potentially

Takata mounted millions of potentially mortal airbag. And the family of the first deceased in Spain will go to court

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Juanjo was a neighbor of Benazacón (Seville). He was 44 years old when on August 5, 2023 he suffered an accident on the A-4 road at the height of Dos Hermanas (Seville). The driver died after hitting his Mercedes Vito with a Peugeot 308 who was stopped by a breakdown. But what should be an accident without mortal consequences thanks to the airbag became the opposite. In fact, it was precisely The airbag that ended his lifesince its explosion was uncontrolled, causing “a penetrating wound in the right hemithorax with internal hemorrhage” caused by the expulsion of metal parts that acted as shrapnel when the airbag inflated. That is the conclusion reached by the Forensic Report. Juanjo’s name is fictional but the rest of the story is completely true, as reflected ABC. The newspaper explains that this Sevillian driver circulated exceeding the maximum permitted blood alcohol limits when the clash occurred but that it was a Takata airbag that really ended his life. This person was, in fact, the first deadly victim registered in our country as a direct consequence of these airbags. The airbags of this company should serve to protect the lives of drivers but for years it is known that they are, in fact, a weapon against the passenger itself in case of accident. Now, the driver’s family ensures that a complaint Against Mercedes-Benz, who claims economic compensation for death, after keeping a negotiation route that has not fruitful. Although after this fact Another deceased has also been counted In our country with these Takata airbags involved, that of this Sevillian driver was the first case and the future of the possible complaint can be the case of a new fatal accident. The Takata case In Xataka We have contacted Mercedes to learn about the company’s position before this case but, when writing these lines, we have not obtained an answer. What we do know is that in 2020 The world He collected a review call of up to nine models of Mercedes (each of them with different generations). In the list detailed by the company was not the Mercedes Vito But in the newspaper it was detailed that the company had called for review to the predecessors of class V and this van. The company also has a Web page in which the VIN number can be introduced to check if a concrete unit is affected by a revision call by the defective Airbags of Takata. And it is that the damage that the company did is difficult to calculate. In Spain, tens of thousands of affected cars have been called to review but it is believed that there are more than 12,000 of them who have ignored the passage through the workshop. In France it is estimated that there are 1.7 million cars affected and In the United States It was said that since 2008 almost 30 million of these airbags have been withdrawn in constant call calls. The big problem is that the Takata scandal inluó a good part of the automotive industry. Mercedes is not the only one affected, to mention some there are Japanese companies (Honda, Mazda or Toyota), American (Fod, Chrysler or General Motors) and European (Audi, BMW, Citroën or Volkswagen). To give an example, In 2023 Seat called 300,000 cars to review on the occasion of these defective airbags. These security systems had the problem that, with the passage of time, the gases inside were degraded causing violent explosions that generate shrapnel when exploiting and can seriously damage the driver to the point that he can cause death as in the Sevillian case. This ruling is present in millions of cars that mounted the airbags of this company Between 2008 and 2019 Therefore, it is still common for manufacturers to make review calls with airbag substitutions if necessary. The company, in fact, ended up hosting bankruptcy in the United States in 2017 as a result of the fines and compensation imposed. Photo | Rahul Pugazhendi and Mercedes In Xataka | The DGT wants to generalize the airbag on motorcycles. Your shortcut: make it mandatory to get the card to

All the resources that we can potentially extract from the moon, illustrated in this graphic developer

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Mars has become the long -awaited objective of space exploration. So much that the New “Manifest Destination” of the United States. This is something that has sown doubts about the future of Ambitious Artemis mission for go to the moonbut beyond to satisfy scientific curiosity, our satellite has a lot to offer as far as resources are concerned. And in this graph prepared by Visual Capitalist We can what resources we can get from the Moon and what is the degree of confidence we have for each of them. Scenery. The graph is more informative than attractive, that must be recognized, but clearly exposes not only what are the main resources of the moon, but the possibilities we have to take advantage of our current technology. Thus, we can see that there are resources that we have well measured, such as the amount of regolito or solar energyothers not calculated so precisely, and we can see clearly if they are resources that we can recover for land use right now or if they are resources that are out of our reach. Because, of course, one thing is to collect resources, and another very different to be able to pack them correctly and return them to the earth. Resources. The data that they have used for the elaboration of the graphic respond to those of the geological study that the United States developed in 2022 and there is something important that must be taken into account: we are at the dawn of something that seemed science fiction, the Mining on the Moon. There is a large presence of metals on the moon such as iron, titanium, aluminum or magnesium, but also the coveted silicon, which is the Base of our technology industry and solar panels. There are also ice-3, which is a Fuel potential for nuclear fusionrare metals, oxygen, and it is estimated that there is water, but not in a liquid state, but present in the form of ice in the craters that are permanently shaded. The main resources and their status are clearer in this table: resource Current classification Recoverable with our technology Reserve in 30 years Solar energy Measured Yeah Yeah Helio-3 Dear No A stranger Regolito Quantified No Yeah Oxygen in Regolito Quantified No Yeah Hydrogen retained water Quantified No Likely ice -shaped water Minimal or without evidence No A stranger Lunar mining. Before Elon Musk’s arrival to revolutionize space exploration at the governmental level, there were Plans For NASA to send drilling equipment to the Moon to establish a permanent extraction plant for 2032. It is an objective that may have been complicated taking into account recent events, but it is also something that would conflict with the Treaty of ultra -resters. That mining on the Moon is, as we say, very interesting due to the deposits we believe we have located in the satellite, but article 11 of the 1967 Treaty establishes that all the natural resources of the Moon are “common heritage of humanity.” In addition, “it cannot be subject to national appropriation through claims for sovereignty” and those resources “cannot be owned by any state, intergovernmental or non -governmental international organization, national organization or non -governmental entity or any natural person.” Interpretation of lunar soil by ESA Regolito. Returning to the graph, there are two resources that stand out on the rest, both because we know of their existence and because they are the simplest to take advantage of current technology. One of them is lunar dust, curiously. It is called a regolito And it is a carpet of rocky materials that has a couple of useful applications. The first thing is that it is composed of a large amount of oxygen and metals, elements that could be separated from dust to use them in other purposes. Through electrolysis, we can separate oxygen from metals and, although oxygen on Earth is a byproduct, on the moon it can be vital as a source of life. The dust obtained as waste can be used as construction material for brick or roads. There are other projects to take advantage of this abundant lunar resource: Improve regolito fertility through bacteria to be able to grow on the satellite floor. In fact, this soil fertilization is key not only for the colonization of the moon: also for the Martian adventures. Solar energy. Now, from the resources that we can extract from the moon and on the moon, solar energy is the most interesting. The reason is that we could start extracting in the short term because we have the technology to do so. In lunar poles, the sun is visible for long periods, so energy could be generated continuously because there is no rain with rain or clouds (this rainy March we have learned The price of rain in the generation of solar energy). To transmit that energy captured to Earth, lasers or microwave could be used. Projects. There are some in progress. On the one hand, we have Luna Ring, a Japanese project that wants to place a 400 -kilometer wide solar panel belt and 11,000 kilometers long (an absolute barbarity) around Ecuador lunar to send 13,000 theravats to the earth continuously. Is more than we currently need. On the other hand, the European Space Agency had the GE⊕-LPSa project that would consist of a lunar station with panels manufactured from lunar resources. Because yes, the regolito also has silicon and other metals that could be used in situ to make panels. Here the idea is to use that energy to feed the lunar bases. And another project is Blue Alchimist de Blue Origin. Again, taking advantage of the regolite to create panels, it also seeks to generate energy in an unlimited and constant way. Challenges. Now, they are not simple or cheap programs. Focusing on the most accurate project, which would be to produce energy because we know that there is light and we know how to send that energy to the earth, we … Read more

There is a potentially habitable planet only 59 light years from Earth. The IAC has just discovered it from the Canary Islands

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Spain has a lot to say in the search for potentially habitable explanets. On this occasion, an international team led by researchers from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) has discovered a planet in the habitable zone of its star, just 59 light years from Earth. The finding. The newly discovered planet is called GJ 3998 d. It is a superstierra, which means that it is significantly larger than our planet, in this case with a mass six times greater than land. The important thing about GJ 3998 d is that orbits its star Within the “habitable zone”which means that it could have liquid water on its surface, whenever it is a rocky planet like ours. The habitable area. This new exoplanet orbit the GJ 3998which is a red dwarf. This type of star is much smaller and colder than the sun, so the habitable zone is at a lesser distance. GJ 3998 D completes an orbit around its star in approximately 42 days, a sixth part of what lasts a land year. Despite the proximity to the red dwarf, it only receives 20 % more radiation than the earth, which makes it a candidate to house the necessary conditions for life. Neighbors. Another point in favor of this new extrasolar planet is that it is relatively close to us, 59 light years away, which makes it a perfect candidate for more detailed studies in the future. Scientists plan to investigate whether GJ 3998 D has atmosphere and if there are signs of oxygen, which would be a strong indicator of the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. But for this they will have to wait for the future spectrograph Andes of the Extremely large telescope (Elt) of that, who will be able to analyze the composition of his atmosphere. Or to the telescope Exo Life Finder (ELF), currently in development by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. A red dwarf galaxy. Red dwarfs are particularly interesting because they are very common in our galaxy. They constitute almost three quarters of all known stars. In addition, its low mass facilitates the detection of planets that orbit around it. GJ 3998 has three known planets: GJ 3998 B, GJ 3998 Cy the newly discovered GJ 3998 d. This discovery was possible thanks to the Hades project, an international initiative that uses the Nazionale Galileo telescope (TNG) at the Rocque de los Muchachos Observatory, in La Palma, to look for planets around small and near stars. Image | Gabriel Pérez Díaz (SMM, IAC) In Xataka | The Webb Telescope has observed a planet so extreme that the clouds are rock and in the cold night 600 ºC ago

China has discovered a source of energy so massive that potentially lasts 60,000 years. The bad news: is Torio

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China sits on a virtually unlimited energy reserve. Only the Bayan Obo mine, in the Interior Mongolia region, could contain about 1 million tons of Torio, sufficient to meet the country’s energy needs for 60,000 years. In interior Mongolia. While the world, with China at the head, looks for alternatives to fossil fuels to complement the intermittent supply of renewables, the answer could be resting under our feet. More specifically, under the ground of Interior Mongolia, the Autonomous Region of China that limits the north with Mongolia. According to South China Morning Posta newly declassified 2020 study has revealed that Bayan Obo’s site could contain enough Torio to supply all the energy needs of China for millennia. Virtually unlimited. Only five years of mining waste in the largest field of rare earths in Interior Mongolia contain both Torio and the demand for US homes for the next thousand years, according to the study of China Geological Review magazine that CMP quotes. If it is exploited to the fullest, Bayan Obo’s mining complex could produce 1 million tons of thorium. We would be talking about enough production to supply China for 60,000 years, the article suggests. Context. The thorium is a radioactive element that is estimated between three and four times more abundant than uranium in the earth’s crust. Until recently, the official figures placed the Chinese reserves around 100,000-300,000 tons, in themselves of the largest in the world. With a potential of 1 million tons, Bayan Obo would go from being the largest rare land mine on a virtually unlimited Torio source. Some geologists described the finding as a change of play that would give China the worldwide control of the production of the material. Not so fast. In most cases, the thorium is obtained as a byproduct in rare earth processing (specifically, monacite) or uranium mining and phosphates. China is already the main producer of rare earths, and therefore manages large amounts of minerals containing Torio. Why don’t you exploit it commercially on a large scale? Because the thorium is a radioactive residue of delicate management. Its extraction, either by acid or alkaline digestion of Monacita, or as a recovery of mining tails, complicates waste management with the use of alkaline acids or metals that generate toxic and radioactive wastewater. Perspectives These challenges are not insurmountable, but require a regulatory framework and an important investment for the thorium to be competitive in front of Uranium in the Obtaining safe nuclear energy. And especially in front of renewable sources, which have been cheaper thanks to the exponential growth of the Chinese supply chain. However, the thorium can end up being key to reducing fossil fuel dependence (after all, renewables need batteries to offer continuous supply), and China already has Torio reactor testslike the TMSR-LF1 of 2 MW and its future scaled 10 MW version that could be ready in 2030. If the results are positive, China could end up making the jump to the first 100 MW Torio nuclear power plants. Image | Google In Xataka | The reactors of molten salts and Torio are the nuclear response to solve our energy future (and silence criticism) In Xataka | The moment of the thorium: what if we do not have to wait for the merger to have much more safer nuclear energy?

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