ruin

It is the key day if you do not want a tree to ruin the August eclipse

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Can you imagine preparing everything to see the solar eclipse this August 12 and that right at the moment of truth there is a tree that blocks your views? This is more common than it seems, but don’t worry: it can be prevented with a simple drill. This April 30 is the ideal time to do it. a symmetrical orbit. Due to the symmetrical orbit of our planet, the Sun describes exactly the same arc in the sky on two dates of the year with the same separation from the solstice. You could say that they are twin dates when it comes to the location of the Sun in the sky. The date symmetrical to August 12 is April 30. That’s why, from the official website of the Trio of Eclipses They recommend that this Thursday we go to the place we have chosen to see the eclipse and check that we have good visibility of the Sun. We must do it at 8:30 p.m., as that will be when the occultation occurs in August. This way, we will avoid disappointment when push comes to shove. If the place is bad. If at 8:30 p.m. there is an obstacle that makes it difficult for us to see the Sun, we have time to change the location. Just walk around the area and look for that place where you can see the Sun directly, with nothing in the way to prevent it. If you can’t that day: In case you cannot go to the chosen place on April 30, don’t worry. Two days before and after also good results are obtained. Always at the same time, of course. The bad thing is having to travel. Unfortunately, the eclipse will not be seen equally throughout Spain. It will only be observed in its entirety in a strip that goes from the north of Galicia to almost all of the Balearic Islands, passing through Asturias, Cantabria, La Rioja, the north of Castilla y León and the Valencian Community, La Rioja, and a part of the Basque Country, Navarra, Madrid, Aragon, Catalonia and Castilla la Mancha. In the rest of the country it will be a partial eclipse. For this reason, many people will travel far from their homes on August 12, in search of a luckier environment. Some music and art festivals have even been organized around this astronomical phenomenon.. In case you have decided to travel far, it will not be so easy to do a drill. There you will only have to trust that the locals have done it and can give you a hand when the time comes. More eclipses. The one on August 12 will be the first of what is known as Iberian Trio of Eclipses. And in mainland Spain we will enjoy three consecutive years with a solar eclipse. The dates will be August 12, 2026, August 2, 2027 and January 26, 2028. Those in 2026 and 2027 will be total. That of 2028, cancel. Since they will be seen in different parts of the country, almost all of us will have a more or less close point to which we can travel to see it. And, of course, there will always be a symmetrical date on which to carry out the drill. For now, let’s go step by step and start with the rehearsals on April 30. Even the first Spanish woman astronaut, Sara García Alonso, has echoed these advice. If you have the opportunity, be sure to take the test. You will avoid having to run on August 12. Image | POT In Xataka | The trio of eclipses that await Spain on the horizon: an unprecedented and historic chain between 2026 and 2028

Something that happened 30 km from the North Pole six weeks ago is about to ruin Palm Sunday. The culprit has a name and surname

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There is a line that connects something that happened 30 kilometers from the North Pole six weeks ago with the foremen looking at the weather report on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. And that line has a name: a cold episode as real as it is unusual. -35 degrees at 5,500 meters. This meteorological indicator is a perfect summary: they are thermal values ​​typical of the harshest part of winter at the end of March. However, we should not overstate the issue as has been done in recent days. So what’s going on? The configuration is simple: a powerful blocking anticyclone is establishing itself between the south of the British Isles and the north of the Peninsula. That will channel a polar mass over the continent. Spain in particular will be under the influence of a slightly warmer branch, but (still) very cold for the time. Palm Sunday (i.e. March 29) will be the ‘climax’ of the onset of cold: The two main weather models in the world indicate -35 degrees. A good part of the eastern third of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands will be in full “climate January” during the first half of Easter. The good side. According to AEMETthe anticyclone will block the rains during most of the festivals. It cannot be ruled out that “someday something will sneak in”, but scant rainfall is expected in most of the west and south of the peninsula. What can we expect? That’s the most complicated part of all this. The context is complex: an exceptional winter (the wettest in at least 47 years), a historic number of high-impact storms (at least 19) and reservoirs at 83.2% of their capacity. But the underlying mechanism complicates everything even more. In early February, sudden stratospheric warming occurred at the north pole, fragmenting the polar vortex. What we are seeing now is a coherent scenario with that. Holy Week, in this context, acts as a media amplifier. What’s going to happen. Because make no mistake, the snow level below 600 in the north is going to collapse many roads (just when more people are moving), the uncertainty in the northwest is going to complicate life for processions and agriculture can affect many plants in full bloom. Now, all of this falls within the typical Easter ‘playbook’. So no, it won’t be a perfect week: but we certainly shouldn’t expect a “universal flood” either. Image | Tropical Tidbits In Xataka | The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts

why drinking water while eating doesn’t ruin your gastric juices

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In the era of TikTok and short videos that provide us with information very quickly, nutritional advice spreads like wildfire. One of the last is related to how bad it is to consume water while eating food, since this can “dilute” stomach acid and worsen digestion. The problem is that science is not at all clear that this really happens, and even very important societies of experts They have denied their relationship. How the stomach works. To understand why this is not the case, you first have to know how digestion works. A priori, those who defend that water worsens digestion argue that the liquid “washes” the gastric juices and causes a decrease in stomach acidity that prevents enzymes such as pepsin (which breaks down proteins) do their job, because they need reduced acidity. But the reality is very different, since your stomach is really ‘intelligent’ and has a complex regulatory system that allows it to secrete hydrochloric acid in a dynamic way. In this way, if food enters or the pH becomes more alkaline, the digestive system detects it and automatically compensates, secreting more acid through a quite complex hormonal pathway that involves several cells in the walls of our stomach. The real impact. In this way, drinking a little water, like a glass, while eating barely raises the gastric pH (makes it more basic) for about 3 minutes, as science has pointed out. After this time, the stomach resumes its normal acidity and does not affect overall digestion. Something to keep in mind in this case is that both liquids and solids do not compete in the same way in the stomach, since water passes quickly through it, while solid foods can spend hours ‘kneading’ in the gastric juices to decompose into all their most basic elements. This way, the prestigious Mayo clinic points out that water during or after meals does not cause digestion problems or dilute digestive fluids in a problematic way, but rather facilitates them. It has benefits. Far from being the enemy of good digestion, water plays a role a fundamental role in which this is carried out efficiently. One of these effects is precisely the role that water has when it comes to acting together with acids and enzymes to soften food and facilitate the creation of chyme, which is the mass into which food is converted in the stomach. In addition, it helps dissolve certain parts of food so that the nutrient is more accessible upon arrival in the intestine and is vital for hydrating the soluble and insoluble fiber that we ingest. In this way, avoiding water with meals can lead to temporary dehydration of the bolus, worsening intestinal transit. There are exceptions. As always, the rule is not universal, but there are people who may be advised not to drink water while eating. one of these exceptions It is in people who have esophagogastric reflux or GERD, where the specialist can recommend less water consumption with meals to avoid the increase in pressure in the stomach that could trigger this reflux. Images | Olena engin akyurt In Xataka | Fibermaxxing sounds like just another internet hype. But it’s just what doctors recommend.

Saudi Arabia wants to invest 38 billion dollars to be the capital of gaming. The Iran war is going to ruin everything

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First it was footballafter video games. Saudi Arabia wants to become the world capital of entertainment at the stroke of a checkbook (and at the same time whitewash his authoritarian regime). Now their plans are in jeopardy because of the war in Iran. 38,000 million. This is what Saudi Arabia plans Invest to become a gaming powerhouse. However, the conflict in the region and Iran’s attacks have put their plans in check. In an interview during the Game Developers Conference echoed by Bloombergthe CEO of Savvy Games has said that “This escalation clearly does not benefit the region and will likely change or cool the perception of it as a stable and calm place where people want to go.” He hopes that the war will end soon and they can continue with their business plans. Entertainment capital. Savvy Games Group, subsidiary of the Saudi Sovereign Fund (the same as bought Electronic Arts for 50,000 million), has very ambitious plans for the region, such as the esports district in Qiddiya Citya megaproject focused on entertainment where there is giant amusement parksstadiums for video game competitions and much more. Their plans go beyond buying companies, they want to hold events that attract gaming enthusiasts. In 2025, Rihyad hosted the Esports World Cup, an event that lasted seven weeks and featured events related to up to 25 esports. They also want to attract foreign investment and large video game companies to move there. It sounds great, until the threat of Iranian drones appears and the dream is shattered. Vision 2030. All this is part of a long term plan promoted by Prince Mohamed bin Salmán since 2016, whose main objective is to diversify its wealth beyond oil and turn the country into an attractive destination for investors. This serves another purpose: to project a more moderate image beyond its borders. Iran attacks. Iran has targeted key infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, such as the Ras Tanura refinery and the Shaybah sitemilitary bases with American presence such as Prince Sultan and, on the rebound, even residential neighborhoods and diplomatic areas of Riyadh. Several of these attacks were intercepted, but it is clear that Saudi Arabia is a target for Iran. There are other companies concerned, such as Wynn Resorts, which is building the country’s first casino on the artificial island Al Marjan. They had to stop the works a few days ago due to the conflict, but They have already resumed work. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | The US has turned off the tap on satellite images of the Iran war. A Chinese startup has left it open

Data centers in space promise to save the planet. And also ruin the earth’s orbit

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Wikipedia should update its page dedicated to the word “ambition” to include Elon Musk’s photo. The tycoon has announced a megaproject according to which his two companies SpaceX and xAI will work together to launch a constellation of one million satellites that will function as data centers in orbit. The problem is that although the idea It has its advantages, it also has an impact potentially terrible for the future of our planet. Energy efficiency. That is the great advantage of the space data centers that Musk proposes. In space, solar panels can perform optimally without the obstacles posed by Earth’s atmosphere and climate. According to SpaceX, the reduction in the cost of launching its rockets makes space a perfect alternative for AI data centers. The plan. He project that has been presented to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) consists of placing these satellites in sun-synchronous orbits between 500 and 2,000 km high. That would allow the satellites to act as interconnected nodes among themselves and also with the satellites of the Starlink network through optical laser links. The plan, of course, will have to overcome important challenges like refrigeration. Dissipating the heat generated by millions of chips in the vacuum of space is complex, since satellites act as “natural thermoses.” And radiation, what? The problem of cosmic radiation will also have to be solved. Advanced chips are very vulnerable to processing errors caused by energetic particles. It seems that AI processors are surprisingly resistant to this type of problembut the deployment of such chips on a massive scale in space could introduce new conflicts. On-site repair, nothing. In today’s data centers, if a problem arises, a technician can physically travel if necessary to solve it. In space, physical repair is not feasible, which would force a strategy of assuming that those chips that become functionally damaged will be completely lost. SpaceX would have to continuously launch substitutes to compensate for this “mortality” of components, which complicates logistics and costs. There are optimistic perspectives in this regard, and for some the bills do work out. Kessler syndrome. But above all there is a latent concern in the field of space security. Launching a million new satellites into already congested orbits multiplies the probability of chain collisions, validating the theory proposal in Kessler syndrome. A single major collision could generate a cloud of debris that would take decades to clear, further threatening climate monitoring missions or even global communications. There are already ideas to “regulate orbital traffic” by coordinating it, and SpaceX has its own “situational awareness” system, Stargazeto avoid problems, but of course, no system is completely perfect. air pollution. Without forgetting that the atmospheric impact is equally worrying. Some are estimated 25,000 Starship flightsand the re-entry of satellites that end their life cycle or die prematurely would cause metals and particles to be released into the upper atmosphere. According to experts, these chemical residues could damage the ozone layer and cause uncertain climate consequences. You can’t see anything. The astronomers, who They had already protested about Starlinkthey will have an even bigger problem with this new idea. The threat to astronomy is clear, because given the altitude and size of these satellites, it is likely that they form a bright band visible even to the naked eye, making scientific observation difficult and even changing the way we see the sunset. Orbital computing may have advantages, but before launching it we should remember that space—especially the space we see—is a shared and finite resource. In Xataka | Starlink’s dominance in space begins to move: another company already has permission for a constellation of 4,000 satellites

Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion

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The story of Shayne Coplan and Polymarket is one of those striking cases that you like to see in the past. And the founder of this company practically started from bankruptcy in a makeshift bathroom as an office to close a $2 billion investment on the New York Stock Exchange. Now, the prediction markets platform that he founded in 2020 has just reached a valuation of $8 billion after the agreement with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the NYSE. The takeoff. Coplan’s situation in 2020 was not exactly an example of the American dream. Just like shared a while ago In a publication in X, he was seen working from a bathroom converted into an office, with hardly any money and alone in charge of the project. Five years later, its platform has become the largest prediction market in the world, where users bet on the results of real events, from elections to sports or culture. Wall Street’s bet. ICE has announced an investment of up to $2 billion in cash in Polymarket, valuing the company at approximately $8 billion before the capital injection. The agreement turns ICE into a global distributor from Polymarket data, which will provide sentiment indicators on topics relevant to financial markets. Additionally, both companies will collaborate on tokenization initiatives that combine traditional financial markets with blockchain technology. How the model works. Polymarket allows users to express their opinions by buying and selling shares on possible event outcomes. Each operation is executed peer-to-peer using smart contracts. Markets grow with the number of participants, and prices reflect the perceived probability of each outcome occurring. The platform gained notoriety for the accuracy of their predictions during the 2024 US presidential electionwhere he managed billions in bets. roller coaster. Polymarket’s trajectory has not been linear. In 2022, federal regulators forced the platform to block US users after an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company operated from abroad for three years. This year, Polymarket bought QCEXa CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, to return to the US market. The operation came weeks after prosecutors closed an investigation into whether the company had allowed access to American users despite the ban. Return at the perfect time. The changing regulatory climate under the Trump administration has favored emerging sectors such as event contracts and cryptocurrencies. Polymarket received an undisclosed investment in August from 1789 Capital, a firm endorsed by Donald Trump Jr., who later joined the company’s advisory board. What’s coming now. Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of ICE, admits proudly that the investment combines an institution founded in 1792 (the NYSE), with a company that “is revolutionizing decentralized finance.” For Coplan, the agreement marks the entry of prediction markets into the traditional financial system. It remains to be seen whether these markets can maintain their growth and become truly useful tools for institutional investors. For now, ICE has bet heavily on the response being positive. Cover image | Shayne Coplan and Matthew Reeves (BFA) In Xataka | There is a worrying symptom in the technological economy: Silicon Valley prefers to buy itself rather than invest in the future

It was practically impossible for a satellite to “ruin” the photo of another satellite. With Starlink already go twice

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Until recently, the idea that a terrestrial observation satellite accidentally captured another satellite in the flight was as an unlikely coincidence as finding a needle in a haystack. Space is an immense emptiness and The satellites move very quickly. But in the last year we have witnessed this phenomenon twice. And on both occasions, the protagonist has been a Spacex Starlink satellite. In a secret military base in China. On August 21, one of the new Satellites WorldView Legion of Maxar It passed over the Gobi desert, in China, with the aim of photographing the Dingxin Air Base: a high secret installation where China proves its most advanced fighters. The satellite achieved the image, but an unexpected intruder appears in it. A silver ship with two large solar panels and three spectra of colors cross Maxar’s photo, creating what an executive of the company described on LinkedIn as “accidental art.” What we see is actually a single satellite, the Starlink 33828immortalized in different wavelengths on one of the most sensitive places of the Chinese army. The trick is in the camera. The curious multicolored image is explained by how observation satellites and the incredible speed at orbit move. These satellites do not take a single image, but a series of images in different spectral bands almost simultaneously: a high resolution (panchromatic) and several in different colors (red, green, blue …) of lower quality. Then, an algorithm merges all this information to create the final photo, already clearly color. The problem of that “almost simultaneously” is almost. When the objective is the earth, which is relatively still with respect to the satellite, the system works perfectly. But when another satellite crosses in the field of vision at a relative speed of almost 1,400 meters per second (about 5,000 km/h), the camera captures it in a slightly different position in each of the color layers. The result is that spectral effect with several colored shadows. The Google Maps Starlink. This is the second time that a Starlink satellite accidentally sneaks into an alien photo. As We count in April 2025a Reddit user discovered a very similar effect on a Google Maps image on a rural Texas area. On that occasion, the photo was taken by a Pleaiades European satellite, and the result was even clearer: five silhouettes of the same object, corresponding to the close, red, blue, green and pancromatic infrared bands. The enormous amount of satellites in low orbit is turning an astronomically unlikely event into a new normality. Why are Starlink satellites. Because they are a majority. Spacex already has More than 8,300 Starlink in orbitmore than all other satellite constellations together. With its plans to expand the network to more than 30,000, the probability that one of them is crossed in the viewfinder of another satellite is growing. But also, they fly low. To offer a low latency internet connection, the Starlink operate about 500 km altitude in the low terrestrial orbit. This is the same orbital “highway” that most use the earth’s observation satellites, such as the Worldview Legion of Maxar (which are 518 km). His paths are destined to cross. Beyond the visual anecdote, these images are the symptom that the low orbit is increasingly congested, which forces perform constant evasion maneuvers To prevent collisions. Image | Maxar In Xataka | What types of satellites exist: guide not to get lost in a gigantic network of which we are increasingly dependent

China has resolved the mystery of why there are people who ruin seeing streams: the “榜一大哥”

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A 37 -year -old man has mortgaged his house, sold his shares and indebted to spending 16 million yuan (2.2 million euros) donating money to a streamer called Lili (name modified by the original source, Tencent Newsto preserve its anonymity). His wife has put a lawsuit to try to recover family heritage. Why is it important. Chen Ping’s, told by SCMP, It is not an isolated case. In the Chinese courts there are 302 civil lawsuits related to “Streamers“And” Donations of streaming“. A residual figure considering the 1.4 billion inhabitants of China, but striking as an emerging trend. Of the 67 most relevant sentences, most plaintiffs are women of compulsive donors trying to recover family assets. The Virtual Donations Market in China was already by 140,000 million yuan (about 17,000 million euros = in 2019 and it is projected to reach 417,000 million in 2025 (about 49,000 million euros). The context. The “榜一大哥” (‘Big Brother‘) They do not seek sex or a traditional romantic relationship. They seek to be important in a community where money determines status. The platforms have gamified intimacy: each donation increases your “level of closeness” with the streamerthat will treat you as someone special, remember your name and give you private access by chat, generating that false feeling of intimacy. In detail. Chen Ping, the protagonist of the case, began donating small quantities that climbed a lot in a short time. The platforms offered “Blind boxes“Where paying real money you manage to send random gifts to Streamers to open them live. On your part. Like a casino, but where the prize is not money but virtual social status, let’s say. The streamer Lili had private groups from WhatsApp only for his greatest donors. Chen became administrator of his room streaming. His wife discovered intimate conversations where he wrote “I wait for you in bed” and she sent him videos in underwear. Yes, but. Chen He insists that he was only looking for “friendship” and “be treated as someone important.” In real life he was a manager in his father’s company, but he felt too controlled. In the sTreaming It could be he who started and ends relationships. The figures: In 612 days, Chen spent 13.5 million yuan in his main account and 2.5 million in another high school (1.6 million and 300,000 euros respectively). Only Lili directly donated 1.87 million yuan (220,000 euros) in more than 5,000 transactions. The rest vanished in blind and miniguegos boxes. On the other side. His wife, Ou Qing, lost three judgments trying to recover the money. Chinese courts have no clear jurisprudence: Some consider “consumption” donations (unrecoverable, therefore). Others consider them “gifts” (recoverable if there is adultery). In the end, Chen and Lili never met physically, so legally there was no “inappropriate relationship.” Deepen. This phenomenon is not exclusively Chinese. The Streamers They have discovered that selling artificial intimacy is more profitable than selling content. Muraunth already reinvented line 906 pulling from chatbot. And three years ago we talked about addicts to donate on Twitch. For that false feeling of intimacy, a special talent is not even necessary, just maintaining the illusion that the donor is special. It is the gamification of male loneliness. In Xataka | China has won the data war without stealing any. We have given them to them Outstanding image | Xataka

The CERN prepares a colossal bet by 2070. Some physicists believe it can take it to ruin

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Santiago Folgueras is a young Spanish physicist who is leading an interesting project in CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). During The conversation I had with him Several months ago he told me in detail What is your Intrepid projectwhich will be linked to the future HL LHC (High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider or high luminosity LHC). However, what caught my attention was the enthusiasm with which he told me about FCC (future circular colliding), which will be the machine that will presumably happen to HL LHC. If the itinerary that has planned the CERN continues its course as has done so far the HL LHC will be ready at the end of this decade. In 2030. and will be able to produce no less than 40 million collisions per second. The amount of information that will generate will be so huge that it will be necessary to put a system that is able to analyze the data in real time and make a decision regarding the collision that has just been produced. This is precisely the purpose of the HL LHC: drastically increase the number of collisions if we compare them with those that have occurred in the previous LHC iterations. The luminosity measures, in fact, how many potential particle collisions are produced by surface and time unit. It is measured in reverse femtobarns, so that each of them is equivalent to 100 billion collisions between protons. Of course, these are billion on a long scale, so an reverse femtobarn are 100 million million collisions. FCC design is under discussion Since the accelerator experiments began, in 2010, until the end of 2018, which was the moment in which its activity ceased, 150 reverse femtobarns occurred inside. According to the current planning of CERN technicians, the modifications required by LHC to increase its luminosity should be able to produce 250 reverse femtobarns every year until reaching 4,000 during the entire period of activity. The purpose of CERN physicists is that the FCC is able to reach a 100 tev energy during the second stage of the project In any case, the most interesting is to remember that the improvements that CERN technicians are introducing in the LHC respond to the need to find fissures in the standard model with the purpose of Expand our understanding of the world of particles. Some of the questions that CERN’s physicists have the hope of being able to answer with the help of HL LHC are what it is and what properties it has The dark matterbecause Neutrinos have mass And why There is no antimatter In the universe. There is no doubt that they are exciting questions. However, CERN’s physicists plan does not end the LHC HL. When all its operation cycles finally conclude this institution plans to build the FCC, an accelerator much larger than the LHC HL and capable of reaching much higher energies. Presumably will have a circle of 100 km (that of the current LHC measures 27 km), and its construction will start in 2038. The purpose of CERN physicists is that the FCC is capable of reaching during the second stage of the project an energy of 100 TEV (Telelectronvoltios). To train a precise idea about what we are talking about we just have to remember that the current LHC works with an energy of 16 TEV. If everything goes as scheduled, the FCC should be prepared not beyond 2070. According to the CERN, the first phase of the project, which does not the complete plan, will cost about 17,000 million dollars. Vladimir Shiltsev, a physicist specialized in accelerators at the University of Northern Illinois (USA), calculates that the entire project will cost At least 30,000 million dollars. According to Nature Some physicists, such as Jenny List, a researcher in the Hamburg Electron Syntron (Germany), criticize this plan and defend the construction of a linear accelerator of up to 33 km instead of a circular one. According to them, the linear option will be much cheaper and will allow the same experiments as a circular installation. We will see why option finally opt, but there is no doubt that these discussions are necessary to make the right decisions. Scientists still have plenty of time to weigh everything and direct the project by the most conducive path. Image | Piotr Traczyk/Cern More information | Nature In Xataka | The CERN has an ambitious plan: it wants to demolish the special theory of Einstein’s relativity

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