Ruđer Bošković advanced the central ideas of 20th century physics: field theory, the uncertainty principle and even dark energy. Furthermore, he did it alone. What Bošković did, as Héctor Farrés points outit’s incredible. Not only is it real and important, but it is beyond doubt (Heisenberg himself lor recognized in 58), but what he didn’t do too. The latter is, in fact, the most interesting. What Bošković knew. In 1758, the Jesuit (who was one of the great mathematicians of the time and had even helped fix the dome of St. Peter’s) published in Vienna ‘Philosophiae naturalis theoria redacts ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium‘. In this book he developed ideas that he had already presented almost 15 years earlier in Rome: that matter was not made of extended solid corpuscles (as Newtonian physics maintained), nor of inextended metaphysical monads (as Leibniz thought). For Bošković, matter is essentially composed of dimensionless points that only exist as points of force. In essence, Bošković believed that Newton’s inverse square law was a ‘limiting case’ (for planetary bodies) of a different equation that governed the relationship of all things in nature. Just this idea that scale is important, that the behavior of forces could change radically depending on it, deserves to go down in the history of physics. Because? Because it is the piece that helps us stop understanding matter as impenetrable ‘bodies’ and allows us to understand that impenetrability as an effect: it was giving mathematical entity to atomism. And the most interesting thing is that his later influence is real. It is documented, come on: there is a chain of readings that takes us from these ideas to those of William Rowan Hamiltonthe most direct precursor of quantum mechanics. Apparently, Werner Heisenberg, he of the uncertainty principle, he even said in 1958 that “the remarkable concept that forces are repulsive at small distances and must be attractive at greater distances has played a decisive role in modern atomic physics. (…) Bohr’s quantum theory of the atom can be precisely related to this concept, and the study of the atomic nucleus during the last thirty years has taught us that the particles that constitute the nucleus, protons and neutrons, are bound together by precisely such a force.” However, one should not exaggerate either. As Borges said when talking about Kafka, authors create their own precursors. That is, as Heisenberg himself said, Bošković’s work “contains numerous ideas that have only achieved full expression in modern physics in the last fifty years.” They were brilliant intuitions that are fully understood in the light of quantum physics, but not seeds that logically contained all the physics of the 20th century within them. A very common mistake. Too common, in fact. We don’t usually approach history from what we already know and there, of course, the similarities shine in the middle of the night. The reality is that what we see are usually ‘pareidolias’: things that say more about us and the functioning of our brain than about what happened in the past. Image | Xataka In Xataka | One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century already identified the problem of Generation Z: “Not tolerating boredom”

We just discovered a new island in an oceanic “danger zone”

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In February 2026 the SWOSan international team of 93 science professionals, embarked on the icebreaker Polarstern from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) toward the northwest Weddell Sea with a mission: study what the flow of water and ice was like in the Larsen Ice Shelf to determine its influence on the planet’s ocean circulation. Neither more nor less. However, a strong storm forced them to seek shelter, changing the course of the expedition. What they found when they turned aside was an island of solid rock that did not appear on the maps. There is a new island on the map. The island is in the northwest of the Weddell Sea, in the vicinity of Joinville Island, near the Danger Isletsan area that fulfills what its name promises: it has dense ice, part of which is hidden beneath the surface, and the navigation conditions are extreme. Its dimensions are approximately 130 meters long, 50 meters wide and it rises 16 meters above sea level, more or less like the Polarstern, whose length measures 118 meters. Despite being a full-fledged island, the island had no name or coordinates nor did it appear in international cartographic databases in the area, vaguely defined as “a danger zone for navigation”, as explains Simon Dreutterfrom the AWI Bathymetry section. The few charts that hinted at its existence did not even locate it well (deviation of one nautical mile, about 1.85 kilometers). Although it doesn’t have a name yet at the SCARYes, we know how to place it on the map. Why is it important. From a geological point of view, this finding shows that although we are immersed in space exploration, there are still corners of our planet to discover. World cartography is incomplete and the Wedell Sea is precisely one of the territories with the most candidates to harbor surprises: it has difficult access and little data coverage, in addition to the interpolation systems that generate bathymetric maps such as the IBCSO can literally erase unregistered objects physically, as the entity itself warns. Simply put, the island may have remained invisible for decades simply because no ship had boarded it with the right tools. Its discovery is also a reflection of the retreat of sea ice in the region since 2017, attributed to warming surface waters. The retreat of the ice has made a previously impenetrable area navigable, which raises the question: was the island always there or has it emerged recently? From a biological point of view, it is a virgin laboratory: its flora and fauna are completely unknown, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand adaptation to that environment. Context. The Weddell Sea is a key piece of global ocean circulation. That is where the Antarctic bottom waterone of the densest and coldest masses of water on the planet. This mass of water feeds the bottom currents of all oceans and regulates the exchange of heat and carbon on a planetary scale, as documented in oceanographic literature. Altering its dynamics, as is happening due to the retreat of the Larsen Ice Shelf, has consequences that spread thousands of kilometers. The SWOS expedition was designed precisely to quantify these changes and so far what they have discovered is how much the thickness of the ice varies: up to four meters on the western continental shelf, where the tides compress and deform the ice, and just five feet to the east, where it comes from the Ronne and Filchner ice sheets, which are subject to less pressure. Antarctic bottom water is formed in the Antarctic Ocean as a result of the cooling of surface water in polynyas.Wikipedia How they discovered it. That storm that forced the Polastern to seek refuge in the shelter of Joinville Island. It was then that Simon Dreutter detected an anomaly in the charts and went up to the bridge. There he saw what looked like an unusually dirty iceberg. Like it was a rock. Approaching with caution, always keeping at least 50 meters of water under the keel to minimize the risk of hitting ice, the team confirmed that it was an island. The ship surrounded it at a distance of about 150 meters and took the opportunity to map both its seabed (with a multibeam echo sounder) and its orography using a drone. They already had the first elevation model of the island. What’s going to happen now. Once the official naming process is complete, the team will publish the coordinates of the island and all that information will be incorporated into the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean and international nautical charts, so that its existence will no longer surprise anyone again. As a curiosity, due to maritime tradition, whoever discovers such a geographical feature has the privilege of proposing the name in a process that can last months. Beyond the name, the island opens up a new scientific range: rock samples will determine its lithological composition and age and biological studies will help understand how Antarctic ecosystems respond to climate change. In Xataka | A century ago Denmark built an island to defend its capital. Now it is full of tourists and is sold for ten million In Xataka | China prepares a pilotable “floating island” for marine exploration: for whatever reason, it resists nuclear explosions Cover | Alfred Wegener Institute / Christian Haas

we have just discovered that it contained a material ‘impossible’ for physics

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In July of last year an academic investigation shook materials physics with an unexpected protagonist: a space rock collected in Germany three centuries ago. Inside it housed a mineral whose thermal behavior does not fit into any known classification. The most disconcerting thing is not the material itself (that too), but that it had been gathering dust in a glass case since 1724: no one had looked at it with the appropriate instruments until now. The meteorite of 1724. Called the “Steinbach meteorite” after the German region of Saxony where it fell. The remains quickly joined museum collections due to their exotic origin and beauty, without attracting special attention from the scientific community. Among them, in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, where the fragment that was used for this research is located. What that fragment contains is meteoric tridymitea form of silicon dioxide extraordinarily rare on Earth. It is a polymorphism of quartz that is only generated under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, conditions that do not occur in ordinary terrestrial geology, but do occur in meteorite impacts or volcanic environments. Why it is important. In a phrase: because of its properties. The tridymite from the Steinbach meteorite maintains a practically constant thermal conductivity between −193 °C and 107 °C (80 and 380 kelvin), something that beyond meaning that it conducts heat the same whether you are in the cold winter of Iceland or in a heat wave in the desert, it has a peculiarity: no known material behaves like this. This thermal stability is a rarity in itself in materials technology and gives it clear applicability for thermal management: it allows designing electronic devices that do not overheat and aerospace insulation systems with an efficiency unthinkable under the laws of classical physics. Context. In 2009 the physicist Michele Simoncelli together with Nicola Marzari and Francesco Mauri developed a unified equation based on the Wigner transport formalism capable of simultaneously describing the thermal behavior of crystals, glasses and any intermediate state. That equation theoretically predicted the existence of materials with temperature-invariant thermal conductivity like this one. The problem is that no one had found that material in the real world. In the universe, most minerals form under Earth’s pressures and temperatures that force atoms to adopt standard crystal lattices. But in the asteroid belt, the remains of distinct protoplanets undergo cooling processes and catastrophic collisions that generate mineral phases that do not exist naturally in the Earth’s crust. Tridymite is common in volcanic rocks, but this one of meteoric origin has the advantage of having been thermally stabilized in space for millions of years. Something doesn’t add up. Until now, science assumed that a solid material must be either a crystal (ordered structure) or a glass (ordered structures) and its thermal properties depended on that structure: the thermal conductivity of a crystal decreases with increasing temperature because the vibrations of the crystalline lattice (the phonons) disperse among themselves with more intensity. Just the opposite happens in glass because its internal disorder facilitates additional ways of transmitting heat when heated. They are opposite trends, robust and well documented experimentally for decades. The Steinbach meteorite breaks the rules and behaves like both at the same time. Steinbach meteoric tridymite has an atomic structure that presents order in the chemical bonds like a crystal and geometric disorder in the arrangement of those bonds like a glass. This combination generates an exact compensation between both transport mechanisms, the propagation mechanism (typical of crystals) and the tunneling mechanism (typical of glass), which is what the research team calls PTI conductivity, propagation-tunneling-invariant. How they discovered it. The discovery it has been possible thanks to thermoreflectometry, which measures variations in the optical reflectivity of a surface when it is thermally excited with a pulsed laser, allowing thermal conductivity to be inferred with high resolution. What they saw was that the silicon atoms were not in perfect rows, but they were not random either: they followed a “middle-range order” sequence that previously only existed in mathematical models, confirming point by point the predictions of the Wigner equation. Yes, but. The Meteoric tridymite is disruptive in materials technology, the problem is reproducibility and scarcity. So far we have only found this material in the Steinbach meteorite, a limited sample of an astronomical milestone that occurred three centuries ago. Obtaining it from meteorites is simply not feasible and the challenge of manufacturing this glass-crystal synthetically is not exactly small. A curiosity: the paper explains that in the Gale crater Martian tridymite has also been detected, raising questions about how it has influenced the geological history of the red planet or opening the possibility of eventual space mining. On the other hand, and although it is true that the material defies the laws of physics, it is important to highlight that we are talking about current physics: it is not that the laws were false, it is that they were simply incomplete. In Xataka | In 2023 an asteroid disintegrated off the coast of Normandy. At that time we were not aware of how lucky we were In Xataka | In 2011, a collector bought a meteorite in Morocco. It has turned out to be direct evidence of thermal water on Mars Cover | Fred Kruijen and Batu Gezer

a man just discovered that robotaxis can do it too

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It is an automatic thought when we check a suitcase: please don’t let me lose it. The airlines They have improved baggage managementbut millions of incidents continue to be recorded every year and it is something that has happened to practically all of us who have taken a few planes. What is not so common is that the person who loses your suitcase is a robotaxi, or rather we should say the one who steals it from you. what has happened. They tell it in Futurism. A few days ago, a man ordered a Waymo robotaxi to go to the San Jose airport in California. The journey went well, it was upon arriving at the airport that the problem arose. The passenger was able to get out of the taxi without problem, but when he tried to open the trunk to retrieve his suitcase, it did not open and the robotaxi left, leaving him without the luggage that he had prepared for his trip. Waym’s responseeither. The first thing the passenger, whose name is Di Jin, did was call Waymo customer service in the hopes they could get the taxi back with his suitcase. However, the person who assisted him told him that the car was on its way to the warehouse and that it was impossible to change its route. Jin decided to take the plane anyway and later tried to get Waymo to send his luggage, but the response was that he had to go pick it up himself. In statements to NBCJin states that “It doesn’t make any sense because it wasn’t my mistake (…) I pressed the button to open the trunk and it just didn’t work” Why is it important. When autonomous driving is questioned, we often focus on safety and overlook incidents like this. What happened to this passenger perfectly illustrates that there is a whole dimension of failures more focused on user experience in unexpected situations. These are errors that a human driver resolves intuitively and quickly, but in this case it became a very complicated situation full of obstacles. The problem is not just security. In China, a system failure caused more than 100 taxis will stop in the middle of the city. In California, several passengers were trapped inside a Waymo because a passerby attacked the car and it crashed. Self-driving taxis have proven to be a safe and effective means of transportation, myself I tried one a few days ago in China and I was surprised how integrated it is into the dense city traffic. What we are seeing most lately are not so much accidents, but problems of this type more related to practical problems that do not affect a taxi with a driver. Image | Xataka In Xataka | The robotaxis did not need a driver, but Waymo has ended up paying delivery drivers to close ajar doors

China has discovered a new mineral on the Moon. It’s so fluorescent it could change the way we make LED light bulbs

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So far, 11 unique minerals have been discovered on the Moon. The last of them has just been revealed by a team of Chinese scientists after analyzing a lunar meteorite. It is an interesting finding, because it gives us useful information about the geology of our satellite. But also because it could have very interesting applications here on Earth. From the Moon to your light bulbs. The material just described It is cerium-magnesium changesite. It is characterized by its glassy, ​​transparent and brittle appearance. The thickness of its granules ranges from 3 to 25 micrometers, less than that of a human hair. Still, it is extremely useful due to its pronounced fluorescence, which could be very useful in improving terrestrial LED technology. A necessary color change. Unlike traditional incandescent bulbs, LED bulbs do not use heat to produce light. They make the most of electricity thanks to a semiconductor material, which allows the flow of electrons from a layer with an excess charge to another with a lack of it. That second layer has what are known as voids. That is, atoms that have lost electrons, leaving something like a free hole. The moment an electron encounters one of these holes, falls inside, in a process in which energy is released in the form of light. The light obtained in this process is blue, but we have all seen that, in general, the light from LEDs is white. The color change is achieved thanks to the coating the bluish chip in which the process occurs with a fluorescent material. This absorbs some of the blue light and, in turn, emits yellow light. Both are what are known as complementary colors of light. Therefore, when you mix them you obtain white light. The more fluorescence, the better. The fluorescence of this lunar mineral is so powerful that it would be a wonderful complement to LED bulbs. White light would be obtained in a much more efficient way, resulting in even greater energy savings. More achievements for China. The Asian country has become an expert in lunar geology, thanks to the Chang’e missions. In fact, the Changesite-(Y) phosphate was already discovered on Chang’e-5, directly related to this other mineral that a meteorite brought to Earth. For now, we can only dream. Logically, going to the Moon to excavate minerals is not very viable. And if it were, it would be good to think twice before jumping in headfirst. We also don’t know if there would be enough on the Moon. It would be necessary to explore it further to know. Therefore, the applications of lunar minerals in terrestrial technology are nothing more than hypotheses. It is interesting, but it does not have a close application in time. What these minerals do teach us. Analysis of lunar geology It can teach us many things. If we find mostly minerals that also exist here on Earth, we can understand that, at some point, similar conditions existed on Earth and the Moon. On the other hand, if many unknown minerals are found on Earth, as is already happening, it is understood that there were conditions on our satellite that have not occurred on our planet. All this serves to understand very well where we are and where we come from. Let’s stay with that instead of thinking about mining our satellite and leaving it without resources as we are already beginning to do on Earth. Image | freepik In Xataka | We have not yet colonized the Moon and we have already filled it with garbage: there are even abandoned golf balls

In 1944, the Nazi occupation of Holland caused a brutal famine. And thanks to her we discovered celiac disease

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The history of wheat is the history of civilization. To be more precise, this cereal is linked to the change from Paleolithic to Neolithic societies, the first complex societies, in 8,500 BC. C. The flowering of our species came thanks to its golden seeds. We had to wait almost 10,000 years to verify that this manna, which for many is synonymous with life, for some of us, is synonymous with death. And, in part, We have the Nazis to thank.. We are in Holland in 1944, in the throes of World War II, and the Wermachtwhich has occupied the country, is fed up with the sporadic rebellions of its native population. The railroad strike carried out by the drivers was reason enough to implement an embargo on food transportation to the northern areas. Survivors interviewed half a century later mentioned how the Hongerwinter or “hunger winter” still sparked flashes of anguish in their minds. According to reports from the time, in areas such as Amsterdam or Rotterdam the shortage caused rationing of 580 kilocalories per adult per day. Faced with this situation, and when a crust of bread could be more precious than the family watch, the Dutch began to eat anything. Your tulips also fell into that category.which in addition to being disgusting and having a negligible energy value, were a food source highly discouraged by doctors, since its toxicity was very high. Would the tulip diet be the beginning of poisoning and indigestion for the population? Yes for the majority, but not for one notable group: the patients at the Juliana Children’s Hospital in The Hague. Discovering celiac disease A child during Hongerwinter. Willem Karel Dicke, a pediatrician, had been investigating these “malnutrition” problems that mysteriously attacked the little ones for some time. In the 1940s, the world average Infant mortality for children under five years old was 15%so, although it was a misfortune, the population was more used to losing children than we are now. Many parents would not have the time or the resources to investigate what caused their children’s weakness, nor would they have the considerations to experiment with their diet, much less if that meant removing the most widespread, convenient and cheap product of all, bread. Although some, the richest, could afford it. For them, the theory of intransigence towards complex nutrients ran at that time, which led to the popularization of the so-called “banana diet”. A regimen that worked, given that this fruit does not contain gluten, but with which adverse effects reappeared in the subjects in their adulthood, as soon as they returned to eating wheat derivatives. As any celiac or person who has lived with one knows, the ubiquity of this product in our pantries is scandalous. Pediatrician Willem Karel Dicke with one of his patients. But in the Netherlands of 1944 there were no bananas. Because there wasn’t there was practically nothing. And yet, despite the lower caloric intake in which society was imbued and the toxic effects of tulips, a good percentage of the children in his hospital felt better than months before. While people were dying in the streets, some children saw how their limbs were getting fatter, their bellies were deflating, and their skin was glowing. If before that episode one in three children with suspected celiac disease died at that time in the Netherlands, the winter of hunger meant that that percentage would fall to zero. What came next is the mere work of field observation. Dicke spent the next few years testing on selected patients. different cerealsmeasuring the weight, growth, general health of the subjects as well as the levels of fat absorption from their feces. By 1950 he was able to publish his findings, which had determined that the cause of “celiac symptoms” came from wheat and rye flour. And no, it had nothing to do with complex nutrients, as had been assumed until then. “Koiliakos,” that mysterious condition that humans had identified in some children since Ancient Greek times and that intrigued pediatricians for millennia, finally had a name and diagnosis. His research earned him a candidacy for Nobel Prize in 1962, but died weeks before the ceremony could take place. Since it is an award that is not offered posthumously, Dr. Dicke missed his chance to go down in the history books in this way. Celiac disease continues to be one of the conditions with the most complex diagnosis, since it is confused with other types of digestive pathologies and its effects manifest in the strangest ways. Without going any further, neurogluten studies How gluten intolerance is behind autism, Parkinson’s or depression. We also do not know how many people suffer from it, and although its existence was known in the 1950s, its diagnosis rate may continue to be lower than the real rate. Today in developed countries there is talk of between 1 and 2% of people with celiac disease and recent epidemiological studies suggest that the disease is possibly ten times more common than it is diagnosed. The percentage of celiacs continues to grow at 15% every year. In Xataka | When the Black Death devastated the continent, Europe became obsessed with a reflex action of the body: sneezing. In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system

James Webb has discovered that carbon “soccerballs” form megastructures in a vacuum

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In 1985, fullerenes were synthesized for the first time, spherical molecules that can have multiple functions in fields such as nanotechnology or superconductivity. Later, in 2010, was discovered that one type of fullerenes, buckyballs, form naturally in space. Now, a team of Canadian scientists has gone much further, deciphering many of the secrets of these curious structures, thanks to the great help of the James Webb Space Telescope. Small balls that make up a huge ball. Buckyballs are spherical structures, made of 60 carbons, with a conformation of hexagons and pentagons similar to that of a soccer ball. In 2010 they were discovered around a nebula called Tc1. Now, that same nebula has been the goal of James Webb, capable of going much further than they were then. To begin with, delicate rays, ethereal filaments and bright layers of gas along the edge have been detected in the nebula. On the other hand, in the heart of the nebula, a curious structure shaped like an inverted question mark has been detected, whose function is a mystery. But if all that were not enough, it has been seen that those buckyballs that were discovered in 2010 are perfectly organized, forming another hollow sphere, much larger. Chronicle of a death foretold. The stars remain lit thanks to nuclear fusion processes that take place on its surface. This is a very long process, but not eternal. There comes a time when they run out of the elements they use as fuel. When that happens, its outermost layers can break off in the form of gas and dust, giving rise to a nebula, like Tc1. The center, however, becomes a white dwarfa type of cold and dense star. The buckyballs are also possibly remnants of material ejected during the star’s last death throes. James Webb sees what others can’t. James Webb has taken the most precise photo ever taken around Tc1. But, also, thanks to his spectroscopic skillshas studied the composition of all that material ejected by the dying star, including buckyballs. The result, as explained in a statement the authors of the study themselves, is an open window to stellar evolution. Many half-baked studies. There are currently several studies underway aimed at explaining all the new findings around the Tc1 nebula. For now, this discovery has led to tracing the chemistry of carbon, explaining mysterious signals and understanding how organic materials change in extreme environments. In addition, it is a discovery that has challenged traditional views on space chemistry and offered clues about how life may have begun. Turning to the amateur eye. Something curious about the photo that has just been published is that it has not been processed by the scientists who took the images. The lead author of the research, Jan Cami, contacted Katelyn Beecroft, a high school teacher who frequently took her students on field trips to the observatory at the University of Western Ontario. I knew that the teacher is a great fan of astronomy and astrophotography and that she was really good at processing raw images taken by telescopes and enhancing even the most subtle structures that appear in them. He was certainly not wrong to ask for help, as Beercroft’s work has been commendable. Now we just have to understand the reasons for all these new findings. We already have the question, literally. We are missing the answers. Image | Katelyn Beecroft/NASA / ESA / CSA / Western University, J. Cami In Xataka | We have been studying the planets of TRAPPIST-1 for years with great hope. James Webb just knocked it down

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