planet

“Any planet that has developed intelligence should have noosignatures, a physical history of cognitive activity”

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¿We are looking for evil extraterrestrial life Or are we alone in the Universe? Some experts opt for the former. They believe that it would be quite egocentric to think that we are the only ones who inhabit the immensity of the cosmos. The problem is that we are busy searching for alien intelligence, but perhaps we are not smart enough to find it. Or, toning things down a bit, we haven’t found the best strategies. Normally we look for biosignatures or technosignatures. That is, biological traces or radio signals from some extraterrestrial technology. Now, astrobiologist Julia De Marines, from the University of California, Berkeley, has devised a new term that focuses right in the middle: noosignatures. Smart, but not that advanced. If an extraterrestrial had landed its radio telescopes on Earth during the stone age I wouldn’t have found anything. I would have concluded that, in that direction, there are no planets with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The failure would have been in thinking that any planet with intelligent life must be at the same point of technological development. Seen this way, it is a pretty big mistake. But the reality is that we are doing just that. For this reason, De Marines believes that technofirms are not the best options. As to biosignaturesdo not always point to biological processes. The history of space exploration is full of examples in which it cannot be ruled out that the biosignature has a geological origin. In fact, it is most likely. For this reason, this astrobiologist proposes that intermediate point in which life is not sought, but rather intelligent activity at an intermediate point before developing advanced technologies. Because it may not have been sought at the right time or, simply, that civilization may not have advanced that much. To be able to detect it correctly, the key is in Assembly Theory. Too many pieces to put together alone. Assembly Theory is based on the assembly index of an object. That is, the number of pieces that had to be joined to form it. Sometimes pieces can be assembled by natural processes. However, above a certain threshold, a complexity is denoted that can only have certain intelligent activity behind it. Stone age tools are a good example. No need to look for stone axes. Although we take prehistoric tools as an example, this cannot be sought by launching telescopes and sensors into space. However, there are activities that can be measured from the outside. For example, agriculture left a measurable trace of nitrogen in our atmosphere. Even food manufacturing, such as fermented products, can be detected in waste chemistry thousands of years later. It is not necessary to understand it. Something important about this method of searching for extraterrestrial life is that it is not necessary to understand noosignatures. Returning to examples from our own history, in Phys point out the case of the Indus Valley writing. At the moment, no one has been able to decipher it, but we know that it was not written alone. There was an intelligent mind behind it. In this case the same thing happens. We must look for traces that do not fit with the natural behavior of the planet, even if it is not understood how they could have arisen. The limitations. This method of searching for extraterrestrial life has a major limitation. And noosignatures are ephemeral. If they are not measured at the right time, they can disappear. Additionally, they can be quite complex to decipher. To all this we must add that the study published by De Marines is a preprint. This means that it has not yet undergone review by an independent research team. Therefore, we must take their approaches with a grain of salt. Anyway, the reality is that, since the beginnings of SETIthe search for intelligent extraterrestrial life is not bearing good fruit. Not even the search for life, in general. The twists in methodology can be interesting, so this one deserves, at the very least, the attention of other astrobiologists. Image | Brooke Denevan (Unsplash) In Xataka | What is the Fermi paradox and why the architect of the atomic bomb gave a twist to the search for extraterrestrial life

“We probably have more than one double somewhere on the planet”

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The idea that we all have a “double“Exactly walking down some street on another continent has fueled literature, cinema and urban legends for centuries. we call doppelganger and, although you may think that it is the result of science fiction, the reality is that there is a solid biological explanation for this idea. It’s proven. Top-level Spanish researchers, such as geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Manel Esteller, director of the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute, demonstrated that this phenomenon is not magic, but is pure genetic statistics. In order to understand this phenomenon, the researchers analyzed 32 couples of “doubles” who were not related to each other and compared their DNA, epigenetics and also the microbiome. What they saw. The team not only relied on the visual perception that two people looked too similar, but used facial recognition algorithms to measure the objectivity of the real resemblance. In this way, of the sixteen couples that the algorithms classified as ‘extremely similar’, nine of them shared multiple genetic variations that are known as ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms‘. But these similarities were not distributed at random, but were concentrated in the genes responsible for sculpting the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth and chin. That is, these sixteen couples gave results comparable to those of real biological twins. There is a nuance. If their DNA is so similar, why aren’t they identical in everything? The study resolved that the subtle differences between these doubles are due to epigenetics, which is basically how DNA is expressed depending on the lifestyle or environment in which we develop, and their microbiome, which are the bacteria that live in your body. A genetic puzzle. This study is not an isolated case, but the scientific community has been mapping the architecture of the human face for years, discovering that the combination of genes that defines our face is finite. In this way, as the probability of the genetic dice landing in the same combination increases exponentially. The experts. One of the authors of this study, Carles Lalueza-Fox, granted a recent interview with El País and pointed out that, after analyzing the 200 most important genes for facial structure and calculating the probabilities, they saw that “we probably have more than a double somewhere on the planet.” Now this phenomenon is a little more popular basically because social networks are making it easier to find our doubles. Image | Anton Malanin In Xataka | The surprising thing is not that we have sequenced the DNA of a Neanderthal from 11,000 years ago: it is what it has revealed

A young planet neighboring Earth was destroyed before it finished forming and now we have found a piece in the Sahara

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According to estimates based on the fireball tracking, is calculated Approximately 17,000 meteorites fall to Earth per year. Only a few of them recover. There are about 80,000 registered worldwide. However, the numbers must be much higher. There will be a multitude of meteorites abandoned in drawers or lost as simple unidentified stones that would make that figure much higher. It’s a shame, because a single meteorite can give us very useful information about our planet and its neighbors. A good example of this is NWA 12774, a fragment found in 2019 in the Sahara. Thanks to it, a team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has managed to extract very interesting data about the dawn of the Solar System. The reconstructed history. The analysis The composition of this meteorite, as well as computer simulations, have allowed us to establish that it must be a fragment of a protoplanet of a size similar to the Moon or Mars, which 4.5 billion years ago decomposed into debris, possibly after colliding with another celestial object while rotating around the Sun. An especially rare angrita. Initial analysis of this meteorite indicated that it is an angrite. This is a very rare type of rock among meteorites. In fact, it is estimated that of the 80,000 that have been registered, only 68 are Angritas. They are rare meteorites because they contain very little silica, a material that is very abundant on rocky planets like Earth. Initially, angritas were thought to be asteroid fragments. However, in this case it is doubly rare, because it also contains clinopyroxene, a very common crystal in the Earth’s crust and mantle. As if that were not enough, said clinopyroxene is rich in CaTs forms, a “version” of this mineral in which one magnesium atom and one silicon atom are replaced by two aluminum atoms. It is a process that requires very high pressure conditions to occur. A large origin. According to the computational reconstructions that have been carried out, to generate such a quantity of CaTs it would be necessary for this object to be subjected to a pressure of 17.5 kilobars. It is something immense. To give us an idea, in the depths of the Mariana Trench barely reaches one kilobar. This pressure could not originate inside an asteroid. According to the calculations made by these scientists, an object of at least 2,000 kilometers in diameter would be needed. Even more. Another relevant fact about this meteorite is that it has sharp edges and chemical patterns that would have been erased if it had originated at a great depth within its parent body. This tells us that said body is immense, since what is relatively shallow compared to its size is actually great depth in terms of pressure. Therefore, the 2,000 kilometers would be short. We would rather be looking at about 3,600 kilometers in diameter, approximately that of the Moon. Some estimates would point to something even larger, like Mars, but in principle they fit the dimensions of the Moon. Very different from Earth. Protoplanets are planets in birth. They must continue colliding and fusing material around them to finish becoming planets. The object that originated this meteorite did not do so. But it should have been part of the dawn of the Solar System. Thanks to him, we know that, at first, the composition of rocky planets would be very different from that of Earth. Something must have changed over time. It would be ideal to analyze more meteorites, since there must be others like NWA 12774. The problem is that we will have to dust off those abandoned drawers to find them. Image | John Kashuba In Xataka | We have been trying to answer the question “where do meteorites come from” for years. And it’s harder than it seems

China manufactured more solar panels in one year than the planet can absorb. Now the market is devouring itself

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In early 2026, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shook energy markets. Consumers, frightened by the volatility of fossil fuels, looked in all directions for alternatives. What they found was a disconcerting paradox: the planet had—has—a historic surplus of clean, cheap energy. There was no shortage of solar panels. There were plenty of them. And no one really knew what to do with them. Economist Adam Tooze summed it up bluntly in his column Financial Times: “Clean energy, on a scale that would have seemed utopian at the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015, is now within our reach. The price of solar panels has plummeted. And yet factories are paralyzed.” It’s not rhetoric. It’s a diagnosis. After a huge increase in investment since 2020, Chinese companies reached a production capacity of 1,000 gigawatts of solar panels per year. To get an idea: in 2023 global demand was only 451 GW, according to Energy News. Chinese production of solar cells that year—588 GW—already doubled international demand. And they continued building. The result was what economists call “involution”: a spiral of destructive competition where companies destroy each other with none winning. More than 40 Chinese manufacturers have gone bankrupt, been acquired or delisted. A third of the staff of the surviving big five were laid off. JinkoSolar, the world’s largest supplier, registered in 2025 a drop in revenue of 29%, a drop in gross profit of 86% and net losses of 4.45 billion yuan. In this way, in June of last year, more than 30 manufacturers They agreed to an OPEC-style pact to stabilize prices and curb supply. Six months later, the result was a disaster: far from stabilizing, production reached historic highs, installations tripled and losses continued to accumulate. “Since when are solar panels just another commodity? They are a technological miracle. They make us cultivators of the sun,” details Adam Tooze in his column. And in all that time, the price of a solar module fell to $0.10 per watt, according to EnkiAI —well below the $0.16/W production cost of the most advanced TOPCon modules. It is, strictly speaking, the largest climate technology sell-off in history. This is not a steel crisis. It’s something else When economists talk about Chinese overproduction, the debate usually revolves around steel, cement or electric cars. But Tooze makes a distinction worth hearing: Solar panels are no ordinary commodity. They are the result of half a century of research—from NASA spinoff programs in the 1970s to the big energy push of the Carter era—and, along with batteries, they are the master key to a sustainable future. Wasting that surplus is not just an economic problem. It is a civilizational irrationality. According to the OECD, China invested less than $18 billion in sector support over 15 years to build an industry capable of providing more clean energy than the world can easily absorb. That figure is less than the cost of building a medium-sized international airport in Europe, or what the US spent on a single Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier. The concentration of power in the supply chain is also unprecedented in the history of energy. China controls more than 80% of the entire global solar production chaindirect result of the plan Made in China 2025 with which Beijing decided to stop being the world’s cheap factory and become its technological supplier. By the end of 2025, its operational module capacity exceeded 900 GW, several times the total global demand. The five largest Chinese manufacturers concentrate more than 50% of the market. LONGi Green Energy alone shipped more than 45 GW in 2025 – more than the entire US domestic manufacturing capacity (73 GW). Never in the history of energy has a single nation so completely dominated a key technology for the decarbonization of the planet. Not even oil at its peak. And the climate paradox is painful: since the Paris Agreement of 2015, a scale of deployment like the current one would have seemed like science fiction. The goal was to stop global warming. The instruments to do so are manufactured and stacked in warehouses. What fails, Tooze points out, is coordination: what Keynes would call a global “chaos,” a catastrophe of collective planning. The global bet Chaos has its own correction mechanisms, even if they are painful. In China, the crisis has already forced the Government to act a few months ago, Beijing called for ‘concerted efforts’ to end price war. The proposed measures include capacity control, minimum guideline prices, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection “to promote the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry.” In practice: the Chinese State orchestrating an orderly rescue of the sector that it itself encouraged to grow without limits. The consolidation had already started before. In August of last year, several players in the sector launched a plan for large manufacturers to jointly invest $7 billion in buying and closing the least efficient facilities, according to OilPrice.com. In practice, a cartel to stop the bleeding. Prices already reflect the shift. According to ABC SolutionsChinese modules have risen between 10% and 20% in 2026 due to the adjustment of overproduction and new logistics tariffs. Wood Mackenzie forecasts a further rise of 9%. The window for the big bargain is closing, although prices remain historically low. The critical variable for 2027 is how the surplus is resolved: through orderly consolidation or through new business disruptions. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign business continues to boom. As Tooze points out in the FTexports of Chinese solar technology to virtually every country except the United States are skyrocketing. And manufacturers have evolved: they now integrate batteries into systems to offer greater stability to the grid, pushing the product towards the complete solution instead of the isolated module. Storage batteries, which They have also reached historical lows in cost Pushed by the same dynamic of overproduction, they thus complete the package: panel plus storage, at a knockdown price. Domestic demand will also recover. China exceeded 1,230 GW of installed solar capacity … Read more

Welcome to the first floating city on the planet

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A few years ago, French Polynesia signed an agreement to study the creation of the first semi-autonomous floating city of the world. The project was never built, but it showed that the idea of ​​living permanently in the ocean was no longer a simple science fiction fantasy. Now we are closer than ever. A floating city larger than many municipalities. Yes, the idea seems taken from a fantastic novel, but its promoters assure that it is still alive three decades after being conceived. He Freedom Ship has been presented as a gigantic floating city almost 1.6 kilometers long, about 240 meters wide and 30 decks high, designed to house about 80,000 people between permanent residents, visitors and crew. With an estimated cost of 12 billion poundswould be several times larger than the largest current cruise ships and would have the capacity to accommodate a population similar to that of a medium-sized city, becoming one of the most ambitious mobile structures ever imagined. Live in the sea without needing to touch land. The concept breaks with the traditional logic of cruises because it is not designed to take trips, but to become a place to live permanently. Some 50,000 residents could make their home there as the city slowly sails around the world, completing a circumnavigation of the planet approximately every two and a half years. Due to its size, the ship would not be able to dock in conventional ports, so it would remain in international waters and use ferries and auxiliary vessels to connect with the mainland. The inhabitants would have access to differentiated neighborhoodsinternal transportation systems through trams, kilometers of pedestrian walkways and large green areas distributed throughout the structure. A city on a single roof. There is much more, as the designers intend for its inhabitants to find practically everything they need without leaving the ship. He project includes homes, hotels, schools from primary education to higher education, hospitals, banks, offices, convention centers, museums, concert halls, sports facilities and a huge commercial offer. It is also they contemplate a stadium with capacity for 15,000 spectators, a water park, large restaurant spaces, aquariums for recreational activities, discos and multiple leisure areas. The intention is to reproduce the operation of a conventional city by transferring all its essential services to a floating platform capable of operating autonomously for years. Thirty years chasing the same dream. The history of the Freedom Ship It began in the nineties with the American engineer Norman Nixon. Although the project was presented publicly on several occasions, it never obtained the necessary financing to start. After years of inactivity, the initiative has regained momentum under the direction by Freedom Cruise Line Internationalwhose officials assure that there is enough interest to even justify the construction of several units. The current priority remains raising the enormous initial capital needed to begin work, a challenge that remains the main obstacle to transforming the spectacular illustrations into a tangible reality. Giant construction on the high seas. If funding is secured, the plan is to make the hull in sections in Indonesia and later assembled at sea. Those responsible believe that construction could be completed in three or four yearsalthough they maintain that the first residents could begin to settle before the work was completely finished. Unlike conventional cruise ships, maintenance would be performed continuously while the structure remains operational in the water. The economic model is also intended to resemble the of a traditional cityrenting or selling commercial spaces to companies and entrepreneurs instead of centralizing all businesses under a single management. Nuclear energy and ecological ambitions. One of the most striking aspects of the project is the possibility of using nuclear energy to boost the gigantic platform. Its promoters argue that this solution would drastically reduce emissions associated with maritime transport and keep a floating city of similar size in operation. Furthermore, they affirm that the vessel could participate in ocean cleanup initiatives during their journeys and become a laboratory for new forms of sustainable coexistence at sea. They also highlight that, by staying away from ports, it would avoid part of the tourist saturation problems that some current cruises generate in highly visited destinations. Between utopia and reality. The magnitude of the project explains why many observers continue to view it with skepticism. No floating city of such dimensions has ever been built and the investment required far exceeds that of the largest existing cruise ships. However, its promoters insist that the combination of permanent housing, commercial activity, tourism and specialized services could make the model viable. Meanwhile, the Freedom Ship continues to occupy a unique place among the great technological utopias contemporary: a vision of mobile cities navigating the planet that has been trying to abandon paper for thirty years to become a reality. Image | Harbor Rear In Xataka | If the question is what is the largest sailing superyacht in the world, the answer has a lot of history: the Orient Express In Xataka | We believed that cruises had already taken everything to the limit: with the ‘Hero of the Seas’, Royal Caribbean believes that they have not

South Korea has just entered the most exclusive club on the planet. And China and North Korea are not exactly calm

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In 2004, South Korea admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency that years before it had rperformed secret experiments of uranium enrichment without officially declaring them. That caused a small diplomatic crisis and revived a question that has been chasing Seoul for decades: how far it is willing to go to not be left behind in Asia. Now he has taken an unprecedented step. The great leap. South Korea just gave one of the most important strategic steps in its recent military history: entering the small club of countries capable of operating nuclear powered submarines. Until now, this terrain was reserved for powers such as the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom or India. He Jangbogo-N project It completely changes Seoul’s position in Asia because it stops being only an advanced industrial and technological power and also becomes a naval actor with oceanic ambitions and a much more sophisticated deterrence capacity. The decision has an enormous symbolic component, but above all practical: A nuclear submarine can remain submerged for months, travel enormous distances and operate with a freedom impossible for traditional diesel models. For China and North Korea the message is clear. South Korea no longer wants to limit itself to protecting its coasts; It wants to have a permanent presence and response capacity throughout the regional board. Announcement of the project in the South Korean defense ministry Seoul’s great obsession. He official argument revolves around the North Korean threat and especially the growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea has been developing ballistic missiles launched from submarines and working on their own naval nuclear propulsion programs with possible Russian help. In this context, South Korea considers that its current diesel submarines are no longer sufficient to maintain a credible long-term deterrence capacity. The new nuclear models would allow the waters near the peninsula to be monitored for much longer and guarantee second attack ability much more difficult to neutralize. Even without nuclear weapons on board, the simple possibility that these platforms could disappear under the sea for long periods makes any enemy military calculation much more complex. China in the equation. Although North Korea is the immediate threat, the greater strategic background clearly points towards China. They remembered the TWZ analysts that Beijing has been expanding its submarine fleet and strengthening its naval presence for years throughout Asia-Pacificas South Korea watches the regional competition shift away from focusing solely on the Korean Peninsula. The construction of nuclear submarines reflects precisely this mental change in Seoul: the country is beginning to see itself as a regional maritime power with much broader interests. Hence China has publicly criticized the program and has insisted on the obligations non-proliferation. Beijing understands perfectly what it means this technological leap. A neighbor with its own nuclear submarines implies a presence that is more difficult to track, a much deeper surveillance capacity and a navy capable of operating far from its ports. The most delicate detail. Impossible to pass by, because South Korea insists that does not intend develop nuclear weapons and will use low-enriched uranium under supervision international and coordination with the United States and the IAEA. However, the movement remains extremely sensitive because historically almost all countries with nuclear submarines also ended up developing atomic arsenals. Therein lies a good part of the regional concern. Although Seoul maintains officially your commitment With non-proliferation, the project brings it technologically closer to capabilities that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. Furthermore, the international context has changed. Blind trust in the US military umbrella It’s not so solid anymore. As before, in South Korea the debate has been growing for years about whether the country needs a more autonomous deterrence capacity against Pyongyang and against an increasingly powerful China. A gigantic industrial bet. The program is also a statement of industrial power. South Korea wants to build the submarines within its own territory using its naval, nuclear and technological industries, something that fits perfectly with the country’s obsession with gain strategic autonomy. The government estimates that the project will last more than forty years between construction and operation, it will generate tens of thousands of jobs and strengthen key sectors such as modular reactors, advanced shipbuilding and military engineering. Market reactions have made the expected impact clear: the large South Korean naval companies they shot in the stock market after the announcement. Seoul understands that this project not only redefines its military strength; It may also establish the country as one of the few nations capable of designing and maintaining complex nuclear naval systems on its own. The silent race. The most important thing is that the movement of South Korea can further accelerate the submarine and nuclear race in Asia. Australia now advances with AUKUS To obtain nuclear submarines, North Korea seeks its own with Russian support and China continues to expand one of the largest submarine fleets on the planet. Now Seoul officially joins to that strategic underwater competition. If you also want, the region is entering a stage where the ability to disappear under the ocean for months has become one of the maximum symbols of military power. And South Korea just announced that is going to be part of that exclusive group, even if that means further altering the security balance in East Asia. Image | x In Xataka | Russia has built an imposing nuclear submarine with one mission: to launch one of the most extreme weapons ever devised In Xataka | North Korea has cleared up doubts about its alliance with Russia: it has just announced its first nuclear submarine

the ranking of the ports with the most traffic on the planet

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The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has forcefully reminded us of the importance of maritime trade: it moves approximately 80% of the volume of world trade, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Essential to that logistics chain are 20-foot-long container ports, measured in TEU (the acronym for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit), the standard unit of maritime transportation. So that we understand each other, TEUs are the currency with which port traffic is measured globally: the more TEUs, the more important they are in logistics and the world economy. Know where those ports are is, in reality, knowing who’s in charge in the global economy. And the map has a clear dominator. This graph created by Visual Capitalist is a ranking of the world’s 20 busiest container ports ordered by total cargo volume processed in a year from from the 2025 Lloyd’s List databaseone of the leading voices in the sector. The metric used to measure it is precisely the TEU, that metal box measuring 6.06 meters long × 2.44 meters wide × 2.59 meters high. Each bar on the graph is equivalent to tens of millions of these boxes moving through the planet’s oceans. In 2024, the 20 main ports in the world generated consolidated traffic of 414.6 million TEUs, 7.1% more than the previous year. Spoiler: 14 of those 20 ports are located in Asia. This Asian dominance is neither an accident nor by chance: it is the reflection of decades of accelerated industrialization, enormous investments in port infrastructure and the consolidation of Asia as the factory of the planet. AND who says Asia, says China: that Made in China that you find even in the soup. For you to see that silkscreen on an iPhone, on a shirt or on a lighter, the product in question had to cross half the world in a container to get here. The ports with the most container traffic in the world. Visual Capitalist with data from Lloyd’s China dominates manufacturing and maritime logistics China concentrates more than 40% of global container traffic. Of the six busiest ports in the world, five are in China. Above the rest, Shanghai stands out, which processed more than 51.5 million TEUs in 2024, quite far from the 41.14 million in Singapore, the second. The leadership of Shanghai is absolute: It has held that title for almost two decades and it alone moves more cargo than all the major European ports combined, to give us an idea of ​​its magnitude. In any case, the eight Chinese ports present in the Top 20 generated 55.6% of the combined traffic in the ranking. Special mention deserves the port of Hong Kong, a historic giant that has been the gateway to China for decades. Today is a victim both its own geography and the Chinese economic transformation: Pearl River Delta ports such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou have taken traffic away from it on the one hand. On the other hand, the rise of Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan has ended up relegating it until it disappears from the Top 10. This was rounded off by the reconfiguration of global shipping alliances, which began to replace Hong Kong as a hub with mainland ports with more capacity and lower operating costs. You have to get out of the Top 10 to find a port outside Asia. The first is Rotterdam, the bastion of maritime trade in Europe, which is in eleventh position with 13.8 million TEUs moved last year. Besides, had modest growth 2.8% compared to the previous year. The photograph of the old continent returns an image of residual influence: the accumulated traffic of the 10 main European ports reached just 65 million TEUs in 2024. If any past time seems better, it is because it was, at least in maritime trade. Obviously, colonization favored that flow (at least unidirectionally). More of the same in America: the busiest port is in Los Angeles and handles approximately 9.9 million TEUs: the Californian port is the gateway for trade from the Pacific, closely followed by Long Beach, with 9.1 million. The influence of America and Europe on maritime merchandise traffic is a clear reflection of their production structures, with relocation by flag. In Xataka | Africa has more than 30,000 kilometers of coastline and one country has managed to control them without anyone noticing: China In Xataka | Each lighthouse in Europe has a different light and flashing: this wonderful interactive map brings them all together Cover | Visual Capitalist

The first dual core and 200 qubits on the planet is now ready

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The pulse between the US and China in the field of technology goes beyond semiconductors and the artificial intelligence (AI). The US leads the industry quantum computersand, although probably not all the achievements that Chinese companies and research centers have achieved have transcended, those that we know of reflect that China is also a power in quantum computing. In fact, these two countries have achieved notable milestones over the past few years. The quantum supremacy is one of those that share, but if we stick to quantum telecommunications China is intractable. In addition, the country led by Xi Jinping is one step away from having indigenous superconducting quantum computers. In recent years, Chinese companies and research centers have been forced to buy high-density microwave connectivity modules abroad, mainly in Japan. This dependency is about to come to an end, if it has not already done so. Be that as it may, the latest milestone for this Asian country has been signed by CAS Cold Atom Technology, a Chinese quantum technology company based in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. And it has presented the world’s first quantum computer with neutral atoms and double core: the Hanyuan-2. We have known for a long time that China is very advanced in superconducting qubits, but now we also know that it is a competitive country in qubits of neutral atoms. Hanyuan-2 is a unique machine Neutral atom quantum computers are an alternative to quantum machines with superconducting qubits and ion traps, and are still in an experimental phase. Those responsible for the design of Hanyuan-2 have confirmed that this device incorporates two independent and complete arrays of qubits of neutral atoms. It integrates 100 atoms of rubidium-85 and another 100 of rubidium-87 to build a dual-core system that implements a total of 200 qubits. Each logical qubit is abstractly built on top of several physical or hardware qubits. Both matrices can work in parallel (hence this machine has 200 qubits) in order to increase its calculation capacity. However, and this is very interesting, one of them can operate as the main nucleus and the other can act as an auxiliary nucleus to build logical qubits. more stable and less sensitive to noise. An important note: logical qubits represent a way to overcome the difficulty involved in using hardware or physical qubits, which are extremely sensitive to noise, and therefore prone to making errors. Each logical qubit is abstractly built on several physical or hardware qubits, so that a single logical qubit encodes a single qubit of quantum information, but with redundancy. It is precisely this redundancy that allows us to detect and correct the errors that are present in physical qubits. Until very recently the number of hardware qubits needed to implement a single error-immune logical qubit made error correction infeasible in practice, but this limitation has been lifted thanks to the work of IBM and CAS Cold Atom Technology, among other companies. Although the quantum computer that you can see in the cover image of this article is the Hanyuan-1, its successor also has a conventional design. In fact, both look much more like a classical computer than a quantum machine with superconducting qubits or ion traps. What is truly striking about Hanyuan-2 is that does not need a cryogenic cooling environment to function. Instead, it uses a small laser cooling system with a total consumption of less than 7 kilowatts, which allows it to be installed in practically any space without extraordinary technical requirements. Image | CAS Cold Atom Technology More information | Global Times In Xataka | China has reached one of the holy grails of quantum physics. So says Peter Zoller, father of quantum computers

The incredible story of the tallest building on the planet that ended up becoming the largest swimming pool in the Soviet Union

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During the coldest winters of the Soviet Union, there was a place in Moscow where thousands of people they continued bathing outdoors while huge clouds of steam completely covered the landscape. In fact, from some points in the city the silhouettes of the swimmers could barely be distinguished among the artificial fog. For many foreign visitors, that scene seemed more like something out of a science fiction movie than in the center of a Soviet capital. I don’t remember spaces that have given so much, literally. The cathedral that Stalin erased from the map. Yes, for decades, one of the strangest places in Moscow was that huge smoking circle where thousands of people swam under the snow without thinking much about what had existed there before. The fascinating thing is that that place had first been the largest orthodox cathedral of Russia, then the land chosen to build the tallest building on the planet and finally the outdoor pool bigger. Today, on that same site, it rises again a gigantic cathedral golden Few stories explain so well how architecture can become an ideological battle permanent between empires, revolutions and erased memories. The monument that celebrated the defeat of Napoleon. The story began after Napoleon Bonaparte’s withdrawal from Russia in 1812, when Tsar Alexander I promised to raise a huge cathedral in honor of Christ the Savior as thanks for the survival of the Russian empire. The project went through decades of delays, design changes and ideological disputes until it became a gigantic cathedral orthodox partially inspired by Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. Its construction took more than forty years and the final result completely dominated Moscow skyline with huge golden domes visible from the Kremlin. The building represented the union between religion, monarchy and Russian imperial power at a time when the country was trying to project itself as a great European power. The ancient Cathedral of Christ the Savior Stalin wanted to erase the old Russia and build something greater. After the Revolution of 1917the Bolsheviks began a fierce campaign against religion because they considered that the new Soviet society couldn’t share space with symbols of the old imperial order. Churches were closed, confiscated or reused as warehouses, cinemas or homes, but the Cathedral of Christ the Savior It was too visible to survive. In 1931, by direct order of Joseph Stalin, the building was demolished with explosives to make way for to the most delirious project of Soviet architecture: Palace of Soviets. The plan was to build a 415 meter colossus crowned by a gigantic statue of Lenin about one hundred meters high, a building so enormous that it would have surpassed any existing skyscraper on the planet. The objective was not only architectural. Stalin wanted to physically demonstrate that Soviet communism had forever replaced the old, religious, tsarist Russia. This is how the Palace of the Soviets would have looked The tallest building on the planet never came into existence. The architect Boris Iofan He spent years obsessed with that monumental project, designing enormous auditoriums, stepped terraces and spaces designed to glorify the Soviet State and its leaders. It was excavated a gigantic crater next to the Moscova River, the foundation work and part of the metal structure began got upbut reality ended up destroying the Soviet propaganda dream. The terrain was difficult, water continually flooded the area and the German invasion of 1941 definitively paralyzed the works. Much of the steel accumulated for the building ended up reused in fortifications and bridges during the war. What should have been the greatest architectural symbol of world communism ended up becoming a huge muddy hole in the middle of Moscow. Then something even more surreal happened. Instead of resuming the project after the war, the Soviet regime made a completely unexpected decision: transform that immense circular foundation into a gigantic public swimming pool. This is how the Moskva swimming pool was born, inaugurated in 1960 under Nikita Khrushchev. The place became the outdoor pool bigger of the Soviet Union and possibly the world, with 130 meters in diameter and capacity for thousands of people. The water remained heated even in winter, creating huge clouds of steam over the center of Moscow as citizens swam surrounded by snow and sub-zero temperatures. For entire generations of Soviet people, that space stopped being a religious or political symbol and became simply an everyday place where they could learn to swim, meet with friends or escape the cold. The most famous swimming pool in Moscow and its legends. The gigantic circular pond acquired over time a almost mythological fame. The dense columns of vapor made visibility difficult in winter and began to circulate rumors about accidents, drownings and alleged “suicide cults” linked to the ancient sacred ground where the destroyed cathedral had stood. There were also stories about humidity and corrosion that the complex caused in nearby buildings and nearby museums. Still, millions of people used the pool for decades and for many Moscow residents that place ended up forming an inseparable part of their personal memories, even if they knew that they were literally swimming over the ruins of one of the most important temples of imperial Russia. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior restored on what was the largest pool The fall of the USSR changed everything again. With the Soviet collapse, Russia began to recover religious symbols and nationals who had been persecuted for decades. Maintaining the gigantic pool turned economically unsustainable due to the enormous cost of heating and electricity, while a movement grew that demanded the reconstruction of the original cathedral. In 1994 the pool was emptied and demolishedand soon after began an accelerated reconstruction financed by donations and institutional support. He new temple was built in just a few years and consecrated in 2000 as a almost exact replica of the building destroyed by Stalin. For many Russians, that reconstruction symbolized the return of religion and Russian historical identity after the Soviet period; For others, it … Read more

China is preparing the most powerful and rare exascale supercomputer on the planet. No GPU: only Chinese CPUs

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An exascale supercomputer is one capable of performing at least 1 exaflop (10¹⁸) of floating point operations per second. These machines are the most powerful currently available if we stick to classic computers and leave aside the prototypes of quantum computers. The classification TOP500 identifies the most capable supercomputers on the planetand, as expected, four exascale machines appear at the top of this list: The Captain, FrontierAurora and Jupiter. The first three reside in the United States and the fourth in Germany. Curiously, no Chinese supercomputer appears in the top ten positions of this classification, although we know that some of its most powerful machines are not officially reported to the TOP500 for geopolitical reasons. Be that as it may, the Government led by Xi Jinping is determined to change this scenario. And the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has announced that is going to build a supercomputer called Lingshen that, according to this institution, will have a sustained performance of more than 2 exaflops and will integrate only components designed and manufactured in China. Lingshen supercomputer architecture is very unusual The supercomputer ‘The Captain’ from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA) is a real beast. This machine exceeds 1.8 exaflops, making it currently the most powerful on the planet. The APUs are responsible for its brute force. Instinct MI300A from AMD, which work hand in hand with the EPYC 9005 processors. However, the most surprising thing is that it brings together no less than 11,340,000 cores and delivers 1,809 PFlops/s Rmax and 2,821.10 PFlops/s Rpeak. Lingshen will bring together 47,000 processors of Chinese origin that will be distributed in Huawei Kunpeng servers The architecture of ‘El Capitan’ is very similar to that of the other supercomputers in the TOP500 classification, but the machine being prepared by the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center is going to take different paths. And it is that according to Lu Yutongthe director of this center, the Lingshen supercomputer will use only general purpose processors (CPU), and will not use GPU. Not a single one. It is a very unusual decision, and it is surprising that in theory it will exceed 2 exaflops only with this type of chips. Be that as it may, this is not the only thing we know. Lingshen will bring together 47,000 processors of Chinese origin that will be distributed in servers Huawei Kunpeng equipped with Taishan cores with ARM architecture. Lu Yutong has also confirmed that this machine will have 650PB of storage and a million-port interconnection. Everything that the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has announced sounds great, but this project also leaves us with some very reasonable doubts. The most obvious is that Lingshen is just a project at the moment. It has not yet been built, so its theoretical maximum performance comes from an estimate and not from a measurement provided by a real test bench. On the other hand, it is very surprising that the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has chosen to integrate only CPU. Huawei, Moore Threads and Cambricon Technologies are three of the chinese companies which have domestically made GPUs that could presumably fit into this machine. In any case, it is worth keeping track of this project to see if Lingshen finally lives up to the expectations it has raised. Image | TOP500.org More information | Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center In Xataka | The Frontier supercomputer is the second most powerful exascale machine on the planet. And it has a mission: nuclear fusion

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