kilometers

Ukraine has knocked down Russian shaheds from a hotel 500 kilometers away

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During a military test in the United States, a pilot managed to land a fighter plane without touching the controls and miles away, guiding it only through a remote connection as if it were a simulator. A decade has passed, and what then seemed like an almost experimental technological curiosity revealed a disturbing possibility: that one day the most critical decisions in a conflict could be made very far from where they actually occur. The war from the basement. Ukraine has introduced a silent but profound change on the battlefield: the possibility of fighting without being physically in it, operating drones from secure locations hundreds of kilometers from the target. counted in one piece the financial times that, from spaces as discreet as basements in kyiv, highly specialized operators control interceptors that no longer depend on short-range radio frequencies, but on secure internet connections that eliminate distance as a real limitation. This leap allows the same pilot to intervene in multiple scenarios without exposing himself to enemy fire, transforming the traditional logic of combat and reducing one of the greatest costs of war: direct human risk. The distance no longer matters. The unprecedented fact that a drone has been controlled from a hotel 500 km away to shoot down two Russian shahed drones is not a technological anecdote, but a clear sign of where the conflict is evolving. Until recently, pilots had to operate close to the front, making them priority targets. Now, that vulnerability is diluted. Modern warfare enters a phase in which the location of the operator becomes irrelevant (due to remoteness), and where the range is no longer determined by the vehicle, but the network that connects it. The invisible key. The Times told This leap is based on a combination of advanced connectivity and artificial intelligence that allows you to maintain control even in the most hostile environments, with interference or momentary signal loss. As? It seems that current systems not only transmit orders, they also interpret images, identify targets and correct trajectories in real time, reducing operator burden and increasing accuracy. In this context, connectivity (that kind of militarized “WiFi”) stops being a support and becomes the true core of the system that pulls the strings. From improvisation to mastery. Plus: what started as an emergency solution to the shortage of missiles has become anthe pillar of defense aerial in certain areas, spaces where drones already intercept most threats. The key is once again that low cost and ease of deployment that allow saturate airspace with multiple layers of protection, freeing up more expensive systems for critical missions. This model not only resists massive attacks, but quickly adapts to new threats. Hitting where it was impossible. At the same time, this developing technology is making it possible to bring war to the enemy rear with unprecedented precision. We are talking about drones with autonomous decision-making capacity that are attacking logistics routes (the surrounding area of ​​the city of Donetsk) and weakening key defensive systems, facilitating operations that were previously unfeasible, and the decrease in these defenses opens windows of opportunity for deeper, more frequent and effective attacks. A system without borders. It is the last of the legs to analyze, because the integration of air, land and naval platforms reinforces this entire transformation, creating a kind of distributed combat network where each element amplifies the scope of the whole. In fact, that’s why intercepting drones from the sea (this week they shot down a shahed for the first time from a naval platform) or coordinating attacks from multiple domains is no longer an exception, but the next step logical. In this scenario, war is no longer defined by geographical lines and begins to depend on networks, nodes and connections. Invisibility. If you also want and as a last note, these advances give a conflict model where physical distance loses all the relevance of yesteryear compared to the capacity for connection. In other words, a scenario that until recently was more typical of a science fiction movie is opening up, one where a few operators can manage multiple systems from locations as remote as a room or a basement 500 km away away from “the war”, and where the front dissolves to become an extended network. Image | National Police of Ukraine In Xataka | From printing drones to looking at lasers, 300 reports have revealed that Iran’s battle manual has one name: Ukraine In Xataka | A disturbing idea has begun to take hold in Europe: Ukraine has turned Russia into a fearsome air force

300,000 kilometers from Earth you can now make video calls. Artemis II is using telemedicine technology

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We have normalized video calls so much that we hardly think about what happens behind when we press a button and another person appears on the screen. We do it daily, with WhatsApp, FaceTime or any other platformwithout stopping at the network, the servers and the connections that hold that conversation in real time. It is a technology that we take for granted, even when we use it thousands of kilometers away within the Earth itself. But as soon as we leave that environment and go much further, to hundreds of thousands of kilometers, what seemed everyday begins to take on another dimension. ‘Hello’ from space. That change of scenery we talked about has a very specific example in Artemis II. The mission took off on April 2, 2026 and has taken astronauts back to the Moon after more than 50 years without manned flights in that area. In the middle of that journey, a milestone has occurred that until now we had not seen on this scale: video calls made from deep space through a platform called VSee. Wiseman’s message. Beyond the technical milestone, there is a scene that sums it all up. Reid Wisemanmission commander, posted a message on X in mid-flight that allows us to understand what that connection really means. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder… it didn’t take 219,669 miles to remind me how much I love Ellie and Katey,” he wrote, alluding to his daughters. Ellie and Katey are precisely his two daughters, and the message has special weight because Wiseman was widowed in 2020, when his wife, Carroll, died. The figure is not minor either: at that moment, the ship was about 219,669 miles from Earth, about 353,500 kilometers. Click to see the original publication in X Before Artemis. Although what we are seeing now marks an obvious leap, the truth is that video calls in space are not an absolute novelty. On the International Space Station, astronauts have been using video communication systems for years, both to talk to their families and to collaborate with teams on Earth.Video exchanges were already taking place in 2010 for educational purposes, and by 2015 this practice is described as common within the station’s operations. That is to say, the novelty is not in speaking by video outside of Earth, but in doing so at this distance. The difference. The International Space Station moves in low Earth orbit, a few hundred kilometers high, while the Artemis II Orion capsule has reached hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Earth during its trajectory around the Moon. In addition, it reached distances that exceed historical records of manned missions, including the maximum so far attributed to Apollo 13. For this reason, everything indicates that a video call made at that point is the furthest ever made by humans. Why telemedicine. This is where one of the most striking questions appears. If we are talking about a video call, why not use conventional tools like the ones we use every day? The answer has more to do with the conditions of the communication than with the function itself. Solutions like those of VSee have been designed to operate in networks with high latency, data loss and unstable connections, just the type of environment that NASA had already been facing for years in its space communications. More than a question of brand or custom, the key is the robustness of the system. The network that makes it possible. For this conversation to be sustained, a good application is not enough. Behind it is a global infrastructure designed specifically for deep space: the NASA Deep Space Network. This system is supported by three large stations located at strategic points on the planet, in Goldstone (United States), Madrid (Spain) and Canberra (Australia), which work in a coordinated manner to maintain continuous contact as the Earth rotates. In the case of Spain, the Madrid station is part of the network that makes this type of link possible, something especially relevant to understand that these communications also depend on infrastructure located in Europe. Images | POT In Xataka | There is a spontaneous competition to design the “flag of Humanity.” And the best design is an engraving of the Pioneer

now you will receive it through 67 kilometers

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The highway that connects Madrid with the Levant peninsula is going to undergo its most ambitious renovation in decades. In February, the Ministry of Transport gave the green light to the preliminary project for the reform and conservation of the A-3, defining what is going to be done and how much it will cost. The investment is one of the highest ever made in Spain and below these lines we tell you all the details. What is this about? The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility approved on February 27, the preliminary project for the reform of the A-3 in Madrid, with a base tender budget of 540.8 million euros (VAT included). The affected section starts at kilometer 3.8where the highway leaves the M-30 behind, and extends until kilometer 70.7, now on the border with the province of Cuenca. There are 67 kilometers of comprehensive reform. Why now. The A-3 is one of the main routes into and out of Madrid, and supports enormous traffic every day. Over time, the highway has accumulated significant wear and tear, and there are structures and safety systems that no longer meet current standards. The reform seeks to update this path. What exactly is going to be done. From the Ministry they are going to carry out a large number of performances and they cover practically all the elements of the highway: Rehabilitation of the pavement in the main trunk, service roads, collector roads and branches, with extension of a new road surface throughout the platform. Reorganization of accesses and expansion of berms to improve visibility and safety. Rehabilitation of existing structures and pre-design of new ones, with interventions such as deck extensions or gauge adjustments. Complete replacement of vertical signage and repainting of road markings. Improvement of the drainage system and replacement of containment systems. Re-highlighting of the highway in certain sections. Installation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): new capacity stations, variable messaging panels, cameras and license plate reading systems to manage a new specialized public transport lane. Replacing old sodium vapor luminaires with LED technology. Relocation and adaptation of public transport stops. There is more. In addition to the A-3, the preliminary project includes the conditioning of a 12-kilometer section of the national highway N-3, between kilometer points 29 and 40,975. Here the action involves the rehabilitation of the pavement and structures, and adaptation of the containment and signaling systems. What lies ahead. The preliminary draft is only the first administrative step. The ad also It is found in the BOEand the final construction project must be approved before the works can be put out to tender. The Ministry also states that the actions will be carried out in sections through independent projects, which means that the work will be carried out progressively. The specific deadlines for starting work have not yet been detailed, so we have to wait until we know more information about it. The figure in perspective. The investment of 540 million euros is in the spectrum of the highest figures in terms of reforming a highway in Spain. To put it in perspective, in new construction projects, the closest references in amount are the Jaca Variant (connection of the A-21 with the A-23 in Huesca), tendered for 153.6 million, or the project to route the SE-40 between Dos Hermanas and Coria del Río in Seville, approved for more than 688 million euros, although in that case it is about building a new highway from scratch, not reforming an existing one. Also the Ministry itself announced in December 2023 a package of improvements in the accesses to Madrid, which grouped five projects on four highways (A-1, A-2, A-4 and A-42) for a total of 360 million euros to act on 36 kilometers. The A-3, with 540 million for 67 km, exceeds that volume of expenditure with a single reform project (although they are later divided into independent projects). Cover image | Ministry of Transport and Google Maps In Xataka | There are roads in India that suddenly turn red: the reason is to save you from running over a tiger

the 106 kilometers of jungle that no country has been able to pave

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If you like driving, throughout the planet there are some roads so legendary that they invite you to travel them at least once in your life. This is the case of the iconic Route 66 that crosses the United States from Chicago to Los Angeles, the beautiful and curvy Romanian Transfăgărășan or the dangerous Highway of Death in Bolivia. But if you have time and you are in America, there is one to explore the continent practically from start to finish: the Pan-American route. The longest road in the world. The Pan-American Highway It has a length of 17,848 kilometers, which allows it to travel across the American continent from north to south: from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. Of course, the figure corresponds only to the main road, but in reality it is a multitude of roads in different countries and characteristics, so that they adapt their layout to areas such as large cities, the coast or the mountains. If we add the variants and branches, it shoots up to 30,000 kilometers, although the Guinness says simply that it is more than 24,140 kilometers through the 14 countries it crosses. The origins. Although originally was glimpsed like a pan-american railroad, at the Fifth International Conference of American States 1923 when the idea took shape like a highway, given the takeoff of the automobile. However, it would take decades for it to materialize: it was at the Convention on the Pan-American Highway when the 14 countries signed the agreement and Mexico the first country to complete its partback in 1950. To choose which route was the best, the “Brazilian Pan-American Highway Expedition” was a pioneer in the task of traveling the continent choosing the most practical route. Lieutenant Leônidas Borges de Oliveira as mission leader, Francisco Lopes da Cruz as observer and Mário Fava as mechanic left Rio de Janeiro on April 16, 1928 with two Model T Fords and arrived in Washington DC ten years later. In figures. Only those 17,848 kilometers of length of its main road already make it the longest route, followed by others such as transsiberian highway (it only runs through Russia and is about 11,000 kilometers) or the Highway 1 Australian 14,500 kilometres. But there are more impressive figures: It travels through 14 countries and connects 10 state capitals. There is only an incomplete section of 106 kilometers. 23 days, 22 hours and 43 minutes is the record time to travel it by car, which is registered in the Guinness Book of World Records. If you drive 8 hours a day, it doesn’t add up Its highest point is in Costa Rica Hill of Deathat about 3,500 meters high. The exception: the Darien plug. Although the Pan-American Highway runs through America from top to bottom, technically this is not the case: there is a hole in the border between Panama and Colombia, the Darién Gap. This jump on the road is in a mountainous and rugged area in the middle of the jungle. That is, the highway ends in Turbo (Colombia) on one side and in Yaviza (Panama) on the other. Mountains, swamps and a dense jungle have been a compelling orographic reason why you cannot cross America continuously by car without leaving that road. However, there have also been environmental and political problems that have prevented the closure of the route. In 1971, the United States, Colombia and Panama they agreed cover this route and their respective economic contributions. However, after environmental protests and a correction in the cost estimate that practically doubled it, the project was stopped. Today there are no active plans to close the Pan-American Highway. A road full of challenges. This environmental wealth reveals a reality, that of the confrontation between the development of infrastructure and the conservation of the environment, as it passes through unique landscapes. Along its route, the Panamericana crosses tropical jungles, the Andes mountain range, deserts or seismic zones that mean that this was not just another highway construction. Access or weather conditions are a challenge for machinery, personnel and materials. And once built, there is the challenge of maintaining a road network across different countries, budgets and standards. In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic In Xataka | Yes, the V16 beacons transmit your position in the event of an accident. No, the DGT cannot “spy” on you with them Cover | Joseph Corl, FanHabbo and Seaweege

wants to build a huge lake 2.8 kilometers long

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If you go to Google Maps and search for ‘Saudi Arabia’, you will find a large piece of land within the Arabian Peninsula. The word “earth” is not just a saying: the sand color predominates throughout its geography. Because Saudi Arabia is sand. Beneath that surface there are important and invaluable deposits of oil, natural gas and minerals that make any construction, even if it defies the rules of logic, profitability or common sense, possible. As a mega ski resort in the middle of the desert. EITHER water parks throughout the dry land. EITHER a Caribbean style resort. Have we already mentioned that there is no water in Saudi Arabia? That is not an obstacle to mounting an artificial lake high mountain with three dams. The most dystopian future is in NEOM and we already know that it’s very expensive. The project. It is called Trojena Lake and it will be a freshwater lake in the middle of the desert, at an altitude of 2,600 meters in the mountains of Tabuk, as a bucolic backdrop for its ski resort. According to the construction company, the reservoir will be the largest artificial body of water in the entire country, 2.8 kilometers long and 1.5 square kilometers in surface. To contain the water between the mountains, it will use a system with three dams and inside there will be an artificial island for recreational use. As if the above were not enough, the lake will not have a normal shape: on one side will be The Bow, a cantilever that will extend the surface of the lake beyond the front of the main dam, as if it were a kind of balcony overlooking the mountain. It will be shaped like the bow of a suspended ship and will house a luxury hotel, residential and entertainment areas. It is not a ship stranded in the middle of the mountain: it is an artificial lake with a view of the valley. WeBuild Why it is important. To begin with, because as we have already been able to glimpse in the main details of its construction, we are facing a challenging project from an engineering point of view: due to its size, the construction challenge of constructing the dams or excavating the rock and even the way of obtaining water. Or simply because it is in a hostile environment where it should not even exist (naturally). On the other hand, because it is a thermometer of the real state of NEOM, a project whose future seems increasingly uncertain after cuts and delays. Trojena Lake one of its most advanced and tangible projects: there is a contract of 4.7 billion dollars signed with a renowned Italian construction company, machinery in the mountains and real progress. And although its completion was scheduled for the end of 2026, there are already leaks from Saudi officials pointing to delays of three to four years. Render of the lake. NEOM Context. The economic engine of Saudi Arabia has been, for decades, oil. But black gold has an expiration date, so it takes time for the Middle Eastern country to diversify its economy. As? with his Vision 2030 plan to promote tourism, infrastructure and, ultimately, other ways to monetize. NEOM is their urban development megaproject, but it is not just any one: it is exuberant and ostentatious, an instrument of international reputation that seeks to attract investment, talent and tourism through a modern and futuristic image. In a nutshell: another Dubai (pre-conflict Dubai between the US, Israel and Iran). For now, influencers have already attracted. In figures. Here are some of the astronomical numerical data from Trojana Lake: An initial $4.7 billion contract signed with We Build in January 2024. A lake 2.8 kilometers long and 1.5 square kilometers in area. An excavation of 90,000 cubic meters of rock per week. Manpower: 10,000 people. Technical challenges. Many and large. To build the lake they will use three dams: the main one will be 145 meters high and 475 meters long and will be made of RCC concrete, like the second dam. The third, however, will be made of rock and will have a volume of 4.3 million cubic meters. The logistics are extreme as they are in the desert, with no pre-existing infrastructure, so everything is moved to that remote location. On the other hand, The Bow is a long-span cantilever suspended over an active reservoir, which combines complex structural engineering with continuous and permanent exposure to water loading. The icing on the cake is the water: WeBuild’s press release does not specify its origin and there are no rivers around it, which implies pumping, desalination or collection of aquifers. According to Arabian Gulf Business Insightthe water will come from an area near the Gulf of Aqaba, more than 200 kilometers away. But there are many more. Trojena Lake cannot be understood without the framework that surrounds it and here the list of problems that threaten NEOM and Saudi Arabia’s desire to diversify its economy by offering a futuristic image is revealed. The 2029 Winter Olympics were postponed indefinitelythe costs of the futuristic city have been shotthe delay of the specific project is an open secret within a general delay. Not only that, even there is talk of a rescaling of its size. And we have barely mentioned the elephant in the room: the war adds a new layer of difficulty, both directly (drone attacks have already reached Riyadh) and indirectly, with the blockage of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the uncertainty of energy trade and, in general, the disincentive for foreign capital investment in the face of instability. In Xataka | The Line and Trojena were the jewels of the new Saudi Arabia. They will also be the first to face reality: they are very expensive In Xataka | Saudi Arabia’s impossible bridge to join Africa and Asia: a 32-kilometer megastructure over the Red Sea Cover | NEOM

drill a well 40 kilometers deep offshore

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Paper supports everything. A business breakfast on a sunny patio on the California coast, too. In this way, between cups of coffee, croissants and toast with jam that come and go, in 1957 a group of scientists from the picturesque American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC) when two of them, the geologist Harry Hess and the oceanographer Walter Munkdecided to launch a research proposal: open a huge hole in the Earth. And huge is not an exaggeration. What Hess and Munk proposed was to drill a kilometer well that would allow reaching and extracting a sample of what is known as Mohorovičić discontinuitythe limit between the Earth’s crust and the mantle, a strip located at a depth between 25 and 40 kilometers on the continents and 5 to 10 km if the ocean floor is taken as a reference. What’s more, once they were digging, they could even obtain a sample of the planet’s own mantle. “It sounded so simple and logical” The idea sounded delirious, but it was 1957, the space race gained strength and with Cold war As a backdrop, the US looked with interest at any project that would allow it to demonstrate its scientific power to the USSR. Besides, as Willard Bascom would recognizefrom AMSOC, the proposal seemed most reasonable when listened to with a hot coffee in hand, among colleagues and letting yourself be caressed by the morning sun on the Pacific coast. “The project sounded so simple and logical at a business breakfast on a sunny patio,” I wrote some time later about that peculiar brainstorming. Whether or not it turned out to be simple—which, spoiler: no, it wasn’t—the idea came to fruition. Its promoters knew how to take advantage of the strong winds of international rivalry and revealed how much the Russians were advancing in the field of science and how they looked with interest at Mohorovičić’s exploration of discontinuity. 57 was the year of the launch of the Sputnik Soviet, so the strategy worked and the drilling project ended up gaining the backing of the National Science Foundation (NSF), a government agency created seven years earlier. They named the adventure Mohole Projectcombination of “Moho”, the abbreviation of Mohorovičić, and “hole”, hole, in English. Short Simple. Easy to handle and understand. Everything that was not going to be the scientific challenge itself. “Where do we get the money?” It was not, however, the only question that scientists had to resolve. Another, equally or even more crucial, was “Where to drill?” The answer was a very specific location in the Pacific, near Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico. And there was a good reason for that. If the efforts were focused on the ocean floor, the team would have to drill significantly fewer meters of the Earth’s crust, a non-negligible advantage when the target is kilometers deep. The various problems The problem, of course, is that this requires operating from a boat, in the middle of the ocean, among the waves, and deploying the drilling equipment over more than 3,000 m of depth. “It’s like trying to work on the Earth’s surface from a helicopter, half a mile up,” explains to Vox geologist Donna Blackman. Today, with the Japanese ship Chikyu opening record wells, an international fleet that includes modern drilling vessels such as the Noble Globetrotter I—the one at the top of this article, built twelve years ago—and researchers reaching marks of 8,023 meters underwater, the challenge may sound less impressive, but in the 1950s it was. Oil companies had not yet embarked on drilling in such deep waters and undertaking an undertaking like the one proposed by AMSOC required first answering a series of technical questions: How to keep the ship stationary in the middle of the ocean to deploy the drilling equipment? Dropping anchors was not very practical given the enormous distance at which the seabed was located, so the final solution was to use a propeller system. They had to apply the same ingenuity to solve other equally or more difficult questions: How to deploy the pipeline at such low levels and between strong currents? How to drill with the depth required to reach Moho? And once these challenges are solved, how do we get the samples up to the ship? With a plan drawn up, in 1961 the scientists set sail aboard the ship CUSS I heading to Guadalupe Island to deploy what was supposed to be the first phase of Project Mohole. The technicians drilled half a dozen wells in total, the deepest of 183 meters and at an underwater depth of 3,600 m. The machinery penetrated 13 m into the basalt of the upper oceanic crust. That was very, very far from 6,000 meters necessary to reach Moho and the mantle, but it was quite a feat which even led President John F. Kennedy to cable the National Academy of Sciences to celebrate what he considered to be “a remarkable achievement, a historic milestone.” However, neither Kennedy’s good words, nor the promise of the company, nor the ability he had demonstrated to overcome technical challenges helped the Mohole Project go much further. In 1961, the Mohole project started, with the aim of drilling through Earth’s crust to the mantle. John Steinbeck (yes, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1yr later) was on the ship & I’ve just found his amazing (genuine joy plus snark) article: https://t.co/CPEB7mCf9q pic.twitter.com/DymGw2ta4o — Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) December 21, 2021 Drilling holes in the ocean floor was expensive and in 1966 the US Congress decided that it was not interesting to continue paying for it. Add to that bureaucratic errors, the dissolution of AMSOC in 1964 and differences between the members of the team about what the next steps should be and you will have the epitaph of a project that, nevertheless, is remembered as a special chapter in 20th century science and served to demonstrate the interesting possibilities of drilling the ocean floor. The Mohole Project It didn’t mark the end … Read more

There are only 20 fateful kilometers left on the Gobi border

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China and Mongolia have been trying to solve one of Asia’s costliest logistics problems for more than a decade: getting coal and metals from Mongolian mines to Chinese steel plants. without using eternal truck caravans. The solution: a railway corridor between the mines of Tavan Tolgoi and the Chinese network capable of transporting up to 50 million tons of cargo, such as declared the Mongolian president. The project carries on the table since 2012 and, after delays and stoppages, the first part was completed. In 2025 the second phase started: a cross-border link of just 19.5 kilometers in length at the Gashuunsukhait-Gantsmod pass whose completion is scheduled for 2027. Let China be capable of remodeling a train station in one night but it takes 22 months to build only eight kilometers, anticipating the technical and orographic challenges it faces. Context. Mongolia owns some of the largest reserves of coal and copper in the world. deserves special mention Tavan Tolgoione of the largest unexploited coking coal deposits on the planet, with an estimate of 6.4 billion tons of this resource. Copper and gold also works well in Oyu Tolgoi. In fact, has a projected production by 2030 of 500,000 tons of copper per year. But Mongolia is landlocked. China is historically the largest importer of Mongolian coal. As? With lines of trucks crossing the desert. From an environmental and economic point of view, the switch to rail makes the most sense but it has fine print: the Mongolian railway network It has 1,815 kilometers of Soviet gauge trackof which the majority are part of the TransMongolia line that connects Russia with China. The network is practically single track, with limited capacity and vulnerable to snowfall in winter and Gobi sand in the southern section. Trans-Mongolian crossing the Gobi Desert. PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ Why is it important. Because this fully completed corridor will close a strategic logistics chain for China at a time when there is tension in the supply of critical raw materials. Without going any further, he already faced a Australian coal veto a few years ago, having to seek supply in Russia and Mongolia. Mongolia also gains by improving its coal and metals export infrastructure. As declared the Mongolian governmentthe average export volume will go from 83 million tons to 165 million per year, which represents an increase of 1.5 billion dollars. Of course, it reinforces its dependence on China: It already exports 90% of its raw materials. First phase. The history of the Tavan Tolgoi–Gashuun Sukhait railway is checkered to say the least: it began in 2012, when Mongolian Mining Corporation announced a railway from Ukhaa Khudag to the Gashuun Sukhait border crossing, with completion scheduled for 2015. With the earthworks very advanced, the work became entrenched both due to economic and political problems how to choose what the track width should be. Work resumed in 2018 under new management. Finally, the line will be inaugurated in 2022 233.6 kilometers long crossing the Gobi Desert (258 km with auxiliary infrastructure), with 16 bridges and designed for loads of 25 tons per axle. According to Tavantolgoi Railway LLC and collected by AFPthe price of a ton of coal fell from 32 dollars to 8. The pending critical phase: the border. The Mongolian railway reaches the border from 2022, but the critical thing remained: coal could not cross to China by train. The main reason for being is pure engineering: Mongolia uses the Soviet width of 1,520 mm and China uses 1,435 mm, the international standard width. At the Gashuun Sukhait pass there was a physical gap that required the transshipment of goods, with the delays, costs and inconveniences that it entails. They are going to solve it with a double track widthwhich extends both the Mongolian and Chinese lines, thus allowing trains from both systems to enter the area without transfers. This cross-border link will have a main road 19.5 kilometers and includes bridge structures between 8 and 31 meters high, necessary to bridge the topographic gap between the two sides of the border. The Chinese side is being built by the state-owned company China Energy Investment Corporation and on the Mongolian side, Tavantolgoi Railway LLC. A corridor full of challenges. The delay of the railway corridor project due to financial and political issues is just the tip of the iceberg of other challenges it has faced, ranging from the engineering problem of the track gauge to the extreme climate of the Gobi: the Mongolian section passes through one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, with temperature ranges ranging from -40 °C in winter to more than 40 °C in summer. It is no longer that it is uninhabitable, it is that it affects the structure of the road itself. In Xataka | 125 kilometers of water separate 140 million inhabitants. China is going to solve it with a mega railway tunnel In Xataka | China has built the highest bridge in the world and has done what it must: turn it into a show Cover | Marcin Konsek and KUA YUE

450 kilometers above Earth

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The idea of ​​​​harvesting solar energy from space may sound like science fiction and, furthermore, it would make all the sense in the world for it to do so: Isaac Asimov already wrote about it in his story “Reason” of 1941. However, the scientific community has been ruminating on it since 1968, when American aerospace engineer Peter Glaser published the first technical article on this concept in Science magazine. Since then, entities such as NASA, the California Institute of Technology or the Japanese Japan Space Systems have explored the possibility. However, Japan is the closest to achieving what no one has yet achieved: generating electricity in space and sending it directly to Earth. Context. To begin with, the cost of launching rockets has become enormously cheaper since the idea began to be glimpsed. On the other hand, we are in the midst of global energy transition from mobile fuels towards renewable sources where there is one that stands out: solar energy. But solar energy requires space to deploy parks with photovoltaic panels, which is why China is choosing to assemble them in the open sea, Germany explores with lakes and Japan… Japan is an island with little space. On the other hand, solar energy has another important limitation: it only works when there is sun. However, in space there are no clouds or night and the sun shines without stopping. Why is it important. Because the business models that J-spacesystems is developing They are designed to generate about one gigawatt of constant power. To better understand the dimensions of that figure, it is the energy necessary to cover 10% of the consumption of a megacity like Tokyo and is also equivalent to the power of a standard nuclear reactor. We are facing a paradigm shift in energy density: a solar plant in space capable of ‘redirecting’ its energy beam towards different receiving antennas according to demand, whether within the country itself or the world. This opens the doors to sending energy to areas in emergency situations or meeting consumption peaks, something that is not possible with the current infrastructure. Japan Space Systems Scheme What is Ohisama. Ohisama is sun in Japanese and it is also the name of a Japanese satellite of 180 kg that has an integrated solar panel approximately the size of a door (70 cm x 2 m) is to orbit at 450 km altitude, where it will be able to generate 720 watts of electricity that it will then convert into microwaves. It will then launch those microwaves up to a 64-meter antenna in Nagano. If the energy arrives, it will be converted into electricity. The ultimate goal: light an LED. Yes, all this to light a light bulb. In reality, the important thing is not so much the power transmitted in the test (which is very small) but rather being able to validate that the transmission works through the ionosphere. It is the test of truth: in 2024 Japan has already tried it successfully from a plane seven kilometers high, but this is already a jump to a real orbit that will allow everything to be scaled (if it goes well). When and where. From now on, literally: The window for the third attempt began on February 25, with a backup date until March 25. The launch site will be the Kii Spaceport in the city of Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, the first private rocket launch site in Japan. What comes next. If the experiment goes well, Japan would go on to implement those commercial models, which consist of 2.5 square kilometer solar panel arrays in geostationary orbit at 36,000 km with 4 km diameter receiving antennas on the ground. The estimated date for its commercialization is from 2040 and in addition to supply on land, Japan has in mind to use the system for energy supply in lunar exploration missions. Why is it so difficult. The first immediate risk inherent to the project is Kairos 5 of Space Onethe private Japanese company in charge of putting Ohisama into orbit: the two previous launches failed. Third time lucky? The possibility of another company from outside doing it is not an option (at the moment). As explains Yanagawa of J-spacesystems: “Although overseas rockets were an option, we selected Kairos following the national policy of supporting Japan’s private sector launch capabilities.” But even if the launch were successful, the big problem will be microwave diffraction: transmission over thousands of kilometers risks scattering, requiring huge transmitting antennas and very precise phase control. Japan has been working to solve this bottleneck for decades. In Xataka | Japan has just made a monumental bet on perovskite solar panels: they are its best chance against China Cover | Hunini CC BY-SA 4.0 and Nuno Marques

Valladolid and León have been longing for a highway that connects them for more than 25 years. 75 million will be spent to build 10 kilometers

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Valladolid and León are linked by 142 kilometers and a claim. Specifically, converting the N-610 secondary road into a two-lane highway in each direction. The project has received a small but important push. One that should culminate in the construction of a dozen more kilometers in a project that has been talked about for more than a quarter of a century. What’s new? That the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility approved last Tuesdayprovisionally, the connection between Villanubla and La Mudarra to continue advancing in the construction of the A-60 highway, which should connect Valladolid with León, currently separated by a national highway. Of course, the approval given by transport does not guarantee that these 10 kilometers will be carried out because, for the moment, any affected neighbor can present the appropriate allegations or observations in relation to the expected expropriations that are going to be carried out. To do so, interested parties have 30 business days. A new step. If consolidated, what will be built will be a 10-kilometer stretch between Villanubla and La Mudarra, a connection close to the Valladolid airport where, until now, the A-60 highway ends on its exit from this city. The project has an estimated budget of 74,750,633.16 euros. There seems little progress but if we take into account what has been done so far, the qualitative leap is more than evident. And right now, There are only 45 kilometers built of the more than 120 kilometers through which the highway is expected to run. That is, with those 10 kilometers, we would be close to reaching half of it and would represent around 10% of the total work. A 20th century project. The issue is especially painful for the neighbors because the project has been on the table for more than a quarter of a century. To find its origin, we must go back to 1997 when it was approved for the first time to deal with the matter in the Cortes. However, it was not until 2002 when the first procedures began, as stated in Europa Press. This last section, in fact, has been frozen for years and is now beginning to be processed urgently. In Valladolid newspaper They point out that the first time the papers were put on the table for these 10 kilometers that separate Villanubla from La Mudarra was 2017. However, the passage of time has caused the deadlines to expire, so it was not until the end of 2025 that a push was given again to the construction of this new section. The current situation. Right now, covering the distance that separates Valladolid and León represents an inappropriate expenditure of time for the distance that separates them. The short route is the N-610 highway, a secondary road with 142 kilometers that requires almost two hours of travel. There are also no better alternatives to reduce the time one needs. If you want to take a highway, there are not many options. The most obvious requires you to go from Valladolid to Tordesillas, there take the A-6 and then connect with the A-66. In this way, the driver is already forced to get closer (very close) to the two hours and add another 40 kilometers to the trip. Of course, the roads are safer. Security issue. Obviously, the construction of a highway between Valladolid and León would have an immediate impact on the security of the region. According to data from the DGT collected by Valladolid newspaper, In 2024, the N-601 recorded 41 accidents as it passed through Valladolid. That is, almost one accident per week was recorded. That year, nine deaths were recorded before the end of 2024 and in 2023 another 11 people died. Until now, the prevention plans for these accidents have focused on adapting the road to the large volume of traffic on it, with the 2+1 lane projection which should alleviate traffic jams in some points, especially those generated by heavy transportation. Photo | In Xataka | Spain built its roads thinking it was a hot country. Now that’s a problem

there was a “hybrid zone” of 4,000 kilometers

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For years we had a fairly clear narrative in our minds of what had happened to our ancestors. The specific story is that the Homo sapiens They left Africa, met some Neanderthals somewhere in the Middle East, had a couple of chance encounters of hybridization pulses and they continued on their way to conquer the world. A change. However, a massive new study that just appear on the bioRxiv preprint server suggests that that picture is too simplistic. They were not specific meetings, but rather a continuous interaction throughout a huge “hybrid zone” which spanned from the Near East to Central Asia and Europe. To get here, the study has analyzed an unprecedented amount of ancient DNA to draw the most detailed map to date of how we intermingled with our extinct cousins. and the result It is a gradient of miscegenation which extends for almost 4,000 kilometers. Lots of volume. The study has not been limited to a few bones that have been found in isolation, but has used computer simulations and a data set of 1,264 paleogenomes. Something that corresponds to thousands of individuals older than 10,000 years. Your conclusion. The Neanderthal DNA patterns that we carry today in our genetic material They are not well explained by “isolated pulse” models, but rather the symmetry found between the genomes of Europe and Asia indicates that there was prolonged contact. In this way, as modern humans expanded out of Africa, which is what we know as Out of Africa, about 60,000 years agowere pushing a demographic frontier. On this advance front, gene flow was moderate but constant. That is why it was not a one-day event, but a long geographical process. The how. To understand this you have to look complementary studies which suggest that the key is in spatial gradients. To visualize the concept, we can imagine a wave that advances as if they were the Sapiens who were moving and encountering the Neanderthals. But the key is that Neanderthal ancestry is not uniform. This means that the first sapiens in Europe had a high level of Neanderthal DNA, but later expansions, such as the arrival of Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, they “watered down” that Neanderthal heritage, especially in Europe, creating a notable difference with the populations of Asia. This is where the study presented in 2026 confirms that only a model of persistent expansion with gene flow can explain why we find signs of interbreeding almost 4,000 km from the point of origin in the Near East. When did it happen? This is where things get interesting when crossing the data with other recent studies, like the one published in Nature in 2024. And although the area was large, the time window was critical. Analysis of more than 300 early human genomes points to a “single window” of major hybridization between 47,000 and 43,000 years ago. This excludes previous theories that suggested multiple, very ancient pulses. And to go a little further, there was a moment, when our species was securing its dominance in Eurasia, when the barrier between species blurred across a huge geographic swath. A map of interactions. What this body of research suggests is that the hybrid zone encompasses almost all of the Neanderthal sites known as Western Eurasia, so it implies geographically extensive interactions. However, as is often the case in science, caution must be maintained. This study has yet to undergo a full review and has limitations in that it is based on demographic assumptions and that it does not model the natural selection that we have in the genetic world. Even so, the image is increasingly clear: we are not the result of one species that replaced another suddenly. We are, in part, the result of a long border of contact where, for millennia, the line between “them” and “us” was much more blurred than we thought. Images | Marc Tremblay In Xataka | Humans are evolving live on the Tibetan plateau. And understanding what happens there will be essential in space

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