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Your browser video calls have no time limit

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From being a space reserved for work environments to becoming a tool that brought us closer virtually when the pandemic prevented it physically: video calls They became a real lifesaver. Platforms like Zoom They jumped to private computers, just like Google Meet, another of the standards. Now WhatsApp brings calls and video calls to its web version. They may not be so necessary, but they have more than one advantage. WhatsApp Web launches voice and video calls. Using messaging from a browser was fine for messages, not for advanced communication features. After several months of testingMeta now includes calls and video calls on WhatsApp Web, both in private and group chats. It is valid for any computer that has a webcam and without the need for a mobile phone. Yes indeed, WhatsApp Web You must have the active link to the account. No time limit. This is important, since it is exactly what makes novelty so attractive. Given that Zoom and Google Meet limit free use with time (40 minutes for the first and one hour for the second), the fact that WhatsApp Web offers it unlimited is a great incentive for those who until now used the competition. At least on a private level. WhatsApp image Not only do they offer unlimited duration, WhatsApp calls and video calls in the web browser have the following advantages: You can start a call on your mobile and transfer it to WhatsApp Web without it being cut off. And vice versa: the transfer between devices is active for all those that support messaging. WhatsApp has enabled a waiting room from which you can organize who enters or does not enter the call or video call. It works on both mobile and web. They allow screen sharing. It is perfect if you want to fix the computer remotely, for example: you can ask the person who is using WhatsApp Web for what you need. QuickHD is released: the video starts in high definition from the first seconds, without the call appearing blurry. They incorporate background noise suppression. It is activated by default and you can deactivate it from the settings, during the call. WhatsApp Web adds its own call tab, with complete history and favorite contacts. You don’t need to open a chat to call. You can send live reactions while you talk, just like on mobile. They work in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari without installing anything. WhatsApp Web calls are completely free and without time limits. They do have a limit of users in a group call: 32 people. Calls and video calls on WhatsApp Web are end-to-end encrypted. On Zoom E2EE encryption is optionaljust like in Google Meet. In the latter, end-to-end encryption in calls It is only available for private users. They have several advantages over platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet, although WhatsApp Web is only aimed at individuals. This does not mean that companies cannot use their WhatsApp on the computer, but it does not have functions as advanced as those offered by video calling platforms. Such as recording the video conference, transcription with AI, being able to have the entire staff on the call (up to 100 people in free accounts) or subtitles. How to use calls on WhatsApp Web. The function has arrived stably in the applicationalthough it is still expanding to all users: it probably won’t appear yet. The first thing is to have WhatsApp updated on your mobile, after having linked it with the web browser. The process to use the new features in the browser is: Open any of your conversations on WhatsApp Web. If you already have active calls, you will see the camera icon and the phone icon appear at the top right. In the case of groups, only the camera group appears (it is a drop-down menu). Click on what you want to use (call or video call) and communication will be activated. You can also create an advance call: click on the corresponding icon and select “Send call link”. You can also start a call or video call and then add the contacts you want: click on the phone icon in the menu on the left and select “Start a call.” You can then choose whether you need voice only or voice and video. Cover image | Ivan Linares In Xataka | WhatsApp contacts green dot: what it is and how to prevent it from appearing on your profile

“In the rental market the price has reached the limit of the tenants’ ability to pay”

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The month doesn’t matter, almost not even the year. If you take a look at the latest CIS studies on the main concerns of Spaniards, there is a topic that repeats over and over in the main positions: housing. Or rather, how difficult it has become to find a home in Spain. In spring the 41.3% of respondents I recognized that this was the issue the more it kept them from sleepingabove the progress of the economy or problems related to employment. One of the agents that has analyzed the phenomenon the most in Spain is Fotocasa, a platform that advances important changes in buying, selling and renting. Record increases… Until when? The Spanish real estate market is going through a peculiar situation: the price of housing continues to rise (second-hand housing at a 17.2% year-on-year and the new at 9.7%), but the purchase and sale operations take several months downjust like the signing of new mortgages. The big question is… With that backdrop, how long will prices continue to rise? Can we expect a fall in the short or medium term or, at least, some relaxation in its rise? For Maria Matosspokesperson for Fotocasa and director of its study area, the answer is clear: the increase in prices accumulated in recent years and the increase in credit After the rate increase in June, they will end up being felt sooner rather than later in the market, softening the rise in m2. “We are going through a turning point in which prices have reached their historical maximum, surpassing the records we had for 20 years. Citizens are facing prices that we have never seen before,” he comments. “However, with the rise in interest rates we foresee an increase in the cost of mortgages. “What is expected is that the pace of growth will moderate.” Matos sees several interesting signs. The first, a clear difficulty for citizens to continue assuming the rise in housing prices. The second, a “change in the mortgage cycle” after the type review from the ECB a few weeks ago. “We are seeing how the access capacity of an important part of the demand, around 75%, is stretched to the limit, and also how in many areas the effort is at the highest levels in history.” Does that mean we will see a price decline? No. What is expected, Matos clarifies, is a certain downshift, but not negative percentages. “We will see how this rate of increase in prices of 20%, 18%, 16%… begins to moderate, that the rate of growth will tend towards normalization; but we will not see decreases because we still have a great imbalance between supply and demand that continues to push prices upwards.” That is one of the great keys to the market. For some time in Spain, homes have been created much higher speed from which buildings are built that can accommodate them, which adds more pressure to the market. For reference, in 2025 they were added to the registry of the Ministry of Housing 95,000 new houseswell below the 240,000 homes created, according to the INE. The Bank of Spain (BE) itself estimates the accumulated deficit between 2021 and 2025 in 750,000 houseswhich gives an indication of the huge ‘hole’ that would have to be covered to satisfy population growth. These are compelling figures, but they fall short for the Fotocasa analysts. Matos specifies that if both the needs of the rental market and the purchase and sale market are taken into account, this estimate would rise to up to touch two million of properties. “Our data tells us that more than 1.8 million homes would be necessary to be able to make up for the deficit we have in Spain,” he clarifies before detailing that between Madrid and Catalonia alone they would need 200,000 properties to balance supply and demand and stabilize prices. “The problem is that many more homes are created every year than we are capable of building.” Matos admits that there are hopeful signs, such as visa increase of new construction, but dark clouds are looming on the horizon. “We continue to encounter very important obstacles: the lack of finalized land, excessive urban bureaucracy and a increase in costs construction rate of 25%,” he comments. “Developers and builders have many difficulties developing these buildings. “There are cities in Spain where it takes longer to give you a license than to build the building itself.” However, the expert points out an equally or even more worrying factor: lack of personnel. “We were reaching a production of about 100,000 homes per year with all the problems of finding land, financing it, buying it and developing it. Now a new obstacle is added, which is that Spain would need to incorporate 700,000 new workers to construction to respond to the housing and infrastructure needs expected for the coming years. “Without bricklayers, formworkers, ironworkers, electricians, without construction managers it is impossible to increase the rate of production. Now that it has been diagnosed, we know why housing is not produced… If we do not resolve this labor deficit it is impossible to increase supply and alleviate the tension on prices.” The truth is that the Fotocasa spokesperson not only anticipates changes in the buying and selling market. It also does so in residential rentals, which in recent months has already has given samples of moderation in price rise. For example, there are real estate platforms that estimate that the year-on-year increase in rents in June was 4.2%In June 2025 it was 8.9% and the previous year it was 13.5%. Although the changes must be analyzed in the long term, Matos advances that his data invites us to think about a decrease in income of 1.6% at the national level. “We have a turning point in the market. We see how the price has reached the limit of the tenants’ ability to pay. It is something we expected because we were seeing in the last six months how it went … Read more

Science believed that geomagnetic storms had a limit. A miscalculation had been hiding the truth for decades

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It is well known that geomagnetic storms and solar winds can significantly affect telecommunications devices on Earth. However, we have always had one piece of information that reassured us quite a bit in that regard: the saturation of geomagnetic storms. This means that there is a limit beyond which, no matter how much the intensity of the storm increases, the harmful electrical currents that are normally generated in our atmosphere do not continue to intensify. It would mean that we have already seen the worst side of this solar phenomenon and, although it has been quite worrying, it has not been devastating. The problem is that now a team of scientists from NASA and Lancaster University has observed that, in reality, this saturation phenomenon was the result of a statistical error known as regression to the mean. It seems that the intensity of electric currents can continue to increase. And of course, that is very worrying. too far. The intensity of the solar winds is measured by spacecraft located at Lagrange point 1 (L1), much closer to the Sun than to the Earth. This is no coincidence. It was done on purpose, because it allows them to be detected with some margin of action before they impact our planet. However, there is a problem, since the intensity with which these solar winds actually arrive is not the same as that measured in L1. To know the real intensity with which they reach Earth, a calculation is made by extrapolating with distance. This gives us approximate data, but never exact. For them to be truly accurate, the intensity of the solar winds should remain constant all the way to Earth and that is not the case. They can intensify or weaken. All of this leads to a margin of error in the calculations. Furthermore, the very magnitude that is measured in the ships in L1 can already lead to calculation errors, which would increase this margin even further. Regression to the mean. When many calculations are made that contain errors, something known as regression to the mean occurs, where the most extreme values ​​are possibly overstated. That is to say, solar winds that were considered more extreme may not have been so extreme. On the other hand, the effects of geomagnetic storms on Earth are easy to measure accurately, since they are measured directly on Earth. And this is where the problems begin. We are relating values ​​on Earth with oversized data from the Sun. What we consider a maximum response on Earth is actually because the solar storms were not as big as they seem. That is why the curve is flattened. The scientists of the study that has just been published consider that with more real data on the intensity of the solar winds the curve would not flatten. It would continue to rise. Solar winds and electric currents. The Sun is surrounded by a gas made up of electrically charged particles, known as plasma. These are continually in motion, giving rise to what are known as solar winds. The problem is that, sometimes, when solar activity is very high, they move with much more intensity. So much so that they can shoot towards the Earth. Luckily, our planet has a magnetic field which, in principle, acts like a bubble, protecting us from those charged particles. It does what it can, but if the solar winds are very intense, because the great solar activity has unleashed a geomagnetic storm, the particles end up overcoming that barrier and reach our atmosphere. There, electrical currents are formed that are measured to analyze the effects of this activity on Earth. Auroras are the result of electrical currents that form in the atmosphere. From northern lights to satellite failures. When these charged particles reach Earth, two types of effects can occur. On the one hand, the northern lightswhich are the result of the emission of light in different colors when the atoms present in atmospheric gas molecules are excited. On the other hand, these currents can affect our electrical and telecommunications systems, causing problems of varying severity. There have already been some very serious phenomena, such as Carrington event of 1859in which telegraphic communications around the world failed. Already in the time of satellites, the largest was the Quebec blackout of 1989with which the entire electrical network of this Canadian province collapsed in just 92 seconds. We have to shorten distances. The authors of the study that has just been published point out that, to understand the true magnitude of geomagnetic storms and solar winds, spacecraft that measure their intensity must be placed much closer to Earth. They have already analyzed a million nearby data and the results have not been encouraging. Therefore, prevention is more essential than ever. And, taking into account that the saturation phenomenon that so reassured us is not real, what happened in Carrington and Quebec would be dwarfed by what could happen in the future. Image | Nithin Sivadas NASA Goddard Space Flight Center In Xataka | Auroras are seen across Europe, including the south, during the largest geomagnetic storm since 2005

TikTok has convinced us that we need 50-minute showers. The WHO has a much stricter limit

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Social networks from time to time viralize a challenge or habit that for many people was not on their radar. The latest of these is a huge Gen Z self-care trend that has been dubbed “Everything Shower” or in Spanish as the “hygiene Olympics”. The concept is simple, since it focuses on transforming the shower into a mega-beauty ritual that includes exfoliation, hair removal, hair masks, deep cleansing and hydration with showers that last 50 minutes. It’s going more. Under the premise of self-care and mental relaxation, this practice has gone viral as the definitive routine to “reboot” the weekend. However, if we put this trend through the scientific filter, the picture changes drastically. From both a public health and sustainability point of view, 50-minute showers are not a reward for your body, but rather a punishment. A dermatological disaster. It may seem contradictory, but exposing the body to water for almost an hour does not hydrate and, in fact, does the opposite. Here the dermatological consensus suggests that prolonged exposure to water, especially if it is hot, and the continued use of surfactants in gels and shampoos, very negatively affects our skin barrier. Why this damage is caused is well documented, since spending 50 minutes under the jet causes transepidermal water loss. By aggressively removing lipids and natural moisturizing factors from our skin, the outermost layer of our skin becomes dehydrated. But in addition, the excess of this wash alters the pH and destroys our skin microbiome, which are nothing more than bacteria that protect us. Its consequences. With this dehydration of the skin, the only thing that is achieved is having a greater risk of xerosis, which is nothing more than having chronically dry skin, but also a feeling of tightness, peeling and itching. Without going any further, in people with sensitive skin or a tendency to atopic dermatitis, a ritual of this type is the perfect one-way ticket to a severe outbreak. Three minutes. The experts they are clear that the ideal shower should be short, just between 3 and 5 minutes and always with warm and not boiling water. And they go one step further in terms of the use of soap, since they recommend soaping focused exclusively on the areas of greatest sweating, such as the armpits, groin or genitals. In fact, they point out that, for most people, a daily shower with soap all over the body is not even strictly necessary to maintain good health. It is not sustainable. If the impact it has on the skin is worrying, the environmental impact is simply a catastrophe. If we take out the calculator and take into account that a 10-minute shower has an average consumption of 200 liters of water, we can know that spending 50 minutes doing this hygiene ritual can cost 1,000 liters of water per person. It is an exorbitant figure that clashes head-on with any policy to protect the scarce water resource, not to mention the enormous energy cost of heating that amount of water. The referent. To put this waste in perspective, just look at the WHO guidelines through its WASH program, which establishes a shower of 5 minutes or less as a reference for sustainable hygiene. To give us an idea, the average daily consumption goal set by the organization to cover all the basic needs of a person is around 95 liters of water in total. Images | Armin Rimoldi In Xataka | The extreme hygiene of the modern world was supposed to have caused allergies: ancestral DNA has something to say

let data centers pollute without limit

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The summer of 2026 started strong with the first extreme heat wave. We have talked about the heat in Spain and throughout Europebut in the United States they have not been spared either of the consequences. With the air conditioners working at full capacity In homes, the electrical grid is strained and the Secretary of Energy made a decision that directly affects data centers. Activate your generators. The heat wave reached its peak last week and mainly hit the US East Coast. Given this situation, the secretary of energy Chris Wright asked data centers and other large customers to begin using their backup generators, which are normally idle. The objective of this measure is to relieve pressure on the electrical grid, which has experienced an increase in demand caused by high temperatures that have touched 40 degrees in many states. Why is it important. The order demonstrates how data centers are impacting the US power supply, especially in the mid-Atlantic area, where it is concentrated the largest number of data centers in the world. According to Data Center Map dataIn the United States there are more than 4,300 data centers and in Virginia alone there are 637. In other affected states there is also a high concentration: 133 in New York, 133 in Pennsylvania, 93 in North Carolina, 67 in New Jersey, 53 in Maryland and 42 in Massachusetts. Air quality. The biggest loser with this measure is the environment. We are talking about diesel and natural gas generators that emit pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and generate suspended particles. The use of these types of generators is limited by their effects on air quality, e.g. In Texas only its use is authorized provided that “the operating time does not exceed 10% of the annual operation of the main power source.” According to a Washington Post analysisin the state of Virginia there are at least 10,500 diesel generators installed. It is estimated that just using them for one hour a week has a health impact equivalent to that of five large gas plants combined and is associated with thousands of asthma episodes each year. Regulatory exception. The Department of Energy already had these limitations and In their directive they authorize connect these generators “without prejudice to air quality limitations.” It is a temporary decision designed to protect the stability of the network and the thermal comfort of millions of homes, but it does not come for free. The order sets an uncomfortable precedent: if environmental regulations are turned off every time there is extreme stress on the grid, the exception may end up becoming the new normal. Without batteries. The manager that offers supply in the area is PJM and last week it surpassed the demand record that occurred two decades ago. As they say in the New York TimesPJM does not have an extensive battery system that allows them to store energy to be used in situations like this. In other states such as California or Texas they do have this type of systems, which allows them to face heat waves or frosts without having to resort to measures of this type. Image | Generac In Xataka | Giant data centers have a space and power problem. A company wants to cut them up and distribute them around the houses

limit the capacity of Barajas and El Prat

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If you visit the airports of Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Malaga or Palma de Mallorca (among many others) these days, you are likely to encounter a flood of travelers pulling suitcases and with more or less happy faces, depending on whether they are going or returning from vacation. Normal in July. The problem is that: that this image is increasingly ‘normal’, more common. So much so that last year Aena reached a passenger record in 23 terminals. In fact, El Prat already has surpassed its ceiling and Barajas is about to do so: in 2025 it moved about 68.2 million of passengers, very close to the limit of 70 million that Transport assigned in 2023. Given such a panorama and the “limitations” that El Prat and Barajas are already suffering, Aena has had no choice but to rethink its way of managing the grid. Objective: avoid collapse. The news has advanced it The Country: faced with the avalanche of travelers in its airport network, especially pronounced in certain terminals, during certain months and at certain times of the day, Aena has opted to take action. Looking ahead to the summer of 2027, the operator will apply a series of adjustments to optimize its two hubs with greater activity, Barajas and El Prat, taking greater advantage of the strips in which it can still grow. Both the airport Madrid like that of Barcelona They have projects on the table to strengthen their capacity in the future, but the idea is to improve traffic organization until then, taking advantage of the room for maneuver they have left. That Aena has decided to make a move just now is no coincidence. In 2025 both terminals saw their traffic grow until touching (or exceed) its operating limit, and everything indicates that tourism will continue to grow in 2026. What do you want to do? In a release launched this morning, Aena explains that it wants to “optimize the use of available capacity” in Barajas and El Prat for next summer. As? “Ordering and distributing” the spaces in both terminals when responding to airlines that need slots. In practice, this means that Aena will reconsider their way of working. Until now, it announced the total capacity of the aerodrome taking as a reference what was happening on the flight strips. In the future it will include capacity per terminal and specify passengers by space and type of traffic. It will do so, he specifies, “in the face of capacity limitations” at times of greatest saturation. “Aena seeks to deseasonalize the new slots within peak hours of activity in favor of off-peak hours. This is a measure that will dynamically adapt the space of the terminals without limiting their current capacity. The aim is to make the terminals more efficient to guarantee quality service,” insist the airport manager before clarifying two aspects. With expiration date. The first thing Aena specifies is that this “redistribution of spaces” will only affect airlines that want to grow in Barajas or El Prat at certain times and months. Second, that these limitations “will disappear” as soon as the investments planned for the year have been made. cycle 2027-2031 and that seek to reinforce the capacity of both terminals. What the data says. It may seem excessive, but the data from the Ministry of Transportation speaks for itself. In 2025, the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport registered 68.18 million passengers and Barcelona-El Prat another 57.48. Not only do they exceed 2024 results and pulverize the pre-pandemic marks, when both terminals moved respectively in 61.73 and 52.69 million. They also test the seams of both infrastructures. As remember The CountryRight now the capacity of the Madrid terminal is around 70 million passengers and the ceiling of the Catalan terminal is about 55 million. Peak hours. Of course, these are annual data and the volume of passenger and airplane traffic fluctuates considerably throughout the year, but what is most worrying are the ‘peak’ moments in which activity skyrockets. For example, peak hours in certain summer weeks, when hundreds of thousands of families from all over the world pack their bags to travel. Both foreigners bound for Spain, and Spaniards flying to other parts of the country or the planet. The new measure announced by Aena is not exceptional. In Heathrow either Amsterdam They already limited the number of flights or passengers after the pandemic, although in that case the reason was staff shortage for its management. Beyond the “limitations”. In your statement Aena emphasizes that the “limitations” are only a temporary handicap and “will disappear once the proposed investments for the 2027-2031 investment cycle are executed”, the DORA 3. In fact, it comes after other news that important mobilizations of funds are advancing to strengthen the operations of the Spanish airport network. In September 2025 the Government advertisement investment close to 12.9 billion of euros between 2027 and 2031. In total, the expansion of AS Madrid-Barajas will be allocated 4.5 billion and the objective, recognized by the Executive in 2024, is to reach a capacity of 90 million of travelers. In El Prat a draft improvement to raise your potential to 80 million. Images | John Waco,jr (Unsplash), John Oswald (Unsplash) and Angela Compagnone (Unsplash) In Xataka | The Albaicín of Granada is one of the most popular destinations in Andalusia. And now the new victim of “overtourism”

“Fate gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit”

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The story we have counted. In 1986, three Soviet engineers volunteered to enter the flooded tunnels beneath the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor and open valves that could prevent a second devastating explosion. For years it was believed that they had died shortly after from radiation, but the reality was even stranger: two survived for decades. The story well summarizes the Chernobyl paradox: the greatest nuclear danger often comes not with a bomb, but with an out-of-control reactor. The return of the ghost. Almost forty years after the explosion of reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the place once again experienced scenes that seemed buried with the Soviet Union. How we count Then, in February 2025, a Russian explosive drone blew a hole in the gigantic confinement structure built over the old sarcophagus and caused an internal fire. Suddenly, Ukrainian firefighters had to climb back a radioactive facility to contain a fire on the largest symbol of civil nuclear disaster in history. The image had a disturbing echo: men climbing toward the radiation again, like in 1986. Climb into frozen hell. The operation was brutal. For two weeks, more than a hundred rescuers worked in shifts of just thirty minutes to reduce their exposure while fighting a fire hidden between the roof membranes. The water froze almost instantly due to the extreme temperatures and the wind whipped a structure thirty stories high. He summarized the logic of that mission in a Wall Street Journal interview Oleksiy Chuprov, one of the Ukrainian emergency workers who was directly involved in the operation to extinguish the arson, did so coldly: “We just did our job.” Then he added something more revealing: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit.” It was not rhetorical heroism, it was the confirmation that Chernobyl remains a place where the margin of error is zero. The new nuclear enemy. Here appears the central idea of ​​the current drama. For decades, the nuclear threat was associated with missiles, atomic warheads and the doctrine of mutual destruction. Today, according to the historian Serhii Plokhythe danger has moved: “the true nuclear threat today comes much more from atoms for peace than from atoms for war.” The phrase is not trivial because it actually redefines everything. The reactor has not generated electricity since 2000, but it still contains 200 tons of material highly radioactive. What was once a monument to an accident has now become a vulnerable target in conventional warfare. When a power plant becomes a weapon. Because the war in Ukraine has shown that civilian nuclear infrastructure They are already strategic pieces. Russia occupied Chernobyl in 2022 and keep controlling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe. Furthermore, its attacks on electrical substations force Ukraine to rely even more on its reactors to maintain the living energy system. The pressure is not only military, it is psychological and political. Every missile that passes near a nuclear plant makes civil energy hostage to the conflict. The hole that changes the equation. He drone impact Russian did not destroy the confinement, but it did break the feeling of invulnerability that surrounded the enormous steel structure of 1,750 million of dollars installed in 2019. Designed to withstand tornadoes, forest fires and the passage of time, it was not intended to absorb direct attacks from war. Now Ukraine needs 580 million of dollars to repair it and avoid irreversible corrosion. The physical hole is also conceptual: it shows that even the best civilian nuclear solutions can be reopened by war. Ignorance as an added risk. During the Russian occupation of Chernobyl, soldiers dug trenches and placed mines in contaminated ground without really understanding where they were. Oleh Lebedev, one of the rescuers, explained it devastatingly: “They had absolutely no idea about radiation control or where they were.” The phrase also summarizes another modern danger: not only deliberate aggression, but operational ignorance about facilities that remain extremely sensitive. In a war like the one in Ukraine, the accident can come as quickly as a simple attack. The erased border. What happens in Chernobyl is a global warning. The line between energy to live and to destroy, as Plokh toldand, it is increasingly blurred. A shut down reactor can still be a potential bomb if hit in the right place. And an active plant can become a military shield, a blackmail tool or a strategic objective. Therefore, the men who rise today to cover the hole Chernobyl are not just containing a fire, they are trying to keep closed the door through which a new nuclear catastrophe could sneak in. Image | Wikimedia, Tim Porter In Xataka | In case there was not enough “gasoline” in 2026, the attack by a Russian drone has crossed a red line: that of Chernobyl In Xataka | We believed that the “elephant’s foot” was the most radioactive point in Chernobyl reactor 4. we were wrong

We thought “cotton candy planets” was a metaphor. NASA just found two that take it to the limit

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In a very distant planetary system, about 1,113 light years from Earth, intuition asks us for a very reasonable thing: if a planet is almost the size of Jupiter, it should also resemble Jupiter in its mass. NASA’s TESS mission just showed that the universe doesn’t always play by those rules. From your data, scientists have identified two giant worlds around the star TOI-791 that seem made to break that expectation: they take up a lot of space, but concentrate very little matter. The discovery has its own names: TOI-791 by TOI-791 c. They are two “super-puff” planets, a term used to describe giant worlds with extremely low densities, comparable in this case to that of cotton candy. Scientists calculate that they are the most “bloated” planets found so far, a striking label but supported by a very specific comparison: their size is close to that of Jupiter, while their mass represents only a small fraction of that of the largest planet in the Solar System. The key piece of this story is TESSNASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. We are not talking about a telescope designed to obtain direct images of these worlds, but rather a space observatory prepared to monitor large areas of the sky looking for indirect signalss. According to technical information, its payload is concentrated in a single instrument: a set of four wide-field optical cameras. These cameras work together with their covers, mount, sun shield and data management unit to track stars for long periods. Two giant planets that weigh almost nothing The important thing is that TESS did not see those planets the way we see an image of Jupiter or Saturn. What it detected were repeated small drops in the brightness of TOI-791, the Sun-like star that hosts this system. This pattern appears when, from our perspective, a planet passes in front of its star and blocks a minimal part of its light. From these transits, and how they repeat over time, scientists can reconstruct the presence of worlds that are too far away to be shown as a conventional photograph. There’s an understandable trap here: we see the NASA illustration and our brain fills in the scene as if we were looking at a photo. But that is not what has happened. The agency clarifies that no direct image of TOI-791 by TOI-791 cand that its appearance in the visual pieces is an artistic interpretation. The image serves to bring us closer to the discovery and compare it with known planets, but it is not the observation itself: the observation is in the signals measured by TESS when these worlds pass in front of their star. The TESS spacecraft and its payload, prepared before launch The rarity appears very clearly when the figures come in. TOI-791 b is almost the same size as Jupiter, but contains only 3.0% of its mass. TOI-791 c goes even one step further: it is larger than Jupiter, although it barely reaches 5.9% of its mass. That combination is what makes these worlds so strange. We are not dealing with small planets with little matter, but with giants that take up a lot of space and yet concentrate a surprisingly low amount of mass. There is also a question of patience. TOI-791 b takes 139 days to complete one revolution around its star, and TOI-791 c needs 232 days. For a telescope that searches for planets through transits, that means waiting a long time to see the same signal repeat and confirm that we are not facing a coincidence. The accumulation of data was decisive here: from its high orbit around the Earth, TESS gathered 1,122 days of observations of this system over seven years. The image compares the size of the two “super-puff” planets with some worlds in our Solar System To arrive at their masses, scientists took advantage of a very useful detail: these two planets do not move as if the other did not exist. TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c follow an orbital pattern that causes them to be gravitationally attracted to each other. That push and pull slightly changes the timing of its transits across the star from our perspective. By measuring these small temporal variations, the team was able to estimate how much mass each planet contains and confirm their status as low-density “super-puff” planets. The confusion comes not only from the fact that they are huge worlds with very little mass, but also from the fact that they fit poorly with what was expected to be found. Jon Jenkins of NASA Ames sums it up this way: “They represent a puzzle “We must solve how giant planets like Jupiter and super-puffs form.” George Dransfield, lead author of the study at the University of Oxford, also emphasizes that their extremely low densities make them fascinating targets for studying the evolution of planetary systems. The metaphor, in fact, was the gateway to the problem. What comes next is trying to read those worlds in more detail. NASA notes that scientists want to study the chemical composition of their atmospheres, how their rotation can affect their shape and to what extent the star’s inclination fits with the orbits of the planets. It also remains to be understood how they moved within the system during its development, whether their orbits were shaped by interactions with other planets and, ultimately, how such low-density worlds can form. Cotton candy was the image; The challenge is to explain the recipe. Images | POT In Xataka | Experts warn: NASA launch facilities are too old to travel to the Moon

AI chips have always wanted to become more and more powerful. TSMC has just pointed out the true limit: efficiency

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More performance? It is the first thing we usually ask of a new chip, almost without thinking about it. We have done it for years with the processors in our devices and we do it now with the chips that support much of the deployment of AI. More computing power, more speed, more scope to do things that previously seemed out of reach. But this logic begins to encounter a very specific limit: energy. What is making its way now is a less flashy idea, but increasingly difficult to ignore: progress will not only be measured by how much a chip calculates, but also by how much energy it needs to do it. The clearest clue comes from TSMC. We are talking about the largest contract chip manufacturer in the world, a company that does not sell processors under its own brand, but rather produces semiconductors designed by other players in the industry. According to ReutersKevin Zhang, senior vice president of business development, explained at a conference in Amsterdam that his customers are paying more and more attention to performance improvements that do not increase consumption. The pressure comes from very different profiles, from smartphone manufacturers to AI data center operators, all with a concern that we have seen growing in recent times: electricity cost and energy availability. The key is in the manufacturing. TSMC has not simply described a change in priorities. He has also placed it on his technological calendar with A14a future manufacturing technology planned around 2028. The firm expects that this process offers more than a 20% improvement in performance and, at the same time, reduces consumption by up to 30% compared to N2, the process that the company takes as a reference in that comparison. The key is that we are not talking about a specific processor, but rather the method with which subsequent chips can be manufactured. Not everything is about miniaturizing. For decades, reducing the size of transistors has been one of the great ways to gain performance and efficiency in chips. That logic doesn’t go away: transistor density remains within TSMC’s roadmap. What Zhang points out is that in the face of energy pressure from AI, other solutions, such as advanced packaging, chip stacking, and photonics, are also gaining weight. In parallel, as we pointed out a few weeks agoTSMC has decided not to use High-NA EUV, the lithography associated with ASML’s most advanced and ambitious equipment, in its A13 and A12 processes planned for 2029. The battle is also in the data. Huawei enters this conversation with Tau Scaling Lawa proposal that seeks to improve performance by accelerating the movement of data within the chips. The idea shifts part of the focus from the transistor to architecture and integration, two areas that gain weight when manufacturing smaller components is not enough. Along the same lines appears LogicFolding, which Huawei presents as a possible step beyond traditional 3D stacking, but which will depend on new design tools for folded architectures and better dissipation solutions for devices ranging from smartphones to AI data centers. Where are we going? TSMC does not speak for the entire industry, but its position makes the message carry. The firm suggests that, at least in its roadmap and in conversations with its clients, energy efficiency is gaining prominence that was previously more hidden behind performance. And it’s not a concern limited to AI data centers. Huawei, for its part, shows that the problem is also being addressed from architecture and integration, not just from the manufacturing process. The common point is not a closed conclusion, but an increasingly visible tension: chips will have to continue to be more capable, but each leap will be more difficult to justify if it increases consumption, heat or costs. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | Samsung has just achieved a milestone that has not been recorded for eight years. The problem is that it is a mirage

There are parts of the world dangerously approaching the physiological limit of the human being.

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On Wednesday, May 27, at 10 in the morning, the Yacobabad thermometers they reached 49 degrees. The city in central Pakistan is one of the warmest places in the world, with average summer temperatures exceeding 37 degrees. The only problem is that it is not summer: touching 50 degrees in May, even there, is a big deal. So much so that the press (and the networks) have begun to talk about the “limits of human habitability”, the point from which a human can no longer endure. Because yes, that limit is beginning to be crossed elsewhere and it is worth looking where. What is happening in the Indian subcontinent? The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) issued on May 23 a “severe heat wave” alert which would last from May 25 to 31, 2026. We are talking about expected temperatures 4-6 ° C above normal in much of Sindh and in areas of Balochistan and southern Punjab. But, above all, we are talking about temperatures close to (or above) 45 degrees in many parts of India and Pakistan. However, the worst is not happening in Sukkur at 49°C with 15% humidity; It is happening in Kolkata which enjoys about 38°C, but with 70% humidity. The physiological limit of the human being. This concept has been around the meteorological world for several decades. In 2010, Sherwood and Huber proposed that the physiological indicator that matters It is not the temperature in dry environments, but the temperature in humid environments. In these cases, at a certain point, the sweat does not evaporate and, therefore, the body cannot cool down. Everything starts to fail. In dry climates the risks come from the other side (heat stroke, dehydration, systemic collapse), but in humid climates there are certain thresholds where what exists is a thermodynamic impossibility of cooling down. The figure that is usually set is 35 degrees with very high humidity. It is not clear because there is a lack of available evidence, but we will soon have it. Occasionally, We have already begun to see these configurations in the Persian Gulf. So what about Pakistan and India is not that big a deal? Yacobabad is historical, yes. A May like this had never been recorded. But the real danger is happening elsewhere: on the plains of the Indus and Ganges valleys. A world where it is difficult to live. However, this is just a warning. On May 14, 2026, World Weather Attribution (WWA) published a rapid attribution study about the April 15-29 episode in northern India and Pakistan. This is not what we have in hand, but it serves as a reference: according to the WWA, climate change made this event three times more likely. That is the future we are going to. Therefore, the question of whether there are areas of the world that are going to become literally uninhabitable places is on the table. Image | Windy (via AbaloOrtega) In Xataka | Half of Europe is facing a wild heat wave with temperatures of 40º C. And we haven’t even reached summer

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