earth

The origin of the oceans on Earth has always been somewhat mysterious. Now we are clearer how it happened

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A team of scientists, analyzing the tiny and invaluable samples of the asteroid Ryugu brought to Earth by the Hayabusa2 missionhas made a discovery that shakes our understanding of water in the early solar system. The discovery, published in the prestigious magazine Naturereveals that liquid water flowed in Ryugu’s progenitor body more than a billion years after its formation. Something that changes our paradigms. Contradiction. This new discovery contradicts the belief that water activity on asteroids It was a phenomenon exclusive to the first moments of the history of our solar system. And most importantly, it could force us to recalculate how much water these bodies brought to a young Earth. Many doubts. The story of how our planet became an aquatic world still has gaps. One of the most accepted theories is that carbonaceous asteroidsformed from ice and dust in the confines of the Solar Systemacted as a cosmic “water delivery” service for the inner planets. JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission has provided us with a unique opportunity to study this process by bringing back 5.4 grams of pure material from the asteroid Ryugu. And this is very important. While meteorites that fall to Earth are altered by contact with the atmosphere and environment, the Ryugu samples are a near-perfect time capsule. This is because a perfect record of water activity is preserved within it, proof that fluids moved through its rocks sooner than could be expected. This is something fundamental that changes the way we think about where the water in asteroids comes from and ends up on our planets. Isotopic clock. To reach this conclusion, the team turned to a “radiometric dating“based on isotopes: the radioactive decay of Lutetium-176 into Hafnium-176. Something that can be similar to the ‘Carbon-14’ test that is better known. In an object as old as Ryugu’s father, you would expect the proportion of these elements to follow a predictable line, known as isochronewhich dates back to 4,565 million years ago. But Ryugu’s data did not fit these models. The samples deviated from that ‘reference’ line showing an excess of hafnium (or a deficiency of lutetium). In order to understand why, it was first ruled out that it was due to accelerated disintegration or the effects of cosmic radiation. This made the conclusion point differently than that, at some point, a liquid ‘washed’ and took away some of the lutetium from the asteroid’s rocks. The reasons. The event that triggered this late flow of water was, most likely, a violent impact. While the first aqueous activity, which occurred in the first seven million years of the solar system, was driven by heat from the decay of radioactive elements, this second event was different. Specifically, we are talking about an impact on the body of Ryugu’s ‘father’ that would have generated enough heat to melt the ice that had remained frozen inside for eons, and at the same time, would have created fractures in the rock that emerged as channels for liquid water to flow. On the Primitive Earth. If asteroids like Ryugu’s father were able to retain not only hydrated minerals but also large amounts of water ice for more than a billion years, their potential to ‘water’ other planets is much greater than expected. Current models of the formation of terrestrial planets could be underestimating the amount of water contributed by these bodies. According to this study, Ryugu-like planetesimals could have entered two to three times more water into Earth than is commonly estimated. This would have direct implications on our understanding of the origin of the oceans, the atmosphere and in general the conditions that made it possible for us all to be living here. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope Carl Wang In Xataka | The last asteroid loaded with precious metals to graze the Earth escaped us. For the next one we already have a plan

that supernovae are behind two mass extinction events on Earth

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When we think about mass extinctions, we almost always The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs comes to mind. But the universe has much more spectacular ways of reconfiguring life, as pointed out a scientific study which suggests that at least two of the ‘Big Five‘Earth extinctions were not caused by space rocks, but by the lethal radiation of stars exploding very close to our solar system. The study. The research, led by Alexis L. Quintana of the University of Alicante, has complicated the most complete census to date of OB type starsthe “heavyweights” of the galaxy. These stars are incredibly large, hot and luminous, and they live fast and die young, ending their lives in titanic explosions known as core collapse supernovae (ccSN). Space bombs. The team in this case has mapped 24,706 of these stars within a radius of 1 kiloparsec (about 3,260 light years) around the Sun. And with this map, they have been able to calculate something crucial: the frequency with which one of these cosmic bombs explodes in our neighborhood. The key fact is chilling: they estimate that a supernova close enough (about 20 parsecs or 65 light years) to wreak havoc on Earth that occurs about 2.5 times every billion years. This figure, which may seem low, fits eerily into the fossil record. A death mechanism. How exactly would a nearby supernova kill you? It’s not the blast wave, but the radiation. Such an energetic and upcoming explosion would bathe our planet in a torrent of gamma and cosmic rays, tearing apart our ozone layer. Without that protective shield, ultraviolet radiation from our own Sun became lethal, sterilizing the planet’s surface and causing ecological collapse. Specifically, the study points out that this rate of 2.5 events per billion years is “consistent” with the fact that one or more of the mass extinctions recorded on Earth were caused by this mechanism. Specifically, they point to two devastating events: Both extinctions have been linked by other studies to periods of intense glaciation and, crucially, a drastic reduction in atmospheric ozone, a “murder weapon” that points directly to a cosmic culprit. Updates. Beyond the threat to Earth, the new OB star census has allowed the team to recalculate the overall supernova rate for the entire planet. Milky Way. And here there has been a surprise: it is lower than we thought. Previous calculations put the rate at 1 or 2 explosions per century. The new study lowers it to 0.4 – 0.5 supernovae per century. The authors attribute this difference to the fact that their census is more precise and reliable thanks to Gaia data, since the models of how stars evolve have improved. This new figure is not just an astronomical curiosity; It is fundamental data for other fields of physics. For example, it is vital for calculating the frequency with which we should be able to detect gravitational waves coming from these explosions within our own galaxy. Our protection. Fortunately, a look at our current stellar neighborhood is reassuring. Although there are massive stars that we know will explode “soon” (in astronomical time), such as the famous red supergiants Antares and Betelgeuse, both are hundreds of light years away. They are too far away to fry us with their radiation, but close enough that when they finally detonate (which could happen tomorrow or 100,000 years from now), they will give us a light show in the sky that will last for weeks. Meanwhile, we now have a new suspect to blame for some of the worst catastrophes in the history of life, long before humans came along to witness it. Images | Aron Visuals 愚木混株 Yumu In Xataka | We could think of space as a place without climate threats to Earth. We could ignore the “space tornadoes”

As if we didn’t have enough climate worries on Earth, a new threat is coming: space tornadoes

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Before we looked at the sky to predict the weather. Now we look at the forecast in an app provided by incredibly powerful simulations based on radar and satellite data. Thus, we can see the path of a hurricane days before it makes landfall, potentially saving thousands of lives. But what about the “tornadoes” that come from space? Sorry? It turns out that interplanetary space is not a quiet vacuum, and a new study warns of a phenomenon that has already been baptized with a disturbing name: “space tornadoes.” They are not wind funnels that carry the debris of the galaxy with them; They are actually rotating vortexes of plasma and magnetic fields that travel at insane speeds through space. But the most worrying thing is not that they exist, but where are formed. The research reveals that these vortices do not necessarily originate from the Sun, but can be born spontaneously in deep space, as a result of collisions between larger solar storms. And yes, they are powerful enough to wreak havoc on Earth. A magnetic problem. When astronomers talk about space weather, they’re not talking about a meteor shower. The weather engine of our solar system is the Sun. From time to time, our star spits out gigantic eruptions of charged particles and magnetic fields. The most powerful event of this type is Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). CMEs travel at speeds of up to 2,900 kilometers per second. When one hits the Earth, it interacts with our natural magnetic shield (the magnetosphere) and can cause a geomagnetic storm. The good thing is that this interaction produces incredibly beautiful northern and southern lights. The downside is that a severe geomagnetic storm can interfere with power grids, overheat transformers to the point of failure, and damage satellites vital to communications and GPS. The mystery of ghost storms. This is where the new research begins. In 2023, a team of scientists at the University of Michigan ran into a problem: They were recording geomagnetic storms on Earth that didn’t match any CME that had been predicted to hit us. They were “phantom storms.” The hypothesis: that smaller, more dangerous space weather events were forming on the way from the Sun to the Earth, rather than directly at the Sun. According to a paper by the researchers in The ConversationThe main suspect was structures known as “flux ropes,” bundles of magnetic fields twisted back on themselves that are affectionately referred to as magnetic tornadoes. They had already been observed, but their exact origin and whether they were powerful enough to cause problems on their own were unknown. The problem was how to detect them. Current space weather simulations are designed to look at “big” things (CMEs), not little vortices. These flux ropes were too small for the models to resolve. The researchers compare it to “trying to forecast a hurricane with a simulation that only shows you global weather patterns.” Since they couldn’t increase the resolution of the entire solar system (it would be computationally prohibitive), the team did something smarter: they created an ultra-high-resolution simulation “corridor,” nearly 100 times finer than previous models, centered on the path of a specific solar flare that occurred in May 2024. And then they saw them. The simulation revealed the birth mechanism of these tornadoes. It happened when the CME “crashed” into the slower solar wind in front of it. The researchers’ own analogy is perfect: it was like “watching a hurricane generate a cluster of tornadoes in its wake.” The study confirms this phenomenon for the first time through simulation. The collision between the CME and the solar wind creates an intense “current sheet.” In that area, a process called magnetic reconnection (when magnetic field lines violently break and reconfigure) “spits out” these mesoscale vortices. Why are they dangerous? The simulation demonstrated that these mesoscopic “flow ropes” are not minor phenomena. They contain magnetic fields (about 30 nanoTeslas) “strong enough to trigger a significant geomagnetic storm” on their own. The real danger is that, to our current systems, they are almost invisible. While a giant CME is an obvious and massive threat that we can track from the Sun, these “space tornadoes” that form along the way would appear, at best, as a “small blip” on monitors. We could be hit by a geomagnetic storm capable of damaging the electrical grid with little prior warning. Our best weapon. Satellite constellations. This discovery shows that our way of monitoring space weather is insufficient. Instead of single-point satellites (like the DSCOVR observatory, which can only measure what passes in front of it), we need a constellation of satellites flying in formation. Researchers have proposed a mission designed precisely for this. It would be called SWIFT (Space Weather Investigation Frontier) and it would be a constellation of four satellites flying in a tetrahedron formation, capable of measuring these vortices with precision. Only by measuring the same phenomenon from multiple points at the same time can we understand its real 3D structure and its danger. Image | NOAA, Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti and Chip Manchester In Xataka | NASA has calculated how much time we would have to prepare for a devastating solar storm and has set to work to get that time

its new rare earth rules target the United States

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China has just moved a piece that can alter the global board of strategic minerals. Beijing has approvedtwo official announcements that establish a new regime of control over the rare earth and technologies linked to its extraction, processing and manufacturing of magnets. The change is not minor: any product manufactured outside the country that contains just 0.1% of materials of Chinese origin will need a license to be exported. It is China’s most ambitious response in an area that it has been using for years as an economic and political lever. This movement does not come from nowhere. The Asian giant has been weaving a strategy for months to strengthen its control over the materials that feed the global technology industry. In April it already restricted the export of metals such as gallium and germanium, essential for the manufacture of chips, and weeks later expanded the list with scandium and dysprosium. Later this year we explain how This offensive is based on a solid base: 39 university programs specialized in rare earths that ensure the knowledge and manpower that today support its leadership. How the Asian giant transfers its power over minerals to the rest of the world With the new provisions of the Ministry of Commerce, Beijing introduces extraterritorial control over strategic minerals for the first time. It not only regulates what leaves its territory, it also what other countries produce with materials or technologies of Chinese origin. The country will be able to decide what is exported, to whom and for what purposes, under national security criteria. Applications for military purposes will bein principle, denied, while those related to semiconductors or artificial intelligence will be examined on a case-by-case basis. The second standard approved on the same day goes one step further: it is not limited to materials, but it protects the technical knowledge that makes them possible. The Asian country prohibits the transfer without permission of its extraction, refining, metallurgy or magnet manufacturing technologies, as well as any type of technical assistance linked to them. The definition of “export” is broad and includes activities such as consulting, training or collaboration in research projects. With this measure, Beijing shields its industrial experience and restricts the dissemination of its know-how outside its borders. The application schedule is staggered. Part of the new framework takes effect immediately, while the rest will take effect on December 1. At the same time, the Ministry of Commerce expands its scope of action with an additional package that add new items to the checklistincluding graphite anodes, certain lithium-ion batteries, synthetic diamonds, and various rare earths that were not listed in the previous restrictions. The expansion directly targets industries with high technological value and reinforces the Asian giant’s ability to set the pace of the global supply chain. The new rules could disrupt the pace of entire sectors. Magnets and alloys derived from rare earths are present in electric motors, wind turbines, medical equipment and consumer electronics. Under the new licensing system, every component that uses Chinese materials or technologies will have to go through an additional layer of oversight. The most exposed companies are those that depend on intermediate suppliers, especially in the automotive and energy sectors. For many, this move confirms that Beijing’s industrial control is no longer limited to its borders. Applications subject to increased scrutiny include advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Commerce has established a procedure case-by-case review for exports related to chips 14 nanometers or smaller and high-density memories. In the case of AI, supervision extends to projects with military or defense potential. This is not a general veto, but rather a system of selective licenses that allows Beijing to adjust its response depending on the context and the country of destination. The application of the new framework will require a high degree of coordination between companies and authorities. Exporters must apply for licenses through the Ministry of Commerce system and submit documentation in Chinese. In addition, they must issue compliance notices to the following links in the chain and report each approved shipment. The ministry has also enabled a consultation channel for doubtful cases, which reflects the complexity of the process. Even in Beijing they admit that effectiveness will depend on the supervision capacity that it manages to build in the coming months. Exporters must apply for licenses through the Ministry of Commerce system and present documentation in Chinese The moment is not coincidental. Beijing announces these measures just before the meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump planned in South Koreain an attempt to strengthen their negotiating position. For months, rare earths have been at the center of trade talks between the two countries, and the new regulations add pressure on Washington. The strategy is clear: demonstrate that the Asian giant retains decisive levers in sectors that the United States considers strategic, from semiconductors to the materials that support its military industry. With these regulations, Beijing closes a circle that it had been drawing for years: it controls access to materials, the technologies that transform them and the knowledge that makes them possible. The Asian country converts strategic minerals into an instrument of economic and diplomatic power, reinforcing its weight in the negotiation with Washington. For the United States and its allies, the new situation represents an uncomfortable reminder: while they seek to reduce their dependence, the Asian giant continues to set the pace for the resources that sustain the global technological economy. Images | wirestock | ArthurHidden | aboodi vesakaran In Xataka | In 1978 Chinese engineers visited two key US companies. Upon his return, an empire began: rare earths

24 years ago, the earth was symmetrical. Now the northern hemisphere is “unequivocally” darker than the southern hemisphere

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NASA’s last 24 years of satellite data reveal an “unequivocal” trend: the earth has lost its balance, and now the northern hemisphere reflects less light than the southern hemisphere. How is that? Until a few years ago, our planet maintained an almost perfect symmetry in regard to its albedo: its reflectivity from the perspective of an observer in the earth’s orbit. Despite its obvious differences (the north dominated by terrestrial masses and the south by oceans), both hemispheres reflected practically the same amount of sunlight to outer space. Now that doesn’t happen anymore. The northern hemisphere is absorbing more solar energy than the southern hemisphere, breaking the balance that had been maintained for a long time. In figures. The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesquantifies this divergence at 0.34 wm – 2 per decade. It is a statistically significant value that points to a deep change in the energy engine of our planet. And why? The study, led by Norman Loeb, from the NASA Langley Research Center, points to a combination of factors; The first one, somewhat paradoxical. According to Loeb, the main engine of the growing asymmetry is the aerosols, the tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere against which we have been fighting for some time. Thanks to environmental protection measures, fine particle pollution has decreased significantly in Europe, the United States and China in recent years. Less contamination means a cleaner air and, therefore, less particles that reflect sunlight. The result is that more radiation reaches the surface and is absorbed. In the southern hemisphere it has happened just the opposite. Mass events, such as Australian forest fires of 2019-2020 or the eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano in 2022, injected huge amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere, temporarily increasing the reflectivity. There is something else. To the aerosols we must add the change in the Albedo of the surface itself. The northern hemisphere is losing snow and sea ice at an accelerated pace, in this case because of global warming. If white and bright surfaces (which reflect the light) are replaced by water and dark terrain (that absorb it), the hemisphere is further darkened. Clouds are missing. What has most bewildered scientists is the role of clouds. For a long time it was theorized that clouds would act as a natural compensatory mechanism for this phenomenon: if a hemisphere darkened by external factors, atmospheric circulation would adjust cloudiness to reflect more light and restore balance. However, the data shows that this is not what is happening. The study concludes that the contribution of clouds to the difference in reflectivity between hemispheres is surprisingly small. The reason is complex: it seems that the changes in the clouds of the tropics are being canceled with the changes in the highest latitudes, questioning one of the fundamental hypotheses on the self -regulation of the earth’s climate. A problem. That a hemisphere hotly gets more than the other is not a simple academic curiosity. The Earth’s energy balance is the engine that drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation; that is, our climate and our weather patterns. This imbalance is already having consequences. The northern hemisphere not only heats up faster than the south, but is also seeing an increase in rainfall in tropical latitudes. If the intertopical convergence zone, the land rain belt, moves north, the consequences will be hard for billions of people.

While the world desperately seeks rare earth, China has an overwhelming advantage: it’s called Wem

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It seems clear that it has begun A race On the planet: the search for Rare earths and the essential critical minerals for many of the sectors that mark the geopolitical agenda. The problem for 99.9% of nations is the same: when they seem to have reached a deposit there are already A Chinese flag. What is not usually explained so much is how Beijing does. The miliar origin. Deep in the mountains of center of China extends A monumental installation that transforms both the landscape and the global competition for strategic resources. It is a gigantic antenna of 500 kilowatts, with lines that are deployed over 80 and 120 kilometers, originally conceived to maintain communication with underwater underwater. This electromagnetic colossus, whose extension exceeds in five times the New York surfacehas been converted into a decisive instrument for the exploration of critical minerals, projecting signals capable of penetrating kilometers in the earth’s crust and revealing deposits that previously remained out of human reach. What began as a military project has become a Scientific and Technological Weapon which gives Beijing a remarkable advantage in the race for the resources that will define the future of energy and industry. Electromagnetic exploration. A study of the China Geological Survey (CGS), published in the Geophysical & Geochemical Exploration magazine, has detailed how the country has managed to monopolize Electromagnetic systems of ultra-high power. All platforms that exceed 100 kW are in Chinese territory, while the most powerful tool in the United States barely reaches 30 kW. The difference is not trivial: this technological leap has allowed Chinese geologists to discover in recent years sites of historical magnitude, such as the Greater gold deposit of the world, reserves Lithium ultra-extends and uranium veins in depths Never achieved. The research led by Chen Hui and his team affirms That these innovations consolidate China’s world position in electromagnetic exploration theory and technology, placing it far ahead of any western competitor. The challenge. As the superficial deposits of copper, lithium, cobalt and rare earths are exhausted, the exploration has moved to what geologists call The “Second Mineral Space”: An underground strip that extends between 500 and 2,000 meters deep. In this environment, the signs issued by mineral bodies are extremely weak and are usually buried under the cultural noise generated by electricity lines, urban infrastructure and extractive operations. The Chinese response has been to redefine the scale of prospecting: multiply the transmission power by above 100 kWflooding the subsoil with signs capable of crossing interference and reaching depths of up to 3,000 meters with unprecedented clarity. Advances in the subsoil cartography. The jump is not limited to power. While conventional techniques relied on two -dimensional models not suitable for complex structures, Chinese systems use Sensors distributed networks and multidirectional field sources that allow a real three -dimensional image of the subsoil. In the Jiama copper mine, in the Tibet, a controlled audio-magnetothelúrica tensorial study (CSAMT) reached unpublished resolutions at more than 3,000 meters, subsequently confirmed with drilling nuclei. These results They far exceeded to the Magnetotheluric of Natural Source, usually ineffective in saturated noise environments. The methods. One of the most prominent advances is the Electromagnetic method wide field, developed by Professor He Jishan, which allows you to obtain reliable data even in the so -called “nearby field zone”, where the records were not very useful. At the same time, the time-frequency electromagnetic systems are expanding the available information by measuring not only the resistance of the materials, but also its polarization and permeabilityessential parameters to distinguish between different types of deposits. The Wem project. And so we reach the clearest symbol of this ambition: The Wem project (Wireless Electromagnetic Method), whose colossal structure crosses China’s heart with two antenna lines arranged almost at right angles. This system, which began as a naval communication tool, has become the First electromagnetic transmitter of continental scale used in the prospecting of resources. In a national test carried out in 2023its signs were detected from Tibet to Interior Mongolia and Guangdong, more than 2,000 kilometers away. In the area of ​​Xiong’an there were magnetic fields up to seven times higher than the natural background noise, an unequivocal demonstration of the system’s capacity to impose itself on the most complex interference. Strategic advantage. In other words, with these Beijing technologies It is placed at the head of the struggle for the essential mineral resources for the energy transition and the green technologies: lithium for batteries, cobalt for high resistance alloys and rare earths essential in modern electronics. In contrast, most Western countries lack comparable systems and, except Russia, almost none use ultra-high power instruments in terrestrial prospecting. Even the most powerful teams manufactured in the West have been designed at China, which underlines the existing technological dependence. A new geopolitical board. China’s ability to identify deep deposits quickly Not only is it a scientific advantage, but also strategic. Control over technology and data places Beijing in a position to mark the rhythm of the discovery of resources in the coming decades. If you want, in a context where the energy transition redefines the global value chains, who controls access to lithium, cobalt and rare earth will control much of the industrial future. With the deployment of Giant antennas and electromagnetic systems Of unpublished power, China is making it clear that it does not intend to participate in the race: its goal is to win it. Image | Ilo Asia-Pacific, Herry Lawford, Terence Wright In Xataka | The great covered in the War of Critical Minerals is Tungsten. The US needs it and 83% have it China In Xataka | In 1978 Chinese engineers visited two key US companies. On his return an empire began: the rare earths

The only way to confirm the signs of life on Mars is to bring the rock to the earth: there are three great volunteers

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NASA’s Rover Perseverance has given us one of the most exciting news of recent years. In an old river bed in the Jezero crater, he has found a rock that could contain, In the words of NASA directorone of the “clearest signs of life we ​​have seen on Mars.” Baptized as Cheyava Falls, the rock has dark deposits whose chemical, mineral and textural characteristics, on earth, are associated with microbial life. But scientists cannot be safe from here. Unless… Mars Sample Return. Perseverance did his job: in July of last year he identified a place of very high scientific interest, analyzed the rock with its instruments and, most importantly, pierced a core of the rock and kept it in a sealed sampling tube. This little treasure, along with 29 other sampling tubes, waits patiently on the Martian surface. The problem is that, however advanced the instruments of the rover are, they have their limits. To confirm if those possible “biofirmas” are the product of old microorganisms or geochemical processes without biological intervention, there is only one solution: bringing samples to the earth to analyze them in our laboratories. And this is where The plans collide with a hard reality. The plan to collect these samples, the ambitious Mars Sample Return mission, has been de facto canceled waiting for a cheaper and faster solution. Truncated due to lack of budget. NASA’s original plan to collect the 30 samples of the Perseverance Rover was to send a ship to the surface of Mars, that a small rocket would take off with the samples (delivered by Rover itself or by a drone) and that an orbiter (in this case, contributed by the European Space Agency) to bring them back home. The project ended up becoming a bottomless well. According to an external audit, the budget shot up to 11,000 million dollars with an estimated date for 2040. The situation reached such an extent that the US administration He proposed to cancel Mars Sample Return for his excessive budgetprioritizing other programs such as Artemis to return to the moon. NASA was forced to put the project in pause and look for faster and more cheap alternatives. A career to counterreloj. Time runs against NASA. Not only for the potential historical value of these samples, but because China plans to launch its own sampling mission in 2028. Tianwen-3 is a simpler mission, which would not bring selected rocks but from the ground where the probe landed, but that would return to Earth in 2031. It would be a Sorpasso symbolic in full rule, advancing the United States in a milestone that had at hand. Before the collapse of its official plan and the probable symbolic defeat, NASA did what has been best given in recent years: to look at the private sector. The agency Explore two paths simultaneously: one based on public technology already tested, such as the “Sky Crane” landing system of Curiosity and Perseverance, and another open to “new commercial capabilities.” Voluntary companies. They haven’t taken to appear. Lockheed Martin has put on the table a groundbreaking proposal: executing the mission For less than 3,000 million dollars and under a fixed price contract, which means that it would assume any extra cost. Your plan is based on reusing and adapting technology already tested in missions such as Insight and Osiris-Rexwith a simpler and more light architecture than the original Mars Sample Return. Another of the great candidates is Rocket Lab, a company that, despite its youth, also has experience on the red planet: its components travel aboard Perseverance and other missions. Your proposal is to send a probe to collect the samples and send them to the Martian orbit and a second probe to bring them to the earth, with a third probe called Telecommunications Orbiter for Mars (MTO) that not only would support the mission, but would serve as a basis for future manned missions, establishing a robust communications network between Mars and the land that Rocket Lab could exploit commercially for decades. And Spacex? NASA It does not rule out using starship as a vehicle to bring to the Martian surface all the necessary equipment. If Elon Musk fulfills its ambitious deadlines, Starship could offer an unprecedented load capacity to an unbeatable cost. The final decision on which path is expected for the second half of 2026. What is clear is that NASA is at a crossroads. The samples collected by Perseverance have the potential to confirm that on Mars there was extraterrestrial life. But to find the answer, you must first bring them home. And the solution may not be in a public program, but in companies that have offered to do the job for less than half. Image | Rocket Lab In Xataka | Perseverance has found what, according to NASA’s director, is “the clearest indication of life we ​​have seen on Mars”

The earth does not have as much space as we believed

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For years, the carbon capture and storage (CAC or CCS) has been One of the great technological promises in the Fight against climate change. The idea is simple: if we can’t stop issuing co₂, It can be captured from the air and bury it safely in deep geological formations. But this ‘plan B’ is beginning to lose meaning. What was thought. We have always taken for granted that the ‘warehouse’ we had had in mind was practically infinite to store all what we would like. Estimates talked about A capacity of between 10,000 and 40,000 gigatons of CO₂that would allow us to ‘live’ calm without having to reduce our emissions overnight. What is the problem. A new and devastating study Made by an international team of scientists, everyone has come to give us all: the warehouse is much smaller and has very strict conditions when using it. The new figure, which the authors have defined as a ‘prudent planetary limit’ is 1,460 gigatons of CO₂. This is almost an order of magnitude lower than the most optimistic estimates that were on the table. It is like discovering that the hard drive that was believed to be 40 terabytes, actually only has 1.5 tenderlast of useful storage. How they know. To reach this conclusion, the researchers did not limit themselves to calculating the total volume of The sedimentary basins of the planet. Instead, they did what no one had done on this scale: apply a series of risk and exclusion filters based on prudence and damage prevention. They created the most detailed map to the date where the CO₂ should not be stored. “Peros” that reduce capacity. In the investigation, experts pointed to different reasons to be able to remove storage capacity to our planet. These can be summarized at the following points: Seismic risk: All areas with moderate or high seismic activity have been ruled out, since injecting High pressure here can reactivate geological failures that cause earthquakes. Protected and Polar Areas: Attending to international agreements such as Kunming-Montreal, all natural parks, biosphere reserves and environmentally sensitive areas are excluded. Cercanías to the cities: to protect human health and avoid contamination of aquifers, an exclusion zone of 25 km around urban areas was established, since a CO₂ leak could acidify drinking water. Ocean depth: current offshore extraction technology is concentrated in relatively shallow waters. The study establishes a practical limit of 300 meters in marine depth, since going further shoots costs and risks, as the Deepwater Horizon disaster recalled. International borders: storing carbon under the territory of another country is a legal and political mines field. The study assumes that cross -border accounts would be, in practice, very difficult to use without complexes and, today, non -existent international agreements. A finite and precious resource. The main conclusion reached by the study is that geological storage is not unlimited. It is a finite resource, Like oil or lithium, and must be managed with an intergenerational vision. It is, as the authors say, a “savings account” that belongs to this and the future generations. Right now it is used to mitigate current emissions and continue to burn fossil fuels, and also reverse global warming, since when storing this gas the objective is to lower the temperature of the planet in general. But the conflict is evident: each ton we use today for the first objective is a ton less than future generations will have for their time. There is a limit. Perhaps the most shocking data of the study is this: if we dedicate the totality of this prudent limit of 1,460 gigatons exclusively to eliminate carbon from the atmosphere, we could only reduce the global temperature by a maximum of 0.7 ºC. This puts a very real stop to the popular ‘overshoot’ strategies that trust that We can exceed 1.5 ° C limit and then ‘cool’ the planet with mass capture technologies. This study tells us that our ability to back down is, at best, very limited. The urgency of reducing emissions is multiplied. If we cannot rely on a massive cleanliness, the only safe way to reduce emissions drastically and urgently, we have a problem. The study shows that, to the current rhythm, many climatic scenarios would exhaust this storage budget before the year 2200, leaving future generations without tools to manage the climate. Rich and poor in storage. The analysis also reveals a new geopolitical panorama with clear ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in this race. Winners are countries such as Russia, the United States, China, Brazil and Australia that retain great alonance potential even after applying all risk filters. At the other extremes we have the countries ‘poor in storage’ such as those belonging to the European, Indian or Norway Union, which see their potential drastically reduced. This means that, to meet their objectives, they could have to depend on other countries to store the captured CO₂, creating new economic and logistics units. A blow of reality. This study does not mean that carbon capture is useless. It will continue to be a crucial technology to decarbonize industries such as cement or steel. Which means that it is not the panacea that some expected. It is not an excuse to delay climatic action. It is a forceful reminder that there are no magical technological solutions that exempt us from the hardest and urgent task: stop emitting greenhouse gases. Images | Peter Burdon In Xataka | I have measured the CO2 of my office for weeks. And now religiously vento every hour and a half

Solar storms are increasingly threatening for the earth. NASA wants to prepare with a “digital twin” of the sun

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The sun, that star that gives us life, also has an unpredictable character and potentially destructive. So much so that A large solar storm It could return to us technologically to the stone age in the blink of an eye. To avoid this, NASA and IBM They have joined forces To create a model that simulates the behavior of the sun. And how could it be otherwise, it has been generated with artificial intelligence. A authentic twin of the sun to understand it better. The union of forces of these two institutions has resulted in the creation of Surya, an artificial intelligence Designed to act as a digital twin of the sun and anticipate their violent outbursts with precision that with the models that are currently used cannot be achieved. Training an AI with the heart of a star. The challenge of predicting the space climate is undoubtedly a great challenge For scientists. To build Surya, the engineers turned to an inexhaustible data source: the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) NASA Hala. For nine years, this probe has State watching the sun without restcapturing images of very high resolution every 12 seconds in different wavelengths and measuring its complex magnetic field. Once you have all this information is where artificial intelligence comes into action to be able to organize and interpret them for experts. That is why the first thing Surya did is standardize all data formats to be able to process them together. Intelligent filtering of all this information. Once the data was unified, the next step was to use a long -range vision transformer, an architecture capable of analyzing gigantic images to identify patterns and relationships between points of solar activity, regardless of how far they are from each other. But he did not stay here, because thanks to a mechanism known as ‘spectral door’, the system was able to filter the ‘noise’ of the data to reduce memory use and improve the quality of the information with which it worked. Therefore, researchers were removed a lot of work to have to label all the images, causing it to adapt rapidly. More precision and twice as much time to react. The results of the initial tests are very promising. Until now, Traditional models barely gave us an hour in advance before a solar eruption. With Surya it has been shown to be able to launch a reliable warning two hours in advance, doubleing the humanity preparation window. But it is not only faster, but also accurate. The IBM and NASA team recorded a 16% improvement in precision when classifying solar rashes compared to the models used right now. Something that is also thanks to the ability to integrate information from other missions such as Parker solar probe or the Soho Observatory. An open tool for the science of the future. Far from saving this powerful tool in a key drawer, IBM and NASA have made it available to the entire scientific community. Surya is now available on platforms such as Hugging Face, GITHUB or even the Terratorch library. Kevin Murphy, NASA scientific data director, is clear: “We facilitate the analysis of the complexity of our star’s behavior with unprecedented speed and precision. This opens the door to a better understanding of the impact of solar activity on the systems on which our daily life depends.” The goal is for the Earth to be prepared. Although we see the central star of our system as harmless, the reality is that at any time this sensation can change. In this way, preparation and anticipation is fundamental and for the moment all hopes are put in this model of where it is possible to learn from the processes behind the evolution of the sun with the aim of having a greater amount of information. Images | Javier Miranda In Xataka | How the Solar System was formed: So that the Earth was born, a star had to die

We believed that astronauts from the Apollo missions left the earth. Actually, they did not completely abandon the atmosphere

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The idea that space begins where heaven ceases to be blue is a story for children. Decades of scientific research show that the Earth’s atmosphere It is much bigger than it was believed. Not even the 12 people who stepped on the moon abandoned at all their influence. Where the earth ends. As Explain the expert in heliophysics From NASA, Doug Rowland, there is no clear border. “The atmosphere does not stop at Everest, or where the planes fly. It continues and continues, becoming less and less dense as you go up.” The International Space Station, which orbits our planet about 400 kilometers high, experiences sufficient air resistance to need a periodic impulse. Otherwise, it would fall back to earth. But the real surprise came after Decades of Observations of Soho (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), a joint mission of ESA and NASA. To the moon and beyond. A study Based on data from the Soho Observatory, he revealed that the outermost layer of our atmosphere, a faint cloud of hydrogen atoms called Geocorona, extends up to 630,000 kilometers, almost twice the distance from the earth to the moon. When astronauts from the Apollo 16 mission installed the first telescope on the moon in 1972, they captured an image of the geocorone shining in ultraviolet light. What they didn’t know was that they were still inside her. In words of Igor Baliukinmain author of the study: “The moon flies through the atmosphere of the earth.” Oxygen on the moon. The presence of the earth on the moon is not limited to hydrogen. Earth oxygen also arrives at our satellite. It occurs for about five days a month, when the moon passes through the Magnetocola of the Earth, the magnetic tail of our planet. Every time it happens, Oxygen ions are accelerated to the satellite and are embedded in the lunar soil. Researchers believe that this process has occurring 2.4 billion years, which means that lunar regolite could keep a record of the evolution of our own atmosphere. The “official” border of space. The Atmosphere is divided into layers: Trophosphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, termosfera and exosphere. The latter, the exosphere, starts about 700 kilometers high and merges with the solar wind about 10,000 kilometers. But their particles are so scarce and so scattered that they can escape towards space. The “official” border of the space is, by convention, the line of karm, located 100 kilometers from altitude. It is considered the point at which traditional aeronautics is no longer possible due to lack of air. However, the geocorone, the luminous part of the exosphere, is the proof that the atmospheric influence of our planet comes much, much further. Image | POT In Xataka | The most prolific astronomer in the world is a complete stranger. Has discovered half of the moons of the solar system

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