physics

Bugatti once again defies the laws of physics. This time with a 250,000 euro stabilized pool table for luxury yachts

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There are Bugatti customers who are not satisfied with having a hypercar in the garagethey also want a Bugatti on the yacht. Having it does not always mean having to get a car several million dollars on board (although some have no problem doing it), sometimes the answer is a pool table. But not just any table. A pool table that defies the laws of physics and of the tidesstaying flat while you play, even if the ship moves. And it does so with the same technical obsession and extreme care for every detail that Bugatti puts into each one. their supercars. Solution to a very specific problem. Playing pool on a yacht may seem simple until you realize that you are on a structure that never stops rocking. Therefore, it would be impossible to play a game without the balls starting to roll by themselves to the sound of the swaying waves. That was the real problem that Bugatti wanted to solve. Superyacht owners wanted a pool table on board, but the swell made it almost impossible. The result is called Bugatti Pool Table and is part of Bugatti Lifestyle, the brand’s luxury objects division, which has also launched luxury watches and even televisions that look like a sculpture. The table was manufactured in a limited edition of only 30 units and its price starts at 250,000 euros with accessories included. In addition, it meets the specifications of a table approved for professional competition. The technology that wins the battle against the waves. The heart of the invention is a gyroscopic system that detects any inclination of the boat instantly. When the waves move the boat, servomotors correct the position of each leg to keep the table surface completely horizontal. According to the brand, “the sensors carry out the measurement and order the correction in just five milliseconds” so the balls are not influenced by the swing of the tide. Everything happens silently, without perceptible vibrations. This type of stabilization is reminiscent of the boat stabilizerswhich reduce hull roll with gyroscopes or moving fins. Bugatti applied a similar idea, but on the scale of a table. This way the balls stay still where you leave them. A Galician with a French accent. Although the table is signed by the French supercar manufacturer, the design was actually developed in Vigo. The company in charge is IXOa Galician firm specialized in carbon fiber that also works for the aeronautical industry, and has repaired Ferrari and Lamborghini bodies. Its founder, Pedro Sánchez, assures that “We have not skimped on anything; everything has been risked and sacrificed to create something unimaginable.” The table structure combines carbon fiber with CNC machined aluminum. The screws and nuts are made of titanium, designed to resist corrosion in the marine environment. The embrasures are made of stainless steel covered in leather. Each table also has a numbered plate, just like the cars at the Atelier de Molsheim. No two tables are the same. Accessories that cost more than a car. The table does not arrive alone. The pack includes a matching carbon fiber cue holder, with a 13-inch touch screen for keeping score. It also has an adjustable LED lamp and a leather suitcase to store the balls. Those balls, by the way, are signed Aramith Tournament Prothe Belgian brand that makes the standard used by most professional tournaments. In addition, each table includes a USB memory with photos and videos of its manufacturing process, stored in a machined aluminum box. This attention to detail turns a simple game of pool into an exercise in pure engineering, extreme luxury and enormous financial muscle. First to buy a yacht, and then to decorate it with a billiard table signed by Bugatti. In Xataka | In 1995, one of the most iconic Bugatti in history mysteriously disappeared. Now it has appeared again Image | Unsplash (jericaglasserphoto)

the physics behind the most violent explosions in the universe capable of extinguishing entire galaxies

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We tend to think about the stars as what we see: millions of bright dots that appear every night above our heads. However, what lies behind it is much bigger. We see light that was emitted dozens or even hundreds of years ago, coming from immense celestial objects, inside which reactions more energetic than any chemical reaction are taking place. And it is not about chemistry, but about something much more intense: nuclear fusion. The “fire” that we see from Earth is the fruit of this fusion, but there comes a time when there is no longer any fuel. With no more fuel to add to the bonfire, the star collapses and dies. This death can be cold and silent, as happens with the smallest stars, but it can also be explosive and colossal when it comes to the largest stars. After that explosion, known as supernovaa black hole or a neutron stardepends on the size of the star that died. The supernova explosion is one of the largest that occurs in the Universe. It is estimated that it releases energy equivalent to 1030 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. It is a phenomenon that releases so much radiation that even has become related with two of the five great mass extinctions that have taken place on Earth. But what makes the death of a star end up becoming something so huge? To know, we must start at the beginning. What is a supernova? A supernova is the last death of a star with a mass at least eight times that of our Sun. When runs out of fuel to continue maintaining the nuclear fusion running, it collapses, releasing a lot of energy. But this is not something that happens quickly. A massive star goes through several phases before reaching the point of generating a supernova. How is a supernova formed? Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which the nuclei of two light atoms fuse to form a heavier onewith a great release of energy. In the case of stars, this process is essential to keep them “on” during the early stages of their life, since They fuse hydrogen nuclei and transform them into helium. It occurs in all stars, although it occurs much more quickly in larger ones. While nuclear fusion occurs in the nucleus, there are two forces that remain in balance. On the one hand, gravity, which pushes all the material inward. And, on the other hand, the radiation pressure, which is generated by the effect of fusion in the stellar core and pushes outward. This occurs unchanged until the time comes when that hydrogen runs out. When spent in the core, the forces are no longer in balance. Gravity overcomes radiation pressure, so the core is pushed inward and compressed. It heats up so much that the helium that remained in the core also acquires the ability to fuse, becoming a new fuelwhich will be transformed into carbon and oxygen. But there was not only hydrogen in the core of the star. This element is also found in its outermost layers, with the difference that it remains inactive. Does not merge. Or, actually, it doesn’t at first. When this first compression occurs, with the consequent stellar heating, the outer hydrogen begins to fuse, causing the growth of the star, which becomes a red giant. Unlike smaller stars, those with a lot of mass have enough energy so they can continue fusing other atoms beyond helium. Carbon, for example, fuses to give rise to neon and magnesium. Neon does the same, generating oxygen and magnesium. That oxygen fuses to produce silicon and sulfur and, finally, the silicon atoms fuse very quickly, generating an iron nucleus. Here comes a key point, since Iron is the most stable element of all those producedso the fusion is slowed down. Cores cannot continue to merge. It is now impossible to continue generating energy and the gravity we talked about at the beginning completely defeats the star. As a result, the core collapses on itself until reaching a limit where a large shock wave is generated and the outer layers collapse, which are violently released into space. We are facing a supernova, an explosion that can last from weeks to months or years. In reality, this explosion can also occur in a binary star systemwhen one steals material from another. Therefore, when we talk about supernovas we must differentiate several types. Types of supernovae All we have seen so far is the description of the most common supernovae. Nevertheless, there are other types of supernovaewhich differ both in the nature of their parent star and in the mechanism by which the explosion takes place. Mainly, The differences are seen when analyzing their spectrum. That is, the light they absorb or emit. This is a process used to determine chemical compositions, as different elements absorb or emit light in very specific patterns of wavelengths. Type I supernova: Hydrogen is not identified in its spectrum. Type Ia: They do not have hydrogen or helium, but they do have a strong line of silicon. This indicates that they are produced by a thermonuclear explosion in a binary system, when a white dwarf accumulates additional material from a companion star. Type Ib: The spectrum does not have hydrogen, but it does have helium. It is the classic supernova that we have talked about so far. The one generated as a remnant of a neutron star or a black hole after the collapse of a large star. Typically more than 8 solar masses. It does not have hydrogen, because the outer layers of the star that contained it were lost. On the other hand, those of helium were preserved. Type IC: There is no hydrogen or helium in the spectrum. In this case, we are also facing an explosion like the one we have described so far. The only difference with type Ib is that, during the explosion, its outer layers are stripped of both hydrogen … Read more

We have been wondering for 4,500 years why the Great Pyramid of Giza resists earthquakes. Physics finally has the answer

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Throughout its more than 4,500 years of history, the Great Pyramid of Gizathe tomb of Pharaoh Cheops, has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, the erosion of the desert and also the earthquakes in an area with very intense seismic activity. This is crucial, because while the Alexandria Lighthouse or the Colossus of Rhodes succumbed to the Earth’s tremors, the 138-meter-high mass has remained immovable. The secrets Their longevity has been a topic of conversation for decades among Egyptologists, engineers and architects who tried to understand why they were still standing. And it is logical, because every physical object has a “natural frequency” of vibration, and this is crucial because when the seismic waves of an earthquake coincide with the frequency of an object, a very important amplification effect is produced. It is an effect that we can see, for example, on a swing, since we push it at the exact moment so that it goes higher and higher. And this is where the “superpower” of the Great Pyramid lies. What does it consist of? According to a study published in Scientific Reports, the pyramid and the ground on which it sits dance to completely different rhythms. This means that the pyramid has a natural vibration frequency which is around 2.3 Hz. For its part, the surrounding terrain of the Giza Plateau vibrates at a drastically lower frequency, close to 0.6 Hz. This mathematical gap is a true structural lifesaver, since, since there is no coincidence between the frequency of the stone mass and that of the ground during a seismic event, resonance is practically impossible. Waves from the earthquake pass through the area, but the pyramid does not amplify the vibration, dispelling the danger of a catastrophic collapse. It is, in modern terms, perfect passive seismic isolation behavior. Extreme geometry. This frequency decoupling is one part of the equation, since the focus is also on the impeccable architectural design and geometric of construction, which provides a uniform structural response to any mechanical stress. All this is thanks to the ingenuity of Egyptian engineers who created an artificial monolith that defies the laws of destruction through several characteristics, such as greatly lowering the center of gravity. And, unlike modern structures that are slender, in pyramids the vast majority of stones are concentrated in their lower third. This makes the building virtually impossible to overturn, regardless of the violence of the transverse shaking. More reasons. The square pyramid shape is not just an aesthetic or religious choice, but it is the most stable geometric figure that exists to withstand compression. Symmetry ensures that when seismic waves shake the building, the load and stress are distributed equally across all faces, avoiding critical fracture points. The internal chambers. One of the details that the investigation has pointed out is the unsuspected role of the famous internal chambers of the pyramidlike the King’s Chamber. Historically, they have been analyzed from a funerary perspective, but it is now suggested that, together with the impressive granite discharge blocks, they also act as a system to dissipate energy. In this way, seismic waves that manage to penetrate the structure encounter abrupt changes in the density of the matter, which causes the waves to refract and disperse. Did they do it on purpose? This is the question we can ask ourselves after reading all this, and the most plausible answer is that the Egyptians did not handle all these technical concepts, but they were absolute masters of empirical engineering. Through observation, trial, error and a deep knowledge of the materials, they arrived at the optimal solution so that they would last for life. They built for eternity based on massive stability and, in doing so, accidentally designed a building that meets the same safety parameters that we demand of our most critical infrastructure today to prevent them from collapsing in an earthquake. Images | Jeremy Bishop In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system

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

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

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

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

the reason is the laws of physics

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Surely you already know (online advertising is reminding you day in and day out) that with a simple prompt you can generate a video game. The AI ​​does it for you, but what it can’t do is play it. The reason is not that games are difficult in the abstract: it is that the real world obeys the same physical laws everywhere, and video games do not. Do, not play. The paradox is striking: with tools like Cursor either Claudea prompt generates a clone of a functional classic game. ‘Asteroids’, for example. However, that same system would not even surpass the first level of its own creation. Julian Togelius, director of the Game Innovation Lab at New York University and co-founder of the testing company Modl.ai, has been investigating why for months, and has broken it down in an interview. Programming is not a game. Togelius defines programming from a structural point of view: a very well designed game. Each line of code comes with a clear statement, a verifiable success criterion and feedback on possible failures, and the program indicates exactly where and why it failed. LLMs (language models) have been trained with massive amounts of code and fine-tuned using reinforcement learning to solve exactly those types of problems. Programming is, in terms of task structure, an exceptionally “well-behaved” game, as Togelius defines it. That’s why so many people find programming fun. However, video games are another story: the action space is governed by more arbitrary rules, feedback can be immediate or take hours to arrive, spatial reasoning is essential and the margin of error is much smaller. When an AI model is asked to play something, the result documented in the paper that Togelius made is unequivocal: “absolute failure.” With a guide, please. Gemini 2.5 Pro completed ‘Pokémon Blue’ in May 2025, but it took considerably longer than any human player, made repetitive mistakes, and relied on auxiliary software to achieve it. The TIME magazine analyzed Why the best AI systems still struggle with ‘Pokémon’. And that is one of the few titles that manage to finish. They achieve this because these systems have specific APIs to consult strategic guides. That ‘Pokémon’ or ‘Minecraft’ (another title that AIs can navigate) are two of the most documented franchises in the history of video games, with millions of hours of walkthroughs available on the internet, is the key to making it easier for them. The key is in physics. But… why can a language model write an essay on quantum physics and at the same time fail in both ‘Halo’ and ‘Space Invaders’? Togelius’s response is that “those two games are more different from each other, in a sense, than two different academic essays.” Looked at another way: video games are very heterogeneous. Each one invents their own rules, their own space logic, their own reward system. The mechanics of a platform game are absolutely different from those of a ‘Tetris’. Spatial reasoning (where objects are, how they move, how they relate) does not appear in the pre-training data of the language models because it cannot be understood from one game to the next. However, let’s look at a task seemingly more difficult than playing ‘Super Mario’: driving a self-driving car. And AIs do that well. The difference with games is that the real world obeys the same physical laws anywhere on the planet. The asphalt behaves the same in San Francisco as in Shanghai, the traffic lights follow the same principles, the vehicle always responds the same. As Togelius points out, “driving is much more homogeneous than video games as a whole.” Learn to drive and you can do it anywhere on the planet. Learn how to play ‘Doom’ and you will have no idea how to play ‘Age of Empires’. The definitive criterion. That is why Togelius proposes video games as a criterion to determine the success of an AI: it is necessary to gauge whether an agent capable of learning can complete any game in the top 100 on Steam in approximately the same time as a skilled human player, without access to prior documentation or specific integration. To that scale (which does not require winning on the first try, but rather learning at a human pace) there is no system today that comes close. Header | Photo of Erik Mclean in Unsplash In Xataka | AI entered video games as an experiment. Today more than 80% of developers no longer know how to produce without it

Physics is clear that it is a mistake

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In the middle of winter, a classic dilemma always returns in Spanish homes: is it advisable to leave the heating on all day to avoid the “peak of consumption” when turning it back on or is it better to turn it off every time we go out? For years, fear of an astronomical bill has fueled the myth that “keeping warm” is cheaper. But this winter, experts have decided to settle the issue by relying on an unbeatable ally: the laws of physics. The five minute rule. For Jorge Morales de Labra, industrial engineer and energy analyst, the answer does not allow nuances. As explained in Cadena CopeTurning off the heating is always worth it. In fact, he exemplifies it very simply: “Even if you go down for five minutes to buy bread, it is economically worthwhile to turn it off.” This statement has a solid scientific basis. As Morales de Labra details, heating systems consume energy constantly to compensate for the heat losses that the home suffers through walls, ceilings and windows. If the heating remains on while no one is there, we are paying for a comfort that no one enjoys, forcing the boiler to work tirelessly to counteract the cold outside. So why does shutting down save more than maintaining? The key lies in demystifying the “effort” that the boiler makes when starting. Although it is true that the boiler works more intensely to recover the initial temperature, this specific consumption is much lower than the sustained expenditure to keep the system running during hours of absence. Furthermore, the figures support this thesis. According to data from the OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users)If we decide to turn off the heating completely at night, the savings can skyrocket up to 67%. For their part, energy efficiency studies cited by El Español They estimate that by simply turning off the system for short and moderate absences, a family can reduce their annual bill by 8% to 15%. In an average home, this represents a direct saving of between 50 and 120 euros per year. The “invisible limit” of 21 degrees. Another common mistake is to confuse comfort with excess heat. The Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) warns that Each degree we go above that threshold makes the bill 7% more expensive. The official recommendation is clear: During the day: Between 19 °C and 21 °C is the optimal temperature. At night: Simply keep it between 15°C and 17°C, or turn it off directly. It should be remembered that this rule is universal for radiators and heat pumps. Nevertheless, systems such as underfloor heatingwhich have great thermal inertia and take hours to heat up, require more stable management and do not benefit from shutdowns lasting just minutes. The crucial role of insulation. It’s not all the thermostat’s fault; The reality is that almost half of what we pay depends on the walls. If your house has leaks, heat literally escapes through the cracks, forcing you to turn up the heat to avoid shivering. It is a vicious circle that empties the pocket. Luckily, the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests several effective patches that do not require getting into work: Seal drafts: Installing weather stripping on doors and windows can save up to 100 euros annually. Blind management: Open them during the day to take advantage of the sun and close them tightly at nightfall to add an extra layer of insulation. Adjust the boiler: It is recommended to lower the boiler delivery temperature (the water that goes to the radiators) to improve the efficiency of the equipment. Smart ventilation: Simply open the windows for a few minutes in the morning to renew the air without the walls getting cold. An investment in control. Savings do not come from being cold, but from managing the heat intelligently. Jorge Morales de Labra emphasizes the importance of smart thermostats. These devices allow programming the heating so that it turns on half an hour before we get home or turn it off from our cell phone if we have forgotten. In short, this winter science gives us permission to turn off the switch. Heating an empty house is not comfort, it is waste. True efficiency is not about generating more heat, but about preventing the heat we have already paid for from escaping. Image | freepik Xataka | Heating has an invisible limit: going over that temperature raises the bill without you noticing more heat

The existence of lightning remains a mystery to atmospheric physics. Austria has given us a clue to solve it

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It seems unbelievable, but in the middle of 2025 one of the most common and violent phenomena of nature continues keeping many secrets. This is the case of raywhich we know how to protect ourselves from and we know that Franklin had very right with your kite. But if we ask an atmospheric physicist what exactly detonates the first spark inside a cloud to start the download, you’ll probably shrug your shoulders. The discovery. We would expect the answer to this classic meteorology question in the sky itself, but in reality it seems to be in a laboratory in Austria. It has been here where they have achieved something that seems like magic: using lasers to trap microscopic particles in the air, and almost by accident, discovering a charging mechanism that could be the ‘missing link’ in the formation of lightning in our sky. What we knew. For lightning to strike, it is necessary that there is a monstrous electric field that breaks the resistance of air, something that has a name: dielectric breakdown. The problem is that when we measure the electric fields inside a thundercloud, the numbers don’t add up: They are too low to initiate lightning on their own. This means that scientists have long suspected that the secret was in the aerosols and ice crystals that collide within a cloud. And the theory is quite clear: if a small particle could accumulate enough charge, then it has the ability to create a micro-electric field around it so intense that it would start a chain reaction. The problem is that studying a microscopic ice grain in the middle of a storm is impossible, since we can be next to it and we cannot lower the cloud to the ground either. That is why this is where this research comes in, which has found a high-tech solution with optical tweezers. The experiment. To find the answer, a 532 nm green laser was used to make lift a silica sphere just a micron in diameter. But… Why? In this case, the initial objective was to measure forces precisely, but they encountered something very strange: the laser itself that held the particle was electrically charging it. Far from being a mistake, they realized that they had in front of them a perfect tool to simulate the atmosphere in miniature. It was no longer necessary to go to a cloud to analyze it. In this way, they began to charge a particle with so much static electricity that it caused a dielectric breakdown in the air around them, discharging themselves suddenly. They had literally created a controlled micro-ray in the laboratory. The authors of the study explicitly suggest that this system is an ideal model to study the electrification of aerosols and clouds. Its importance. Until now, studying these phenomena required getting into a storm-chasing plane or relying on computer simulations. But now we have the ability to simulate these conditions in a controlled way. And it is also ideal to understand why sometimes the sky seems like it is going to break in our own heads. Images | Michael Mancewicz In Xataka | What is a dry storm: when the sky throws lightning, but the rain never reaches the ground

40 years ago three researchers insisted on blurring the borders of quantum physics, today they have won the Nobel

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It was 1935 and Erwin Schrödinger was already tired of reading nonsense. It was not a decade since the birth of modern quantum mechanics, but the world had already filled with delusional pseudophilosophical reflections on what reality really was. It was then that poor Erwin inflated his noses and decided to talk to us about his cat. The happy cat of Schrödinger. Of his cat, of a closed opaque box and, in addition, of a container with a poisonous gas. The container in question is controlled by an opening device that only works if a radioactive particle disintegrates over a certain period of time. After that period, the probability that the cat is dead is 50% and that it is also alive of 50%. “If we do not open the box,” the standard version of this ‘paradox’ tells us, “the cat will be alive and dead at the same time.” Or, in other words, we could be calm: as long as we did not open the box, the cat would not be really dead. According to many interpreters, in fact, it would be the one that opens the box that kills the cat. No one understands poor Erwin. The interesting thing about all this is that, although it has been used to the fed up to illustrate The idea of ​​quantum overlapSchrödinger used it to demonstrate how absurd it was to apply categories of quantum mechanics to the real world (macroscopic). For the Austrian physicist, the happy cat would be alive or dead regardless of the opening of the box or not. But … what if not? However, half a century after all this, there were a group of researchers from the University of Berkeley who did not have it so clear. For some years it was known that we were missing a key piece to understand the process of molecular disintegration. That is, “the ability of individual particles to disintegrate is well known” (this is, for example, the physical fact that there is Behind carbon-14); What happens is that according to what we knew about physics, that could not be. The particles should not disintegrate. Between 1984 and 1985, John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis They performed a series of experiments With a closed electrical circuit with superconductors and showed that, well, Schrödinger was wrong. How was it wrong? As I say, the intention of the cat’s mental experiment was “to demonstrate the absurdity of this situation, since the special properties of quantum mechanics usually disappear on a macroscopic scale. The quantum properties of a complete cat cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory experiment.” However, since these researchers were successful in demonstrating that the very strange properties of the quantum world can also be seen in a larger system, none of this is so clear. This explains very well people like Anthony Leggett Because, although “a macroscopic system composed of numerous pairs of Cooper remains many orders of magnitude smaller than a kitten”, the key of the experiment is that “there are phenomena that involve a large number of particles that, together, behave as they predict quantum mechanics.” A Nobel to kill a cat. “It would surprise you very much if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of the wall. In quantum mechanics, this type of phenomenon is called a tunnel effect and is precisely the type of phenomenon that has given it the reputation of being strange and not very intuitive,” explained the award committee. That is precisely what these researchers showed that it could happen at the macroscopic level. But they did something else. And I do not mean to lay the foundations that have allowed us to create the technological system we know: from the transistors of the computer microchips that we see everywhere to quantum cryptography. No. I mean blurring the wall that separated the world from the very small with the world we know. Along the way, “they killed a cat”; But because of the gap they opened, one of the best science we have was sneaked. Image | Nobel Foundation In Xataka | Don’t call it “Nobel Prize,” call it “how Swedes are dynamiting current science”

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics is for John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis

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The Nobel Prize in Physics of 2024 has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunnelization and the quantification of energy in an electrical circuit.” The Nobel Committee He has decided Highlight the important advance that has been seen in the quantum field and that today are the basis of all the digital technology that we use practically daily. Quantum mechanics. Those awarded this Nobel did experiments in 1984 and 1985 with a closed electrical circuit with superconductors. The key in this case was that among the drivers there was an area that was not a conductor. Thanks to this, both the typing tunnel effect and “quantized energy levels in a system large enough to hold it in hand were allowed to demonstrate.” Something that could be wonderful on paper, but that had to be carried out with the aim of being fully functional and had a real application in our day to day. Applications. Thanks to this work we know the technology as it is, because its applications are many today. One of the clearest examples is in the transistors of computer microchips that is in almost everything around us. But beyond this he has also given quantum cryptography or quantum computers. Tunnel effect A concept that can be very difficult to understand, but that from the Nobel committee have wanted to exemplify with an example: It would surprise you very much if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of the wall. In quantum mechanics, this type of phenomenon is called a tunnel effect and is precisely the type of phenomenon that has given it the reputation of being strange and not very intuitive. In this case, the winners were able to demonstrate with a series of experiments that the (very strange) properties of the quantum world can be sustained in their hand in a sufficiently large system. In this way, the electrical system they have designed allows you to pass from one state to another through a tunnel as if the ball crossed the wall, when a priori seems impossible. And it is precisely what has been awarded: to take the tunnel effect on a macroscopic scale in a centimeter chip. The pools. As every year, there are many candidates who can come to mind when thinking about this award, and that ‘the shots’ go to roads that are very different. On the one hand, it points to the moment of boiling and the enthusiasm around the quantum information that is fundamental for the security of communications or in problem solving. On the other hand, the pools also point to the physics of materials that always give us some kind of surprise throughout the year. But if we change completely, we could also have gone to the field of astrophysics and the advances that have been made in the study of the cosmos and that in recent years has always given many surprises. The prize. The Nobel Prize in Physics has a wide history since the first recognition was granted in 1901 to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. In its long history it has been granted on 117 occasions and 225 people have been recognized with the most distinctive prize. On the ‘bad’ side is that this is the award that has less women has awarded: only five. As a striking history, Marie Curie is one of the few people who has received two Nobel noise throughout her life: that of Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. And if we talk about ‘double awards’, we must also highlight John Bardeen who is the only person who has won this Nobel twice: in 1956 and 1972. In Xataka | Exactly 100 years ago we began to understand how the world works. Quantum physics has radically changed our lives

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