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The US built the most powerful army in the world. Now there are those who point out its Achilles heel: cyberwar

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Few countries have a military mix comparable to that of the United States: ground, naval, air and space forces, industrial capacity and the means to operate far from their borders. However, recent conflicts have made it clear that the superiority no longer depends solely of airplanes, ships or battle tanks. In Ukraine, drones have acquired a prominence that forces us to review tactics and defenses. Meanwhile, Cyberattacks have established themselves as another tool of confrontation. And that’s where some experts believe the American structure is starting to show problems. A commission assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in collaboration with the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0s project, has tried to answer this question and its diagnosis is not very reassuring. In a recently published reportits authors maintain that the current design of US cyber forces is insufficient to deter, compete and combat in this domain. They do not claim that the Pentagon lacks specialists, units or operational capacity. The problem, according to the study, is deeper: no organization concentrates the responsibility of consistently recruiting, training and equipping the personnel needed by the United States Cyber ​​Command. It is no secret that measuring military power requires more than counting soldiers, ships or planes. The most visible data comes from SIPRI: in 2025, the United States remained by far the biggest military spender in the worldwith 954 billion dollars and 33% of the global total, compared to the 336 billion estimated for China. This data does not measure military power on its own, but it fits with other analyses, like those of GAO and Brookingswhich continue to describe the US as a dominant force due to its combination of capabilities, deployment, logistics and alliances. The domain for which no branch of the United States Armed Forces was designed There appears the anomaly that focuses the report. The United States has created military services with central responsibilities associated with the large traditional domains of combat, including the space branch since 2019. Cyberspace, on the other hand, continues without its own branch. The commission maintains that, for this reason, there is also no single authority responsible for creating the necessary forces to operate in that area. Responsibilities are distributed among different services, all involved in the mission, but none obliged to place it ahead of their traditional tasks. This dispersion translates, according to the report, into different approaches among the Department’s five military services to recruit, train and develop those who make up the cyber forces. Each one applies their own criteria access, career plans, educational systems and compensation models, which, according to the commission, produce unequal and inefficient results. Katherine Sutton, civilian cyber policy officer and senior cyber advisor at the Pentagon, acknowledged before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 28, 2026 the “significant difficulties” in recruiting profiles with the appropriate skills, retaining the most experienced operators in the face of better-paid opportunities in the private sector and offering specialized training with sufficient agility. Now, the Pentagon has not stood still. The report acknowledges that it has attempted to correct part of the problem with CYBERCOM 2.0an initiative announced in 2025 to reinforce the role of Cyber ​​Command in talent, training and capacity development. But the commission considers that this type of reform does not resolve the underlying issue: the absence of a military branch dedicated to generating forces for cyberspace. In other words, it is not just discussing who commands the operations, but who stably builds the personnel, preparation and tools that those operations need. The United States Cyber ​​Command, known as USCYBERCOMhas the official mission of directing, synchronizing and coordinating operations in cyberspace to defend and promote national interests, according to its own institutional description. According to the commission, the problem is that in practice it also ends up carrying part of the “service-type” functions that it should provide. personnel, preparation and capabilities. The authors see there a design problem that is reminiscent of the model corrected by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986which reorganized the Pentagon and better delineated the difference between building the force and employing it in operations. And what do they suggest? Well, the study works on the hypothesis of creating a military branch dedicated to cyberspace and develops how it should be organized if Washington were to make that decision. This Cyber ​​Force would have a defined mission: organize, train and equip the personnel in charge of offensive and defensive operations, while USCYBERCOM would retain the responsibility of employing them. The proposal does not seek to absorb all of the Pentagon’s technology or take charge of each of its computer networks. The other branches would continue to manage the systems linked to their own missions, but they would stop separately generating a capability that requires common criteria, careers and priorities. The paradox is difficult to ignore. The United States retains the most powerful military force in the world, but the report warns that has not yet developed a structure specifically designed to generate its capabilities in cyberspace. Erica Lonergan, lead author of the study and professor at Columbia University, and Mark Montgomery, commissioner of the report, retired rear admiral and head of cyber and technology at the FDD, They later transferred that conclusion to a forum in Defense News: If the digital environment has already become a war domain, it should have a branch ready to fight in it. Images | US Army Cyber ​​Command | Wyoming National Guard In Xataka | For years Russia accustomed its citizens to a distant war. Thousands of gas stations have just broken that illusion

China has a weak point under the sea. Your new anti-submarine plane points right there

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Above the surface, a fleet of ships can be counted, photographed and tracked in almost real time. Under water, however, the rules change: the target disappears from sight, the sound is deformed and each contact can be a valid clue or a false alarm. For this reason, anti-submarine warfare remains one of the most demanding tasks of any Navy. China knows this well and is expanding its response to monitor a space where the size of its forces alone is not enough. A plane enters the scene. The response that China has begun to show from the air is an improved variant of its Y-9 anti-submarine aircraft, now seen for the first time in maneuvers. The aircraft had appeared publicly at the parade on September 3, 2025, but the new official images allow external modifications to be seen in its detection systems. According to military analyst Zhang Junshe, quoted by Global Timesits incorporation into these exercises indicates the beginning of operational training and the acquisition of initial search and attack capabilities. The difficult part is below. An official evaluation by the US Department of Defense allows us to place the progress of the Y-9 within a gap that China would still be trying to close. Its 2024 report stated that the Chinese Navy was improving its anti-submarine means, but still lacked a robust deep-water capability. In March 2026, scholar Andrew Erickson described an unequal situation, although he made it clear that his conclusions were personal. According to the expert, China is developing a layered detection architecture within the first island chain, but its capabilities remain more limited beyond it. There, the smallest number of deployed sensors, limited maritime patrol aviation and logistical restrictions weigh in. That does not make these evaluations neutral diagnoses: they come from the United States, the power that tries to preserve its submarine advantage against China. The next obstacle. Zhang points out that the South China Sea reaches depths of more than 1,000 meters in some areas and has more complex conditions than the East China and Yellow Seas, which makes it difficult to locate submarines. In addition, temperature, salinity, currents and underwater relief modify the propagation of sound. This requires knowing the environment precisely to correctly interpret the information collected by the acoustic systems. A network, not a single plane. Beijing is not entrusting this entire task to Y-9. A Reuters investigation published earlier this year documented an extensive operation supported by oceanographic vessels, hundreds of sensors, buoys and arrays installed underwater. Separately, Erickson describes a Chinese architecture that integrates space, air, coastal, surface and underwater assets, as well as unmanned vehicles. The new plane represents the aerial and mobile component of that broader effort to understand and monitor what happens under the sea. The most visible change appears under the nose. According to Zhang, the images show what appears to be a new active phased array radar, with broader coverage, a longer sweep and a greater detection distance than the version presented in 2025. That does not mean directly finding a submerged submarine from the air, but it does mean expanding maritime surveillance and delimiting areas of interest. The more the search area is reduced, the easier it is to then target systems specifically designed to locate underwater targets. Listen and confirm. Once the area is delimited, the Y-9 can deploy up to a hundred sonobuoys of different types, housed on both sides of the fuselage. These form a listening network capable of covering tens of kilometers and collecting signals from submerged targets. In the tail, what appears to be a new magnetic anomaly detector looks for small alterations associated with a large metallic mass. Its smaller size would reduce the magnetic interference of the structure itself, facilitate maintenance and extend the detection distance. Beyond what it detects. The Y-9 aims to improve compared to the Y-8 in range, combat radius, takeoff weight and autonomy. In the maneuvers, in addition, the crews operated without a script or fixed tactics, with electromagnetic interference, simulated breakdowns and coordination with other units, within training aimed at improving their search and attack capacity day and night. None of this makes the ocean transparent, but it does show where Beijing is concentrating its efforts. Images | PLA In Xataka | In 1989, the Soviet submarine Komsomolets sank with one reactor and two nuclear warheads. To this day it continues to radiate

China has erected two mysterious “rectangles” in the middle of the desert that point to Taiwan

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Aerial photographs played a decisive role during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the images taken by American spy planes that revealed the installation of launch ramps Soviet forces on the island and unleashed one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. Since then, many of the great military advances have begun as a handful of strange shapes detected from the air long before there was official confirmation. Two rectangles that don’t fit. The latest images from the Chinese base of Jilantai, in Inner Mongolia, have focused on two mysterious structures Hardened rectangular with retractable roofs. The facility is not just any base: since the late 2010s it has been one of the main centers testing and expansion of China’s new ICBM silos. Precisely for this reason, the appearance of two constructions that do not resemble the known silos has aroused enormous interest among military analysts. The dimensions point to another very different mission. He prepared report by analyst Eli Tirk argues that these structures are too small and shallow to house intercontinental ballistic missiles like the DF-31 either DF-41. “These structures appear to be shallower than the silos intended for intercontinental ballistic missiles,” explains. Its dimensions, therefore, fit better with smaller weapons, such as short and medium range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or even hypersonic systems. like the DF-17. Although there is still no official confirmation about their function, the measurements, the design of the roofs and their configuration clearly differentiate them from the nuclear silos that China has built during the last few years. Satellite image of the site in question The great hypothesis looks at Taiwan. They remembered the TWZ analysts that the explanation that is gaining the most weight is that Beijing is developing a new rapid conventional attack capability. Instead of serving as a nuclear deterrent, these facilities would allow launching large quantities of missiles during the early stages of a crisis to saturate enemy defenses. According to the tirk reporta massive deployment of this type of launchers could facilitate a rapid escalation from a naval blockade to a campaign of attacks against targets in Taiwan, US bases located in the first island chain or even naval groups deployed in the region. Close-up of one of the new reinforced structures with a retractable roof, as seen on January 28, 2026 An infrastructure designed to survive. Regardless of the type of missile they can house, the design reflects a trend that is spreading through the Chinese armed forces. The retractable roofs They allow launch systems to be kept hidden until the last moment and protected against precision attacks or drones. Researchers believe they could be part of a vertical launch system capable of using different types of ammunition from the same platform, increasing flexibility and reducing the time needed to execute consecutive attacks. A satellite image shows what appears to have been a new air defense emplacement pattern, with reinforced structures and retractable roofs It is not an isolated case. These new structures add to a much broader process of hardening of the chinese military facilities that we have been counting. During the last years have appeared hundreds of new silos for nuclear missiles, reinforced shelters for aircraft, completely closed hangars and protected facilities both inside the country and in strategic areas near the border with India or the South China Sea. The war in Ukraine and the growing prominence of drones have reinforced the need to protect any fixed infrastructure against increasingly cheaper and more precise attacks. A mystery far from being solved. The own authors of the report They recognize that there are still many unknowns. It is possible that these structures have a different function, that they are related to testing of new systems or even that they hide underground facilities deeper than the available images show. However, satellite photographs have been enough to put on the table an idea that is difficult to ignore: China appears to be building a new generation of military facilities that do not seek only to increase its arsenal, but to accelerate the speed with which it could use it in a hypothetical conflict. As Tirk ditch at work“if built in sufficient numbers, these systems would allow the Chinese military to quickly move from a quarantine or blockade of Taiwan to a massive campaign of preparatory strikes against targets on the island, US bases in the first island chain, or US naval groups.” Image | Google, China Aerospace Studies Institute In Xataka | Satellite images leave no doubt: China has launched an underwater creature into the sea that defies naval engineering In Xataka | The US Navy warns Congress: China is erecting the largest nuclear barrier in its history under the sea

Global warming has stepped on the accelerator at an unprecedented rate and we are getting closer to the point of no return

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In recent years we are seeing how the climate is changing radicallyand the reality is that we know well that the Earth’s climate system is accumulating heat at an unprecedented rate. And it is not a stimulation that we do in our heads, but it is the main conclusion of the fourth edition of the report Indicators of Global Climate Change. The figures do not leave much room for maneuver, since, according to the panel of more than 70 researchers from 56 institutions around the world that have participated in the analysishuman activities have pushed global warming to 1.37 °C in 2025. And most worrying of all is that, if the current trend continues, the mathematical projection indicates that we will cross the dreaded 1.5 °C line in approximately four years. An unprecedented rhythm. The analysis, supported by an immense Earth observation network and aligned with the program data Copernicus and institutional repositories such as NASA Earthdata, shows that the rate of human-induced warming remains at a historical maximum of about 0.27 °C per decade. Because? The report points to a lethal combination, such as record levels of greenhouse gases and, paradoxically, a continued decline in sulfur dioxide emissions. The latter is important because, by reducing sulfur aerosols, part of the warming effect of greenhouse gases, which was previously mitigated, has been “unmasked.” As Piers Forster, lead author of the study and director of the Priestley Center for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, explains, the key to understanding the magnitude of the crisis lies in the Earth’s energy imbalance since this indicator measures how quickly heat accumulates in the system. In the researcher’s words: “Without human influence, it should be close to zero, but it has been growing since the 1970s and is now at a record level, doubling in recent decades” The carbon counter. Perhaps the most urgent data that the scientific consortium provides for short-term decision-making is the update of the remaining carbon budget. This concept defines the total amount of carbon dioxide that humanity can still emit into the atmosphere before exceeding the 1.5 °C limit is inevitable. As of early 2026, that estimated remainder was just 130 gigatonnes of CO₂. If we take into account that in 2024 global greenhouse gas emissions reached a historical maximum of 56.8 Gt of CO₂ equivalent, mathematics tells us that at the current rate, that budget will be completely exhausted in about three years. Oceans under pressure. Beyond the average surface air temperature, the updated climate indicators portray a transversal impact on all biomes. Something that we have repeated a lot is that the oceans are the planet’s great thermal sink, and the report introduces a critical monitoring indicator to monitor them, which are the days of marine heat waves. Globally, the year 2025 experienced 65 days under these anomalous conditions, meaning that this number has tripled since 1991, severely disrupting carbon exchange between the ocean and atmosphere, altering acidity levels and threatening coastal infrastructure and marine habitats. sea ​​level It continues its continuous advance, fueled by the melting of land ice and the thermal expansion of warmer waters. Consolidated records show a record of 23 centimeters of increase since 1901 and the current rate of rise is around 1.8 mm per year and, far from stabilizing, it is accelerating by leaps and bounds. Images | Marcin Jozwiak In Xataka | Three days and above the 95th percentile: AEMET’s golden rule for declaring a “heat wave” in Spain

Ukraine has found Russia’s weak point in Crimea. And now there is a line of Russian trucks that cannot move forward

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During World War II, General George S. Patton It stopped its advance not because of a lack of tanks or ammunition, but because of something much more basic: gasoline. Their armored columns consumed so much fuel that logistics could not keep up. Since then, armies learned a brutally simple lesson: sometimes war is decided not by who fires the most, but by who keeps the tank full. The real Achilles heel. For months, the war in Crimea had been told in terms of missiles, air bases and attacks on the Black Sea Fleet. But Ukraine seems to have identified something much more vulnerable, the same thing we just saw with the US agreement with Iran to end the war: the fuel. It is not just about destroying military objectives, but about attacking the “blood” that makes the entire Russian machine work. Without gasoline, trucks do not move, projectiles do not arrive, drones do not fly, nor an offensive is sustained. And that’s exactly what kyiv is cutting. Hit the artery. I was counting this morning the financial times that the Ukrainian campaign has concentrated on the land corridor connecting continental Russia with Crimea, especially the “Novorossiya” highwaythe great logistics work inaugurated in 2023 and presented by Vladimir Putin as one of the great strategic successes of the war. It we counted recently. That road connects Rostov with the peninsula through occupied Mariupol and Melitopol, and has now become a shooting gallery: more than 375 documented attacks against trucks and vehicles since May, many of them precisely on that road. The message is clear: there is no need to destroy Crimea, enough is enough with disconnecting it. A peninsula that lives off what it enters. The problem for Moscow It is structural. Crimea neither produces oil nor has enough refining capacity to sustain itself. It has always depended on external supplies, before from Ukraine and now from Russia. This dependency turns each destroyed convoy into an immediate problem. The images of kilometric queuesdigital coupons and rationing at gas stations in Sevastopol show how the logistical impact translates almost instantly into social pressure. What at the front is a supply interruption, in the rear already seems like a siege. The Kerch bridge is no longer enough. For a long time, the bridge was the great russian lifeguard. But since the 2022 attack that damaged its stretches and set a fuel train on fire, Moscow has greatly reduced its use for sensitive shipments. Transporting fuel by road is much less efficient than by train, because a single rail convoy is equivalent to dozens and dozens of tanker trucks. And therein lies the problem: Ukraine is hitting both systems at the same time, forcing Russia to improvise floating bridges and much slower and more vulnerable secondary routes. The intermediate drone war. The most interesting thing is that this campaign is not being led by either small front-line drones or large strategic drones, but rather a new intermediate category that we have been explaining. We talk about systems like the FP-2, Behemoth or the Hornet that allow you to attack at distances of up to 200 kilometers with enough charge to destroy trucks, warehouses and bridges. They are cheap devices, difficult to intercept and operate with networks like Starlink that complicate Russian electronic warfare. It’s a major change, as Ukraine is turning logistics into its own front. Crimea is an island again. If you like, the great effect of this strategy It is psychological and military both. Crimea was conquered by Russia as a platform to project power, and now it is beginning to look an isolated enclave which needs to be fed daily to survive. If Ukraine keeps up the pace through the summer, the pressure will not only be on the southern front, but at full capacity Russian to sustain operations in the region. And there is the central idea: Moscow still has missiles, bases and soldiers in Crimea, but Ukraine has understood that the weak point was not so much in destroying them directly, it was in simply leaving them without gasoline. Image | Britannia In Xataka | We have to start thinking about the Ukrainian war in terms greater than those of the First World War. In Xataka | The drone war has left a clear lesson for Ukraine: you can’t leave home without a 100-year-old machine gun

Some astronomers made a paella at 2,000 meters above sea level in Almería. And they discovered the best cooking point for rice

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If you like cook a paellait is best that you do it on the coast. And not only because of how pleasant the impression of having a rice at the beach bar looking at the sea is. Also because, basically, it will cook better. Astronomers know this well. Calar Alto Observatoryin Almería, who have a curious anecdote with this story. It wasn’t the chef’s fault.. Years ago, the astronomers at the Calar Alto Observatory enjoyed the dishes prepared by a magnificent chef, from a small town in the province of Almería, during their work days. In his municipality he was known precisely for the quality of his rice. However, I had a thorn in my side with the paellas I was trying to prepare at the observatory. Rice never suited him. At least, not as tasty as normally. In Xataka We have spoken about it with Ana Guijarro, one of the astronomers at this observatory. One day she explained to him that he should not martyr himself. The fault was not his, but rather the fact that the facilities They are 2,168 meters above sea level. The physics behind. As we rise meters above sea level, the atmospheric pressure is lower. To understand it, we can visualize it: there is less column of air above our heads, therefore there is also less pressure acting on them. The boiling point of liquids depends on the pressure. If we heat waterthe molecules that make it up will move faster and faster, colliding with each other. When they reach the surface, they may attempt to “escape,” turning into vapor. However, atmospheric pressure pushes them down and prevents this from happening. If the atmospheric pressure decreases, so does the boiling point. That is, the temperature at which the liquid can begin to turn into vapor. At sea level, the boiling temperature of water is 100ºC. However, at 2,168 meters, water boils at approximately 92.6ºC. A cooking class. For rice to cook properly, it is necessary for the starch in its grains to hydrate and gelatinize correctly, and for that to happen, sufficient heat is needed. The problem is that, when a liquid boils, all its energy is invested precisely in that change of state instead of continuing to raise the temperature. The 100ºC at sea level, or 92ºC at higher altitudes, remain stable so that the liquid turns into a gas. Therefore, there is not enough temperature to process the rice grains in the best possible way. And what about Andean rice? In the Andean countries there are many rice-based dishes that are very tasty. The height is even higher than that of the Calar Alto Observatory, but in these places, where they have no choice but to cook at high altitudes, They have a very precious trick: the pressure cooker. Precisely the objective of this utensil is to artificially increase the pressure, so that the boiling point rises and the food can be cooked for longer. It is valid for rice and all types of stews. Even at sea level it is very precious for cooking certain dishes, such as stews. Sometimes physics makes it difficult for us, but there are tricks to deal with it. It’s not just a matter of rice. Ana Guijarro tells us that this does not only happen with rice. “For example, tea or any infusion They don’t taste the same in the mountains, because the water boils at a lower temperature and that affects the extraction of the flavor that these things have.” It is something that can frustrate a chef a lot, but with which people who, like astronomers, usually work many meters above sea level, are more than familiar. Better paella on the beach. In short, the next time you have a paella on the beach, remember that it is the best place you can have it. And everything is much more enjoyable when you know the science behind it. Images | MagnificentJorgechp In Xataka | The paella Taliban have been growing strong for years. More and more evidence points to the contrary.

In Zambia, gas bubbles in hot springs point to an unusual birth: a new tectonic plate

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In 2005, the floor of the Afar Desert in Ethiopia suddenly opens up along more than 50 kilometers in just a few days after an intense seismic and volcanic sequence. For many geologists, that image was like observing in real time the type of fracture that, in millions of years, could end. creating a new ocean. Zambia has just given the most serious warning. Bubbles as an almost unequivocal sign. In Zambia, simple bubbles emerging from hot springs have begun to reveal something much bigger than a local geothermal phenomenon. Scientists at the University of Oxford believe have found signs that the southern African subsoil could be entering an early phase continental fracturea geological process so slow that it is imperceptible for human life, but so gigantic that it can end up rdrawing entire maps. The key is in the helium detected in the thermal springs of the Kafue Rift: Its isotopic composition contains too much helium-3, a chemical marker directly associated with the Earth’s mantle. Translated into less technical language, it means that fluids from dozens of kilometers beneath the crust are finding ways to ascend to the surface. And that, for geologists, is an extremely serious sign that the African crust could be starting to break down from within. A silent crack beneath the continent. Rifts are not simple faults or isolated earthquakes. They are areas where the lithosphere begins to stretch and weaken until, in some cases, it ends separating into tectonic plates different. Most never make it that far and remain an unfinished geological scar, but the Kafue Rift presents something that changes the scene: a active connection between the mantle and the surface. The researchers analyzed gases from eight wells and hot springs, six within the suspected area and two outside it to compare results. Only within the rift did they appear associated chemical signatures to the deep interior of the Earth. In addition to helium, they also detected carbon dioxide with characteristics typical of mantle fluids. For scientists, this suggests that the fracture is no longer solely superficial and that the system could be entering into a tectonic phase more advanced than previously thought. Location map of the extensional zone within the Central African Plateau of Zambia. The Kafue Rift is connected to the Luano and Luangwa rifts to the northeast, and to the western branch of the EARS in the Rukwa rift (RRB) and the Rungwe Volcanic Province (RVP) The possible birth of a new plate. The hypothesis is especially relevant because the Kafue Rift is part of a huge strip of geological weakness about 2,500 kilometersone that crosses Africa from Tanzania to Namibia. For years, many researchers had considered that the great candidate to divide the continent was the East African Rift, in Kenya and Ethiopia, where volcanic and tectonic activity is much more visible. However, the new study of Oxford researchers suggests that the southwest African system could have important structural advantages. According to Mike Dalythe natural crustal weaknesses in that region are better aligned with the tectonic forces acting around Africa, which would reduce the resistance needed for future continental breakup. In other words, the Zambian bubbles could be signaling the extremely slow birth of a new African tectonic plate. The continent moves, even if you don’t notice it. The investigation It also serves as a reminder that Earth is still a planet geologically alive. Hundreds of millions of years ago, all continents were part of Pangea before slowly breaking up into their current shape. That process never stopped. Beneath our feet, tectonic plates continue to shift, recycling minerals, raising mountain ranges and opening new oceans. Africa is today one of the places where this dynamic can best be observed. From the Afar Depression to the East African Rift, the continent already presents huge tectonic scars visible from space. What is happening in Zambia could be an additional piece of that continental puzzle, although scientists insist that we are talking about time scales of millions of years and not immediate changes. A geological fracture… and economic opportunity. Beyond scientific fascination, the discovery It has very real economic implications. Early rift systems typically offer relatively clean access to geothermal energy and gases valuable substances such as helium and hydrogen, increasingly important for the technology and energy industry. Unlike mature volcanic zones, where fluids appear mixed with more aggressive and difficult to handle gases, in Kafue the material from the mantle still arrives relatively “pure”. In fact, that is precisely the reason why several energy companies already They are funding research in the region. The problem is that the authors of the study themselves they ask for caution: The samples come from only a specific part of the system and it remains to be seen whether these signals are repeated throughout the entire fracture. But even with caution, the idea is so powerful that it is already on the table: in Zambia, the bubbles that silently emerge from a hot spring could be announcing the beginning of a continental separation that will one day change Africa forever. Image | PexelsDaly et al., 2020 7 Legg, 1974; Tamburello et al., 2022 / R. Karolytė et al. 2026 In Xataka | We thought we were clear about how the continents were formed, until researchers found a stone in Australia In Xataka | More than 5 million earthquakes spread throughout the Earth, gathered in a very complete map

Android 17 launches Pause Point, a function to save us from addictive apps. It is the paradox of the arsonist firefighter

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Among all the news announced by Google a few days ago, without a doubt Gemini Intelligence It was the one that attracted the most attention, but it was not the only one. Android 17 also releases other changes Among which a function called ‘Pause Point’ caught my attention, an option that promises to save us from infinite scrolling by making us stop and think for a few seconds. When I discovered what Pause Point was, I did just that, stopped to think for a moment and realized the ironic of the situation. What is Pause Point “Have you ever spent 45 minutes scrolling and suddenly you realize that you don’t remember why you opened the phone?” This is how Google presents this new function that will arrive with Android 17 and that follows the line of others like Digital Wellbeing that was released with Android 9. Until now, if we wanted to limit the use of certain apps we could set timers or even block access completely, but according to Google this does not solve the problem: timers can be postponed and blocking sometimes makes it impractical if we need that app for something important. What they propose now is another different approach: when you open an app that usually distracts you, Pause Point is activated and makes you stop for 10 seconds to ask yourself “Why am I here?” During this break you can do a small breathing exercise or open the app, but setting a timer of 5, 15 or 30 minutes. It also offers you other apps to focus on, such as one for audiobooks. It makes sense: we have internalized certain patterns so much that we pick up our cell phone and open apps for no apparent reason, out of pure muscle memory. If we want to completely disable Pause Point, it is necessary to restart the phone. The goal is to make you stop and think before anything else. It makes sense and is something we have talked about before: we have internalized certain patterns so much, that we pick up our cell phone and open apps for no apparent reason, by Pure muscle memory. The arsonist who sells fire extinguishers In 2017 we were already talking about what was being set up an industry that promised to cure us of mobile addiction. There are all kinds of solutions that promise to reduce our screen time, from boring cell phones that make us use them lesseven accessories that They prevent us from opening certain apps. What is striking is when Those who offer the cure are the same ones who have created the problem. Recently, a judge in the United States has said that Meta, TikTok and Google They are guilty of having deliberately designed their products to generate addiction among young people, with functions such as autoplay or infinite scroll. Google defended itself arguing that “this case misinterprets YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social network.” It is true that the concept of “addictive” infinite scroll was born with apps like Snapchat, TikTok or Instagram, but let’s not forget that Google entered fully into this formula with YouTube Shorts and one is no less guilty for having committed the “crime” later than the rest. Google is not the only company that is offering the solution to a problem that they themselves are fueling. Instagram and TikTok also have features to help users disconnect from the app, but without leaving the appclear. As long as the metric that controls is usage time, these “detox” functions will be little more than a cosmetic patch in a system designed so that we never let go of our cell phone. One thing must be clear and that is that the business of these apps lies in Let us spend as much time as possible on them. Only then do we see more advertising and buy more products. We live in the attention economy and, as long as the metric that controls is the time of use, these “detox” functions will be little more than a cosmetic patch in a system designed so that we never let go of the mobile. Images | Google In Xataka | The psychology of doomscrolling: the trap our brain is programmed to fall into again and again

We knew that octopuses were very intelligent. But not to the point of having a “brain” in each arm

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Octopuses are invertebrate animals, but the absence of a central nervous system like that of birds or mammals does not make their brains less interesting than the rest. Brains, emphasizing the plural since neuronal systems of each of its extremities They have a degree of independence, which leads many to consider them as such. A nervous system not at all central. In January 2025, a group of researchers has studied the nervous systems of these cephalopods to better understand how these nine neural organs operate together and to what extent they maintain their independence. What they observed is that each of these brains had the ability to operate individually. The team responsible for the study believes that it is thanks to the unique segmentation of the nervous system of octopuses that these animals achieve the level of skill in the management of extremely flexible organs that serve these animals to move, feed, sense their environment, and even copulate. “If you are going to have a nervous system that is going to control such dynamic movement, that is a good way to organize it,” explained in a press release Clifton Ragsdale, co-author of the study. “We think it’s a feature that evolved specifically in soft-bodied cephalopods with suction cups to carry out these worm-like movements.” Studying segmentation. The study focused on segmentation of this curious neuronal system, analyzing the distribution and function of the neurons in these arms, taking as reference an octopus of the species Octopus bimaculatus. Neurons that together add up to a greater number than the neurons located in the “central brain” of the animal, which is responsible for coordinating actions that require the use of various arms. These neurons in the extremities are concentrated, explains the teaminto an axial nerve chord (ANC), which “snakes” the limb to each of the animal’s suction cups. Neural columns. The ANC analysis showed that neurons in the octopus’s limbs were grouped into “columns” that in turn formed segments that the team compared to corrugated pipes. The segments were in turn separated by gaps called “septa” from which nerves and blood vessels made their way to the muscles of the limb. “From a modeling perspective, the best way to organize a control system for this long and flexible arm would be to divide it into segments,” Cassady Olson added.co-author of the study. “There must be some kind of communication between the segments, which you can imagine attenuates their movements.” Job details can be found in an article published in the magazine Nature Communications. Much to investigate. In fact, a subsequent joint study between Florida Atlantic University and the Marine Biological Laboratory analyzed 4,000 arm movements, captured on video, from three different species and came to a surprising conclusion: although all arms can perform any movement, according to his research, the front arms are used for exploration, while the rear arms are used for everything that has to do with movement. The arms of octopuses are very versatile limbs that allow this animal to navigate the seabed, but also, through their suction cups, allow these octopods to perceive the world around them, hunt and feed on their prey. Knowing the details of the functioning of such complex limbs will still require new research. In Xataka | Octopuses are not aliens, and scientists have had to come out to explain why Image | Theasereje, CC BY-SA 4.0 This article was originally published in 2025, but we have updated it with new information

models point to worst El Niño in 140 years and one of the key reports is published on Thursday

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All the meteorological agencies in the world are looking at the same building on the east coast of the United States. On Thursday, May 14, before markets open, in College Park, Maryland, a room full of oceanographers and meteorologists will discuss a four-page pdf. In that pdf it will be written the future of the planet. It sounds epic, but it’s more prosaic than it seems. It will not be written clearly, sharply, or with absolute certainty: but it will be. What’s in that PDF? NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) publishes the second Thursday of each month your ENSO Diagnostic Discussion. It is the most important report from the global El Niño monitoring systems and, from what the models are saying, the probability of a “very strong” El Niño is going to exceed 25% (and growing). But if it’s monthly… why is this specific report important? Because the index the agency uses to monitor and predict ENSO has changed. Until this year, NOAA I used ONI: an index to measure the sea surface temperature anomaly, but which does not discount the average anomaly produced by climate change. What is expected is that the predictions under the new index (I’ll call it RONI) is significantly less than under normal conditions. If the magnitudes shoot up despite the correction, things will look worse. This report is important because it is the first that will capture the “acceleration” of El Niño at full capacity. What would this entail? Each new NOAA report translates into a cascade of decisions in agricultural, energy, fishing and fire policies. He last major El Niño (2023-24) coincided with 2023 would be the second warmest year on record and 2024 the warmest ever: a strong 2026-27 El Niño could push 2027 to another global record and the impacts are not well measured. It is true that between March and May the reliability of ENSO forecasts drops sharply (because the equatorial Pacific anomalies go through their transition phase); but, in the absence of the June report, this is the best clue we have. What can we expect? We already know that there is a 61% chance that El Niño will be with us between May and July 2026. A 25% chance that it is “very strong.” The important thing to keep in mind is what that means. 61% measures the probability that the equatorial Pacific crosses the threshold of what we understand as El Niño. But, unfortunately, it does not measure how much it will rain in Cádiz, nor what will happen to the crops in Misiones, nor how many hurricanes the Yucatán will see. It is worth remembering that, during the warm phase (that is, during El Niño), the absence of strong trade winds that cool the surface of the equatorial Pacific causes the temperature of that area of ​​the ocean to skyrocket. It is this, through different atmospheric teleconnectionswhich disrupts all the weather systems in the world. What we are not clear about is exactly how. The effects are varied and change depending on the region (“drier conditions than normal in certain parts of the world; while in others it causes more precipitation. Some countries have to deal with major droughts and others with torrential rains”, says AEMET); but when we talk about temperatures there is no doubt: El Niño is synonymous with heat. Everything else remains to be written. Image | Xataka In Xataka | “It is so extreme that it is difficult to believe”: El Niño forecasts depict an event of unprecedented intensity.

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