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220 meters in length and three giant sails of 1,500 square meters

June 6, 2026 by usatoday24

When someone says “the largest sailboat in the world”, one immediately thinks of the whim of some millionaire. Jeff Bezos paid $500 million to build his schooner koru 127 meters long and the Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko also paid a fortune for his impressive Sailing Yatch A 142.8 meters of length. However, all those luxury sailboats pale when compared to the new titan of sailing that has just been launched in Saint-Nazaire. This is not a private yacht, but a new concept of luxury cruise for millionaires Equipped with three gigantic masts to recreate old-fashioned navigation. The Orient Express leaves the tracks. If we think about great classic luxury trips, it is inevitable to mention the Orient Express as a reference for luxury and glamor trips at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, the hotel company Accord, which also operates one of the lines of the Orient Express, has thrown away the Orient Express Corinthian in the shipyards of Chantiers de l’Atlantique, the same ones where the mythical Normandie liner. The Orient Express Corinthian is not only the largest sailing ship in existence. It is also a form of sea travel that has not been seen for a long time. This is a cruise where 110 passengers sail through the Mediterranean without rushing, assisted by personal butlers on board, with Guerlain spa and avant-garde cuisine with Michelin stars. Three sails, no anchor and an AI looking out to sea. What makes the Corinthian technically unique is not that it has the wingspan of an ocean liner, but rather its propulsion system. It carries three rigid sails of 1,500 m² each, developed by Chantiers de l’Atlantique with a technology called SolidSail. The masts of the Orient Express Corinthian rotate 360 degrees and tilt up to 70º to capture the wind from any angle and make the most of its thrust force. This technology has already been tested successfully in huge freighters to reduce their emissions. Another peculiarity of this luxury supersailboat is that there is no anchor. Instead, the boat uses a dynamic positioning system that keeps it still without touching the bottom. This avoids damaging Posidonia meadows or protected reefs. It also has an artificial intelligence system that continuously monitors the water to detect marine mammals and drifting objects. As support, the sail propulsion system uses a hybrid liquefied natural gas engine. The result, according to the buildersis that it avoids about 9,000 tons of CO₂ per year compared to a conventional cruise of the same size. The luxury of slow travel, from trains to the sea. For a few years now, a part of high purchasing power tourism has turned towards what they call “slow luxury“. A simple idea that recovers all the luxury of the great voyages of yesteryear, where the important thing was not to arrive, but enjoy the journey with the calm that the fast-paced modern lifestyle steals from us every day. The legendary Orient Express train has been the symbol of that spirit of luxury on railsbut now they propose an alternative on the sea. The luxury supersailboat has 54 luxury suites spread over four decks. Each of them is decorated with leather, fine woods and marble. The service includes an exclusive personal butler and you can enjoy the best dishes of avant-garde cuisine in the five restaurants run by chef Yannick Alléno with several Michelin stars to his credit. Vacations within reach of very few pockets. You can now find combined packages where you travel on the Corinthian on routes along the Côte d’Azur, the Italian Riviera and the Adriatic. By 2027, Orient Express introduces new itineraries through Greece, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and northern Europe. To give an example, a seven-night cruise along the Adriatic coast departing from Venice and arriving in Malta in one of the Orient Express Corinthian Suites costs around 39,900 euros. If you opt for one of the most exclusive suites, such as the Agatha Christie Penthouse Suiteof 225 m2 and a 180 m2 terrace and capacity for four guests, can cost up to 198,800 euros on an all-inclusive basis. In Xataka | The latest trend among millionaires is not to buy a yacht. It’s sharing a luxury mini cruise Image | Accor

The length of “a day” on all the planets in the Solar System, explained in a revealing video of just one minute

March 21, 2026 by usatoday24

The Universe is full of unknowns for humanity. What’s more, even data that we know ends up being questioned and reformulated, such as: the distances between planets in the solar system. In fact, as a millennial, when I was a child I learned all the planets at once and then I had to forget about Pluto. However, a reasonably solid and most interesting piece of information is How long is a day on a planet in the Solar System?information that on Earth is approximately 24 hours (23 hours and 56 minutes, specifically). This duration is due to the average time it takes our planet to complete a rotation on its own axis, although translation has an influence. Furthermore, it has evolved historically due to the gravitational pull of the Moon. Thus, and in general terms, we can establish that to estimate this duration, factors influence its radius, its orbit and also interactions with other celestial bodies. The reality is that we are facing a non-intuitive pattern with results that defy logic. To solve the question numerically, the popular science channel The Brain Maze has a great video the most agile and visual to clear our doubts with the figures in just one minute: Now we know how much, but it is even more interesting to understand why. As a summary, there are certain general rules that are met: paradoxically the largest planets are those that rotate the fastest and those closest to the Sun have suffered the effects of gravitational tides in such a way that they have slowed down to almost a stop. Although we already told you that there are quite a few anomalies. The counterintuitive pattern for determining how long a day is The Sun and the planets of the solar system. The sizes are to scale, but the distances are not. By Edits by Pepedavila. Source image on Commons edited by Farry, credited by original uploader to “Martin Kornmesser”, and later an anonymous edit re-credited it to “zaria mayers”. – Edit of File:Planets2008.jpg by Farry., Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20584284 Giant planets have shorter days than the Earth and in short, they spin fast because they grew fast. When the Solar System formed, these early planets accumulated gas and dust with angular momentum. The gas giants captured so much material in a short time that they were able to preserve almost all of that original angular momentum. They go without brakes and it shows: it takes Jupiter less than 10 hours to make a complete revolution on itself, despite the fact that compared to Earth, it is more than 300 times its mass and 11 times larger. With Saturn this also applies, but for Uranus and Neptune the explanation is incomplete: the ice giants also spin fast for the same reason, but their history is much more eventful, either due to collisions or disturbances in the early days. On Mercury and Venus the days become eternal. The rocky planets close to the Sun found a brake in the tides. Mercury is so close to the star that its gravity has dissipated its original rotation over time. If you were on the surface of Mercury looking at the Sun, you would see it stop, move backwards, and move forward again: it is the effect of its elliptical orbit and its slow rotation, compared to its orbital speed. In fact, even has a double dawn in some parts of the planet. Venus is also slowed down by the sun’s gravity, but it also rotates in the opposite direction. Because? Good question, for you, for me and for science in general: it remains a mystery, although there are hypotheses. A curiosity to reinforce the rarities of Venus: a day lasts longer than its own year, it takes 243 Earth days to rotate on itself and only 225 to complete its orbit around the Sun. By the way, the fact that a day on Mars and on Earth lasts practically the same is, according to science, almost certainly a coincidence. This similarity and other factors have fueled for decades the idea that Mars is the ideal candidate to host life. In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury In Xataka | The true size of all the planets in the Solar System, explained in a clarifying video

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