powerful

The most powerful solar installation in the world is in the Pyrenees, it reaches 3,500 °C and is not a power plant

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In the middle of summer and with the heat wave upon us, frying an egg on the hood of a car parked in the sun is a reality that gives us an idea of ​​the thermal potential of the sun. But that sensation falls far short of what happens in the heart of the French Pyrenees: there, a building embedded in the side of a mountain concentrates sunlight until it becomes a source of artificial heat so intense that it would be capable of melting steel. The great solar oven. It is the Odeillo solar oven, in Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via, and it is one of the two largest and most powerful installations of this type in the world along with that of Parkent, in Uzbekistan. The most striking thing about the installation is the colossal curved mirror measuring 54 meters and 48 meters wide that is integrated, composed of 9,000 facets. This design has a reason for being: it concentrates sunlight up to 10,000 times its natural intensitywhich allows you reach temperatures of between 3,300 and 3500°Caccording to data from the facility’s operating laboratoryPROMES-CNRS. The system combines two optical elements: a field of 63 motorized flat mirrors that follow the path of the sun and constantly return its light to a large fixed parabolic reflector with a surface area of ​​1,830 square meters. All that light converges on a focal tower, that point barely 40 centimeters in diameter where it develops a thermal power of one megawatt. The Odeillo installation. Philipendula via Wikimedia Context. The origin of the Odeillo solar oven dates back to the 1940s, when the chemist Félix Trombe, who at that time He was director of the Meudon rare earth laboratorymanages to concentrate sunlight with a reused anti-aircraft defense mirror. In 1949 the first prototype is built in the citadel of Mont-Louis, just over 10 kilometers from Odeillo. After several increasingly powerful attempts, between 1962 and 1968 is built the current oven. Its location was chosen with complete intention: the French Cerdanya offers a high number of sunny days per year and an atmosphere of great optical purity at altitude, ideal conditions to minimize radiation losses. In figures. Throughout the article we have broken down some of the most impressive numerical data of this solar oven, which we condense here: Main reflector height: 54 meters Parabolic mirror area: 1,925 square meters Rated thermal power: 1 megawatt Maximum temperature: 3,500 °C Solar concentration factor: 10,000 times normal solar radiation Why is it important. Because this oven has been in operation since 1969 and constitutes the first serious attempt towards the large-scale exploitation of solar energy for industrial purposes, long before the today so common solar plants existed. Although pioneering, its function is more research than energy. Thus, it paved the way for one of the first solar tower plants on the planet, that of Thémis in the early 1980s. Today it has essentially two applications: the study and manufacture of materials resistant to extreme conditions with applications such as the aeronautical industry and the development of solar fuels. A recent example: Sunfuela research project that uses heat from the solar furnace to produce alternative fuels by heating metal oxides to generate gases that are then converted into clean fuels. Yes, but. Taking into account its figures and the fact that it is 50 years old, the Odeillo solar oven is a true engineering prodigy and the precursor of the solar energy boom that we are experiencing. Of course, it is worth remembering that it is not an electricity generation plant: it does not produce electricity significantly nor is it part of the current renewable mix. As for its comparison with Parkent, both are the only two theoretical 1,000 kW solar ovens in the world, with similar focus temperatures. Of course, Odeillo wins in real power: although the Uzbek park has a slightly larger mirror (1,840 square meters compared to 1,830), its lower altitude (1,050 m compared to 1,600 m) reduces the available solar intensity, limiting its useful power to 700 kW compared to Odeillo’s 1,000 kW, according to SolarPACES. In Xataka | Macron believes that Spain has “a problem” with renewables. What it really means is that they are “competition” In Xataka | The wind industry has been dreaming for years of a turbine that can be assembled without concrete or machinery. France has said ‘hold my cubata’ Cover | Rabatakeu

who controls the most powerful AI in the world

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Just two weeks ago we had how the United States government blocked two of the most intelligent AI models in the world: Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 while Anthropic promised to be working on it to solve it. Just 15 days later, the situation has taken a first turn: the US Department of Commerce has authorized the reactivation of the Claude Mythos 5 model, but not for everyone: only for a closed list of US organizations considered “trustworthy.” It is an unlock, but with conditions. For now, no Fable 5 newsthe most general and closest model for the average user. what’s happening. As collects exclusively SemaforHoward Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce in the Trump administration, has sent a formal letter to Anthropic with the good news. The partial redistribution of Mythos 5 will reach a set of more than 100 US organizations that operate and defend critical infrastructure approved by the US government. Lutnick reported in its letter that Anthropic “has committed to working with the United States government on protocols, standards, and future releases” of its models. Or what is the same, that Anthropic has gone through the government hoop, which now has a voice to choose how and to whom its most advanced models reach. In return, Mythos 5 is partially back. Why is it important. Because never before has an AI model been subjected to such scrutiny and government approval requirement to be distributed, which establishes a dangerous precedent: converting the most advanced AI models as export technology subject to control, such as semiconductors. And it doesn’t just affect Anthropic. OpenAI has also launched in the last few hours versions of its new GPT-5.6 model with government-controlled restrictions, such as Sam Altman tells Xwhere despite expressing his predilection for a widespread launch, he shows his willingness to collaborate with the US administration in the authorization of future models. Context. The June 12 blockade occurred after a warning from Amazon of possible manipulation of Anthropic models for malicious purposes, although reports also weighed that indicated upon his hidden arrival in China. Before the ban, Mythos 5 was available on a limited basis to a number of organizations, among them the government of Spain. Following the blockage, Anthropic sent a team of professionals to work closely with the Department of Commerce and the Office of the National Cybersecurity Director to find a solution. In detail. Lutnick’s letter specifies that authorized organizations (the list is not public) can use the model in a kind of “white list”: whoever is part of it has access, whether foreigner or not. Curiously, all this is happening without the US having formal regulations to evaluate AI models, unlike the European AI law: The Trump administration blocked first and is building the rules as it goes. This partial unlocking does not solve the problem for those outside the United States: the list of authorized organizations is exclusively American and the exemption mechanism is based on export control, so any foreign entity wanting to use Mythos 5 would require a specific license that does not exist. So other governments, non-US companies, and foreign consumers still don’t know if or when they will recover these models because the United States is acting unilaterally. Yes, but. Obviously the unlocking is good news for Anthropic, but it leaves several fronts open. The first is what happens with Fable 5, the general use model, for which there is no return date. The second is that the list of authorized organizations is not public and it is not known what criteria have been used for the selection. In Europe several voices They have already expressed their frustrationalthough the problem of the old continent is another: technological dependence on third parties and the lack of an ecosystem of alternatives to match. In the background lies another problem that was revealed with the blockade two weeks ago and that the launch of GPT-5.6 has confirmed: the most cutting-edge AI companies and models in the United States have to go through the government filter and we do not know if this will be the modus operandi from now on. If so, this way of proceeding could be a liability in the AI ​​race precisely for the country that currently has the advantage. In Xataka | China has two ideas to win the AI ​​race: invest a fortune and leave NVIDIA with almost no margin In Xataka | Anthropic is at the most important moment in its history and has a warning: we must lift the AI ​​accelerator Cover | Xataka with Gemini

The most powerful supercomputer in the world is in China. The other part of the story is even more interesting

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The biannual TOP500 list with the most powerful supercomputers on the planet has given a striking surprise in its June 2026 edition. The Chinese LineShine system, installed at the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center, has debuted directly at number one. It thus displaces the American supercomputer El Capitan, which had dominated the ranking for years. China has not managed to lead this classification since 2017, thus breaking a decade of North American hegemony. Unprecedented raw power. The performance tests used to configure this list leave no doubt: LimeShine has achieved 2,198 exaflops of performance in the benchmark HPLcompared to 1,809 exaflops for its American rival. The Chinese machine is therefore 20% more powerful than the flagship of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It is a whole new milestone in global supercomputing. Surprise: zero GPUs. The performance is extraordinary, but even more so is the way this supercomputer has been created. Most modern supercomputers rely heavily on GPUs, specialized graphics chips from Nvidia or AMD, for massive data processing. However, LineShine uses CPUs instead of focusing everything on GPUs, something that differentiates this supercomputer from its rivals and makes the feat even more striking. Heart ARM. The fundamental pillar of LineShine It is the LX2 CPU. The data they point because it has been designed by Huawei, and in each of those CPUs we have two dies HBM computing and memory. Each die It has 152 ARMv9 cores that have EVS and EMS supportwhich allows the system to process vectors and matrices in an exceptional way even without GPUs. In total LineShine has 304 of these processors with a total of 13,789,440 cores. Avoiding vetoes. One of the reasons that have undoubtedly contributed to this design decision is the US trade war with China. Tariffs and export bans on hardware and software have made things very complicated, especially when it comes to getting Nvidia GPUs for AI processing. Despite all this, China has once again demonstrated an astonishing ability to advance technologically. Another curiosity: the system has been built without public funds from the Chinese government. Source: TOP500.org AI clusters don’t compete here (but they would “win”). This prestigious list had always offered us that vision of the most powerful computing systems in the world, but today the panorama has changed. It has done so because the AI ​​clusters created by big technology are probably more powerful than any of these systems. As explains Jimmy Goodrich of the University of California, “if hyperscalers competed with their systems, ‘fastest’ in the world wouldn’t even be in the top five.” That phrase, yes, has crumbs. But it’s comparing pears with apples. However, the supercomputers on the TOP500 list and the AI ​​clusters that hyperscalers are building to meet global demand are very different. The root problem is in floating point precision. Classic supercomputers like El Capitan are designed for high-fidelity scientific simulations, where the slightest rounding error can be fatal. That is why they operate under the FP64 standard with which tens of decimals are calculated: it is a slow and expensive process in energy, but extraordinarily precise. AI rounds with joy. In contrast, AI models are very resistant to numerical “noise.” They don’t need perfect precision to recognize patterns or generate text. That allows AI chips to use reduced precision formats like FP16, FP8, or even FP4. By processing much shorter numbers, they multiply their speed and efficiency significantly. So when an AI cluster achieves tens of exaflops, it does so rounding up quite happily. These machines are exceptional for AI tasks, but they do not threaten the future of traditional supercomputers. Europe (and Italy) and supercomputing. If we look in detail at the list, we see great news for European supercomputing. The HPC7 system created by Eni has entered directly at number 6 on the list, while Jupiter Booster (Germany) is at number 5. Europe has four systems in the top 10 of the TOP500 list (two of them, from Italy), and eight in the top 20. Spain is still present on the list thanks to MareNostrum 5which yes, drops from 14th to 16th place. In Xataka | The EU wants to close the gap in the race for AI with 750 million euros. And it is good news for Barcelona

Claude Fable 5 is the most powerful public AI model in history. Also the most expensive, exclusive and frustrating

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When Anthropic presented Claude Mythos Preview two months ago, he did it with a singular message: it is so powerful that you will not be able to use it. That, of course, caused everyone to want access to it. Well: Anthropic has just introduce Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5its new AI models directly derived from that. There is good news, but also bad news. Like Mythos, but capped as a precaution. Anthropic already warned that Claude Mythos Preview was a spectacular tool for finding security vulnerabilities. That made it especially juicy for cybercriminals, so the company decided that only a few trusted entities (under its Project Glasswing) would have access to the model. That learning has now been applied, because in this announcement we have two different (and layered) versions of the model: Claude Fable 5: a model with all the capabilities of Mythos Preview, but with notable security measures that prevent it from being used for malicious purposes. As soon as the model detects that we are asking something “dangerous”, it avoids the question and even forces the use of an inferior model, Claude Opus 4.8. Clear examples: questions about cybersecurity or the development of biological weapons, for example. Claude Mythos 5: This version is somewhat less capable than Fable 5 in terms of cybersecurity, but will only be available to “a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers.” It is the natural heir to Mythos Preview, and according to its creators it is even better than the original version. Claude Fable 5 / Mythos 5 simply sweeps the most demanding benchmarks on the planet. There have never been more powerful models. Anthropic’s internal testing shows that we are facing the most powerful AI models in history. In all benchmarks – including the new FrontierCode programming, much more demanding than SWE Bench Pro – the scores of Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are simply spectacular, well above those of their rivals. The jump from Claude Opus 4.8 is really surprising, but it leaves GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro far behind (they don’t compare with the recent 3.5 Flash). This is a brutal blow to Anthropic’s table, and we will see how both OpenAI and Google respond. Claude Fable 5 is amazing. Ethan Mollick, well-known AI popularizer, has had access to Fable 5 for a few days and is amazed by the experience. With this model he has managed to complete projects such as east of the isochronic map that previous models had never solved, and it has done it almost “the first time”. In one of the cases Fable 5 worked for 9 and a half hours straight to produce a code called Concord of data analysis. Their conclusions are compelling: Last year (when working with GPT-5 Pro) I called him “work with a magician”: you recite the spell and something happens. With Fable, the spell has become so powerful that I’m no longer sure I’m the wizard. I feel more like a patron. I describe what I want, pay for it and evaluate the result. The conspiracy takes place somewhere I can’t see, in hundreds of small decisions over which I never have a say. Work has gone from being a process to being a result. I no longer direct; charge. The criticism is unanimous. Andrej Karpathy, who recently signed by Anthropic, commented on X how this is a qualitative leap that for him is of the same relevance as the one that Claude 4.5 represented in November. That model began the overtaking of OpenAI: this puts it even further away (at least, for now). Other tweetersemployees or not from Anthropic, make it clear that this is an important leap in the capabilities of AI models. It’s only been a few hours since the launch, but everything points because we are indeed facing a notable leap in quality. Consume tokens like there’s no tomorrow. But in the face of that fascination, the criticism. Discussions on Reddit reveal how users who have started using it have quickly detected the problems associated with this release. The first of them: Claude Fable 5 burns tokens like there is no tomorrow. Its consumption is enormous, and the quotas for Pro and even Max accounts run out in minutes if we use the model intensively. If it already seemed to us that we were exhausting the limits of the free or quick payment accounts, with Claude Fable 5 that feeling worsens: Fable 5 is fantastic, but we can barely use it often with the Pro or Max plans because those dreaded messages about waiting X hours to continue using it quickly appear. Extremely cautious. Anthropic has been very serious about avoiding misuse of Fable 5, and as soon as it detects anything suspicious it “brakes” and “downgrades” the model so that at that moment the one that is activated is Claude Opus 4.8 (which is not bad at all). The problem is that users are detecting that the model takes completely harmless prompts as dangerous. Although in Anthropic indicate Although these security measures are activated in less than 5% of sessions, what users are detecting is that they are activated much more. Fable 5 can get silly. Not only that: Fable 5’s own design means that if it encounters a prompt that it detects as dangerous, the model tries to avoid the response and automatically reduces your capabilities (‘nerfing’) without you knowing. It gets a little sillier on purpose, so to speak. As Anthropic itself explains on the system card, We have implemented new measures that limit Claude’s effectiveness in requests related to the development of cutting-edge large-scale language models (LLMs) (for example, in creating pre-training pipelines, distributed training infrastructure, or designing machine learning accelerators). Using Claude to develop competing models already violates our Terms of Service, but enforcing this restriction through our security measures prevents giving an advantage to those users most willing to violate those terms. Unlike our cybersecurity, biology and chemistry interventions, and distillation attempts, … Read more

CATL wants a battery as powerful as gasoline. And he will trust his plan: lithium-air

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CATL has prepared a very interesting roadmap for us over the next few years. With an energy transition increasingly accentuated in the automotive industry, there are several battery technologies that will fight for permanence in the next decade. Wu Kai, chief scientist of CATL and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, advertisement At the Equipment and Energy Forum 2026, the company has identified lithium-air technology as the strategic front where the next great global battery battle will be fought. It is the first time that CATL makes this bet officially public. Why this ad matters. CATL controls 47% of the global electric vehicle battery market, according to April 2026 datawhich means we are talking about the world’s largest battery manufacturer by market share. The company has also accumulated five consecutive years as a leader in global energy storage, with a share of 30.4% in 2025. So, when its chief scientist points out a technology as the battlefield of the future, the industry listens. What exactly is a lithium-air battery. Unlike conventional lithium ion batteries, which use heavy metal compounds (nickel, cobalt, manganese) to house lithium ions, lithium-air batteries dispense with that solid cathode and replace these materials with oxygen taken directly from ambient air. The anode is pure metallic lithium. The result is a lighter system with an open architecture, which has led researchers to call them “breathable batteries”. Without so much dead weight inside the cell, the potential energy density skyrockets. The numbers. The theoretical energy density of this technology reaches 12,000 Wh/kg, a figure comparable to that of gasoline, which is around 13,000 Wh/kg. The lithium ion batteries that equip electric cars today offer between 250 and 270 Wh/kg. Solid-state batteries, considered the next big leap, aim for about 500 Wh/kg. The lithium-air prototypes already developed in the laboratory have exceeded 1,200 Wh/kg, more than four times the capacity of current batteries. If this technology were commercialized, we would be talking about electric cars with ranges of more than 1,600 kilometers on a single charge. A problem that comes from the 70s. The lithium-air battery concept is not new. And just as share CarNewsChina, its theoretical foundations were laid out in the 1970s. The problem is that taking it from theory to practice has proven extraordinarily difficult. The cells are very sensitive to humidity and carbon dioxide present in the air, which causes rapid degradation. Added to this are problems with catalyst stability and a very short useful life. But there is real progress. In 2024, a joint team from the University of Illinois Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and California State University Northridge managed to demonstrate a lithium-air battery capable of exceeding 700 charge cycles in an environment similar to real air. A year later, in 2025, Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology developed a prototype that reached 1,200 Wh/kg with a life of 1,000 cycles at room temperature. According to collect CarNewsChina, this design is not expected to be ready for use in vehicles before 2030. The key to the breakthrough was, among other things, replacing liquid electrolytes (which are flammable) with a solid matrix composed of a ceramic polymer with lithium-rich nanoparticles, which stabilizes the cell during high-energy cycles. How does this fit into CATL’s strategy. The company already has experience in converting alternative technologies into market products. An example is sodium-ion batteries, which were proposed by the company in 2020 and This same year they are already being mass producedinstalled in models such as the GAC Aion UT, the Changan Oshan 520 and vehicles from Geely, Chery and FAW. According to explained Kai in the forum, the company’s strategy is planned in the short term to offer mature technologies to meet current demand; in the medium term, solid state batteries to improve the experience in premium vehicles; and in the long term, lithium-air with the intention of exploring the physical limits of energy storage. Between the lines. Betting on lithium-air now is not waiting for a product for next year. Just like points out Gasgoo, for large companies, investing in these frontier technologies serves above all to accumulate patents, secure strategic positions and build technical reserves, not to generate short-term income. It is something like a move to avoid surprises in case another company decides to announce a disruptive technology. Cover image | CATL In Xataka | Peugeot, on PureTech engines: “We recognize that we have done things wrong”

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

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

Tenerife was known for the sun and its beaches. It will soon house one of the five most powerful supercomputers in Spain

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Tenerife will have a new supercomputer. I already had two with the names of Teide and of Anagaand they will now be joined by a new and promising project called the Atlantic Supercomputing Center. With it, it is hoped to turn the Canary Islands into a new nerve center for retaining and attracting talent in the technological field. Up to 10 million euros of investment. This new project It is a collaboration of the Cabildo of Tenerife and the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies (ITER) with the German technology giant Bechtle. It will have an initial investment of 5.5 million euros, which could rise to 10 million as its four phases are deployed (two for storage, two for computing) oriented by the demand for the center and its resources. The expansion is flexible and Bechtle will supply the latest technology available at the time of project execution to avoid the use of obsolete components. The fifth supercomputer by power in Spain. By integrating with the existing nodes, the Atlantic Supercomputing Center will achieve a combined power that will place it as the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the entire national territory. It is also expected to enter the prestigious TOP500 list which brings together the most powerful supercomputers from around the world. Hybrid architecture. The rise of AI has meant that the project has an architecture that will allow working with both more conventional workloads and those intended for projects in the field of artificial intelligence. Thus, its architecture will be hybrid: CPU: although it has not been specified which processors it will use, it has been indicated that the supercomputer will have 13 nodes with 288 cores each, which will allow for more than 3,000 process cores to execute scientific tasks, for example. GPU: there will also be four specialized nodes with a total of 32 Nvidia H200 NVL cards, which will allow training of large language models and the development of AI projects. Performance: this expansion is expected to provide between 1.3 and 1.4 PFLOPS of global computing power (close to 300 TFLOPS in CPU and almost one PFLOP in GPU), indicated those responsible for the Cabildo de Tenerife and ITER. Hours instead of months. The president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, stood out that local laboratories, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of La Laguna among others will be able to access these resources to be able to compute in hours what previously could take months. Juan José Martínez, from ITER, recalled how during the pandemic the Teide-HPC supercomputer It was one of the five centers in all of Spain who sequenced and monitored the biological variants of COVID-19. From the audiovisual sector to the aerospace sector. Among the sectors that will benefit from this computing capacity will be those associated with the audiovisual industry. The Teide-HPC infrastructure was for example used to render scenes from the film ‘Tadeo Jones 2: The Secret of King Midas‘. It will also be the core of the project management of canary satellite constellation. Attracting talent. This facility also wants to become an element that reinforces the role of the Canary Islands as a technological hub. Having a supercomputing infrastructure like this wants to help attract technology companies that promote highly qualified young employment and therefore retain and attract new talent in this sector. Efficiency. Although the power of Teide HPC will greatly benefit from these new resources, advances in photolithography will mean that the new supercomputer will occupy only a quarter of the previous physical space. Its environmental impact will also be zero: the infrastructure will be located in ITER’s own facilities, and will be powered entirely with clean energy from its wind farms and photovoltaic plants. Image | POT | ITER In Xataka | The muscle of many supercomputers depended on GPUs: China is trying another way to surpass the best in the US

China is about to launch the most powerful cargo drone in the world. And it will move it with hydrogen

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The aeronautical industry has been researching and experimenting for quite some time. with hydrogen turboprop engines on airplanes. A Chinese company is about to break that barrier, as it has taken off an airplane with one of these megawatt-scale engines. Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC) has completed the first test flight of the AEP100, installed on a 7.5-ton cargo drone, in an operation that took off from Zhuzhou airport, in Hunan province. what has happened. The device flew for 16 minutes, reached an altitude of 300 meters and traveled 36 kilometers at a speed of 220 km/h before landing without incident. According to AECC, the engine operated stably throughout the flight profile and responded as expected. Chinese state media present it as the world’s first flight with a hydrogen turboprop of this power. Why is it relevant?. Yes, it is a short, unmanned, low-altitude test. But this means that hydrogen aeronautical propulsion leaves the laboratory and test benches to face real flight conditions. AECC maintains that the country already has a complete technological chain for hydrogen aeronautical engines, from essential components to system integration. direct combustion. The AEP100 does not use fuel cells to power an electric motor. It burns liquid hydrogen directly in a turbine cycle, just as a conventional turboprop would burn kerosene. This is the main difference with other bets. Airbus, for example, has prioritized fuel cells on its roadmap to a hydrogen commercial aircraft in 2035, while China has opted for direct combustion. Combustion is more complicated to tame in engineering, but offers much higher power density, something key to scaling up to larger aircraft. What aircraft is it intended for?. The AEP100 is custom designed for the W5000, a twin-engine cargo drone developed by Chinese startup Air White Whale. According to the manufacturer’s data, we are talking about a device with a maximum takeoff weight of 10.8 tons, 5 tons of payload, more than 65 cubic meters of hold and a range of 2,600 kilometers. Just like share from China Daily, when it completes its first flight, it will become the most powerful transport drone in the world, surpassing the Norinco Luca. Deadlines. Yuan An, general manager of subsidiary AE General Aviation Power Tech, has explained The engine is in the final phase of the type certification process and they hope to obtain approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China in 2027. The process is progressing faster than usual because the AEP100 shares a core with the AES100 turboshaft, which shortens procedures. Yuan has also assured that the AEP100 and its variants will “end the heavy dependence on foreign engines” in Chinese general aviation. Where will it be used first?. For now, we have to forget about getting on a hydrogen-powered passenger plane. The bet goes through what they call the “low altitude economy”that is, situations in which unmanned cargo drones, inter-island logistics or controlled transport routes to remote areas are used, being scenarios where hydrogen refueling infrastructure, certification and operational economics are more manageable than in passenger aviation. Yuan remember also that the United States has more than 275,000 general aviation aircraft, while in China there are only a few thousand. The problems that remain unresolved. Burning hydrogen in a turbine is no small feat, as you can imagine. It burns at higher temperatures than kerosene and with a much higher flame speed, which requires the design of systems that avoid autoignition, flame flashbacks and combustion oscillations. Added to this is storage, since liquid hydrogen requires cryogenic temperatures close to -253 ° C, heavily insulated tanks and, most likely, redesigning the geometry of the fuselage itself to accommodate it. Sustainability. aviation Today it is around 2% of global CO₂ emissions, a figure that could skyrocket in the coming decades if the sector maintains its dependence on fossil fuels. China aims to reduce its exposure to imported oil in an increasingly complicated geopolitical scenario, so hydrogen can fit into both narratives. And now what. China’s road map mark 2028 as horizon to validate similar technologies in small unmanned aircraft, helicopters and urban air mobility, 2035 for applications in broader regions and 2050 for large commercial turbofan aircraft. The first flight of the W5000 with the AEP100 installed is expected in the coming months and will be the next litmus test. Cover image | CCTV In Xataka | For China, DeepSeek is more than just AI: it is the key to creating an industry that makes them independent of Nvidia

NASA prepares chips 100 times more powerful

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Human beings explore because they need to understand what lies beyond. We have done it by crossing oceans, climbing mountains and, for decades, sending machines to places where we cannot yet be. But a space mission has more to do than get there. For example, collecting data, interpreting it and sending it to Earth to do science. This is where the great challenge appears, because space requires computers capable of functioning for years in an environment that punishes electronics like few others. High Performance Spaceflight Computing. This is the name of the response that NASA is preparing. According to the agencythe project seeks to develop together with Microchip Technology a new space processor capable of offering up to 100 times more computing capacity than current space computers. We are not talking about a chip designed for a laptop or a mobile phone, but rather a system on a chip, or SoC, called to be integrated, once certified for space flight, in future ships, orbiters, rovers, manned habitats and deep space missions. SoC, a familiar term. This is the type of architecture that is common in our smartphones and tablets: small devices that concentrate essential elements of a computer in a single piece. The difference compared to an isolated processor is precisely there. An SoC is not limited to executing instructions, but can integrate CPUs, computing support units, advanced networks, memory, and input and output interfaces. On Earth we use it to gain efficiency and reduce size. In space, moreover, it has to survive. The challenge. As we say, space punishes electronics in a way that we rarely see down here. According to NASA, a processor intended for real missions must withstand electromagnetic radiation, extreme temperature fluctuations and high-energy particles capable of altering the operation of the systems. We are not just talking about losing performance, but about errors that can force a ship to enter “safe mode”, with non-essential operations turned off until mission teams resolve the incident. A key phase. Now comes the time to check if everything that is promised on paper holds up when taken to the physical field. JPL began testing in February and will maintain the campaign for several months, with radiation tests, thermal cycles, shocks and functional evaluations. The agency ensures that the processor is working as designed and adds a striking fact, although still within the framework of the tests: the first indications show that it operates with a performance 500 times higher than the radiation-hardened chips currently in use. More autonomy away from home. Space exploration has a limit that is not resolved with a larger antenna: distance. Between Earth and Mars, ua signal may take a while between 3 and 22 minutes to travel in one direction, depending on the position of both planets in their orbits. That means we can’t drive a rover like someone drives a remote-controlled car. We have seen it in the Martian landings, the famous “seven minutes of terror”, when a ship enters, descends and lands, executing a choreography by itself that from Earth we can only know when it has already happened. On-board computing. NASA proposes that this type of processor will allow future ships to use artificial intelligence to respond in real time to complex situations, analyze large volumes of data, store it and transmit it more quickly. Let’s remember the case of Perseverance which already combined orbital data of Mars, its panoramic camera and a Snapdragon 801 to compare what he saw with information obtained from space and refine his position on the Martian surface. If we want to continue exploring Mars and look further, we will need more and more systems capable of making decisions without always waiting for an order from Earth. Technology that returns. The history of space exploration is also the history of ideas that are born to solve very specific problems and then find a place on Earth. In this case, NASA points to possible adaptations for sectors such as aviation and automotive, in potential uses such as drones, electrical networks, medical equipment, communication services, artificial intelligence and data transmission. It does not mean that we will see this processor in a consumer product tomorrow, but it does mean that the effort to make it more powerful, efficient, scalable and resistant can go beyond a ship on its way to deep space. Images | POT In Xataka | The biggest problem with living on the Moon is its nights. NASA believes it has found the solution to avoid running out of electricity

The energy jets from black holes are so powerful that they can reshape entire galaxies and now we know how to measure it

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It is always said that black holes They gobble up everything that comes close to themfrom matter to light. However, this is not entirely true. In some cases, there is a fraction of particles and energy that, instead of falling inside, does the opposite. It is ejected in the form of jets, known as jets. Although there are some hypotheses about this, the reason why this occurs is not completely known. What is known is that these jets are so powerful that they can even influence the evolution of galaxies. The problem is that it is known that they are very powerful, but not how powerful. Until now, no one had been able to directly measure the power of these jets. However, an international team of scientists has achieved measuring these jets around a specific black hole, thereby opening up a very interesting range of possibilities. The data. These scientists have studied the Cygnus X-1 systemcomposed of a black hole and a blue supergiant star orbiting each other. Using a very novel method, they have discovered that the energy of the jets leaving the black hole is equivalent to that of 1,000 suns. They have also observed that they move through space at a speed of 540 million kilometers per hour and that 10% of the energy that is initially formed in the fall towards the black hole is converted into jets. The background. Until now, no one knew how to measure the power of a black hole’s jets. The only thing that was done was to measure the scars they left in space using calorimetric methods. When freed, they can leave in their wake hot spots and holes in the intergalactic medium. However, As explained in an article by Interesting Engineeringthis is something like wanting to measure the power of an engine by observing the treads of the car’s tires. The important thing is to directly analyze the machinery. And that is precisely what has been achieved now. Indirect measures. In systems formed by a black hole and a star, the black hole feed little by little gas surrounding the star. As it approaches it, the gas begins to rotate faster and faster, generating a lot of heat and energy. Part of that energy does not fall into the black hole, but instead jump outward, forming the jets. In turn, the star releases very intense flows of particles, which give rise to what is known as stellar winds. Those stellar winds can interact with the jets and bend them. And there is the key. The jets cannot be measured as such, but the resistance they offer to being bent by stellar winds can be measured. For example, we can know how strong a person is by analyzing his or her ability to beat someone whose strength we do know in an arm wrestling match. Trajectory changes. The overall trajectory of the jets depends on the momentum flux of both the jets themselves and the winds. Since the momentum flow of the wind can be calculated, it is enough to analyze the trajectory to solve the unknown. The data can also be further refined with a series of computer simulations. The result is a fairly rough estimate of the power of the jets. There are limitations. The biggest limitation of this study is that only one black hole has been analyzed. The procedure would have to be repeated with more jets in more black holes to check if there is a trend and, therefore, if the method is valid. Galactic evolution. Since jets from larger black holes can significantly affect galactic evolution, this method could be very useful to better understand how galaxies form. That is why it is important to move on to the second step and check if the method is reproducible, especially with larger black holes. Image| A supermassive black hole ejects a jet of plasma 3,000 light years long, traveling at almost the speed of light. NASA artist concept In Xataka | We thought that the heart of the Milky Way was an immense black hole. Mathematics has changed this idea for us

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