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Searching for extraterrestrial life has an unexpected new enemy: neighboring black holes

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At the time of search for habitable exoplanetswe usually take into account factors such as whether they are within the habitable zone of their star or whether they have a sufficient amount of water. However, there is another parameter that has not been taken into account until now and that, according to a recently published study, may be decisive: the presence of supermassive black holes in the vicinity of the planet. Even distant black holes. This study, published in The Astrophysical Journalpoints to two types of winds generated by supermassive black holes. Some driven by moment and others driven by energy. The former are lighter, but the latter can be intense enough to leave a nearby exoplanet without an atmosphere. Since the atmosphere is indeed an essential ingredient for life, we should be paying much more attention to large black holes. In fact, if these winds are sufficiently energetic, an exoplanet could be affected even by a black hole located at a great distance. Much more than a living area. Generally, to search for habitable exoplanets, it is taken into account that they are within what is known as the habitable zone. This is a region that is at the right distance from its star so that it is neither too hot nor too cold and therefore the water can remain liquid. In recent years, much more specific factors have been taken into account, such as the proximity of supernovae. These stellar phenomena release so much radiation that it can sterilize life on a planet. They also emit shock waves so large that they can destroy their atmosphere. Since supernovae may be key, the authors of the recently published study also wanted to explore the role of black holes. What they found is very relevant to the future search for habitable planets. Active galactic nuclei. This study focuses on active galactic nuclei. That is, supermassive black holes, with masses billions of times greater than that of the Sun, that are actively feeding. That is, they continue absorbing matter into themselves. But, as is well known, black holes do not only absorb matter. There is also some radiation and particles that are released abruptly, giving rise to something known as jets. The movement of these particles also forms winds that can affect what happens around them. Based on the hypothesis that these scientists had, the more massive a black hole of this type is and the more it is feeding, the more energy it must release, so that the atmosphere of possible nearby exoplanets heats up more, its molecules move faster and escape more easily into space. Therefore, the atmosphere breaks down faster and its probability of habitability is lower. Unlike supernovae, which release energy much more abruptly, in this case it would be done in a sustained manner, so there may be more consequences. The two types of wind. Through the development of simplified models, it was observed that galactic nuclei release winds that, upon impact with the interstellar medium, divide into two streams. If they cool, they cannot expand, so they will have almost no energy. These do not propagate efficiently and have a limited effect on the galaxy. On the other hand, if these winds do not cool, they expand like a bubble, releasing a large amount of energy that can sweep the galaxy and affect the atmosphere of exoplanets along the way. These are the truly problematic ones, so it would be necessary to take into account whether there are any in the vicinity when choosing exoplanets that are candidates for hosting life. Also the ozone layer. It has been seen that these black holes can also release nitrogen oxides that affect the ozone layerin case a planet has it. If this is the case, it does not mean that there is not necessarily life, but it would be limited to the oceans. It would be another factor to take into account. With all these parameters, we can get a much more precise idea of ​​which planets could truly be habitable. Searching for life in the Universe seems to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But the more we know, the smaller that haystack will become. Images | NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman, cmglee In Xataka | The James Webb has broken another historical record: a supermassive black hole older than expected

We have been searching for extraterrestrial life for decades. According to these astrobiologists, we have been doing it wrong all this time

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We are very used to hearing that someone has found possible signs of life in space. Then life is never found, but the trail seems to be there. All of these findings often end up being false positives, something astrobiologists are more than familiar with. However, According to a study just published in Nature Astronomy, They could be overlooking false negatives and that would be serious. Pass life long. What the authors of this study point out is that false negatives could be more common than we think. That is to say, many of the times when it is clearly concluded that there is no life in a place in space, it could be that it did exist, but it had been passed by without being detected. The causes. There could be three reasons why these false negatives occur. On the one hand, no traces of life are preserved. That is, it exists or has existed, but has not left a detectable trace. It could also be that this fingerprint is difficult to detect. Or, perhaps, that the methods used to detect it have limitations. Along these lines, the authors of the study give an example. Let’s imagine that there is a living being that, through its metabolic reactions, generates some gas that is understood as a trace of life. Maybe oxygen or methane. But let’s also imagine that there is a geological activity in that place that captures that gas from the environment. I wouldn’t have time to measure it. Therefore, the detection of life would have to be covered from other points. The risks. There are two main risks of not paying attention to false negatives. On the one hand, instruments that would help find even more traces of life would be deprioritized. If we do not find anything that justifies its development, we limit the possibilities of continuing searching. On the other hand, if life is not adequately searched for, resources from other planets where such life is found could be exploited. We would destroy it before we even knew it existed. Solutions. These scientists believe that searching for patterns using artificial intelligence could be an option. If the usual methods have not worked so far, perhaps we should ask an algorithm to detect patterns that have gone unnoticed to find new search paths. Along the same lines, it would also be necessary to study the terrain better and pay attention to anomalies. For example, if an unconventional type of oxidation is detected on a planet, inexplicable with what we know on Earth, it could be that it was associated with some form of life. It may not look like the oxidation carried out by terrestrial living beings, but who says it has to be the same? You have to think outside the box. Combine different types of work. In short, these scientists consider that to adequately search for life it is necessary to combine laboratory experiments with modeling and field work. But, above all, it is important to change the questions we ask ourselves. What if it has already been found? In 2019, a former NASA scientist told in an article for Scientific American that, according to himhis agency found life on Mars, but accidentally destroyed it. Supposedly, it all happened in the 1970s, in an experiment that was part of the Viking mission. This consisted of depositing nutrients in the soil and checking if gases typical of microbial decomposition were produced. Then, to ensure that it was not a coincidence, they would repeat the process, but adding a substance lethal to living organisms to the soil. In that case, gases should not be produced. And no, they were not produced, so there was something alive generating the gases. It was great news, but NASA did not publish that result, because when trying to replicate the experiment it came back negative. In science it is very important to replicate the results, so they concluded that it must have been a false positive. However, this former member of NASA, Gilbert V. Levin, believes that they destroyed life unintentionally and that is why they could not replicate it. This is no longer an anecdote. Most likely, they would not have found life. However, this story shows that we are always more predisposed to false positive than false negative. The focus would have to be changed a little. Maybe then we will finally find some life beyond our own planet. Images | Eric Erbe and Christopher Pooley (illustrative image of E.coliit has nothing to do with the study)/ Brett Ritchie (Unsplash) In Xataka | Life on Earth underwent a spectacular change 540 million years ago. We have a new explanation why

We had been searching for the origin of the most massive black holes for years. The answer is a cosmic carom of extreme violence

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All black holes They are the fruit of a very violent activity. However, there are some for which the known processes are insufficient. Now, an international team of scientists has discovered how the most massive black holes in the Universe form. It is a process so violent that it needs a huge star cluster to support it. Two groups of black holes. This team of scientists has analyzed the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC4), which includes 153 detections of black hole mergers through gravitational waves. By analyzing all the available data focusing on the spin of black holes, they have seen that all of them can be divided into two large groups. On the one hand, black holes of lower mass, which arose from an ordinary stellar collapse. On the other hand, very massive black holes, arising from secondary mergers in the environment of dense star clusters. Okay, now that you understand. Generally, black holes are formed when a very massive star that has already run out of fuel collapses. This gives rise to an explosion in which the outer layers of the star are expelled, leaving only a very dense core. It is so dense that it generates a great gravitational pull and nothing can escape from it. On the other hand, there are such massive holes that do not fit with this process. They are believed to be second generation black holes. That is, two black holes they merge and then the result merges with another black hole, becoming much more immense. That would be the second group that has been detected in the GWTC4 catalog. Something doesn’t add up. This black hole merger process is so violent that, as soon as the first merger occurs, the result would fly away like a rocket For it to stay in place and merge with a third black hole, something is needed to retain it. These scientists have discovered that these are densely populated star clusters. There are so many stars in them that the gravitational attraction of all of them keeps the black hole still in place. And what does spin have to do with it? Spin is a parameter that refers to the spin of black holes. When formed in the conventional way, the spin is predictable and perfectly aligned with the star that gave rise to the black hole. On the other hand, when they are formed by a process as violent as these consecutive fusions, the spin takes a random direction, but a value predictable from the sum of the spins of the rest of the black holes. These scientists, therefore, saw that all the data coincided with that hypothesis: consecutive mergers in the environment of a very populated star cluster. A forbidden zone. On the other hand, these scientists found a forbidden strip of stellar size in which black holes could not form. There are small or huge ones, but not medium ones. Although this is something that was intuited, the complete set of data they have obtained gives a twist to what is known about the formation of black holes. Relationship with nuclear physics. As explained by these scientists, this detected mass limit seems to be related to a series of nuclear reactions that take place inside stars. Stellar nuclear reactions are nuclear fusion. Humans have learned to control nuclear fission, but it poses risks that would be solved if we also mastered nuclear fusion. Until now It is being a complicated challengebut perhaps these new findings, obtained thanks to gravitational wave analysis, could shed a little more light on this research. Everything adds up. Image | NASA, ESA, STScI and A. Sarajedini (University of Florida)/NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) In Xataka | What happens if you fall into a black hole, explained simply in an overwhelming NASA simulation

We have been searching for a cure for HIV for decades. The tenth cured patient in the world gives us a starting point

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Receiving an HIV diagnosis several decades ago was practically a death sentence for many patients who saw that there was no possible treatment to eradicate this virus and that sooner or later would develop the disease. But little by little, treatments for prophylaxisof attenuation, reaching an undetectable viral load, and now we are seeing the first cases of complete eradication. There are several cases. We are facing a new historical milestone in medicine, and it is no wonder, since an international consortium of researchers has documented the tenth case in the world of a person who has managed to be cured of HIV, or rather, who has managed to eliminate the virus from their body so as not to develop the disease. The latter is known as the ‘Oslo patient’. A 62-year-old man who has not taken antiretroviral treatment for four years and has no trace of the virus, which has led to a published article in Nature where a great research process is recounted, something that has been possible thanks to the work of the international consortium IciStem 2.0, led by the Oslo University Hospital and with a fundamental participation of Spanish science through the center IrsiCaixa. His story. The clinical history of the ‘Oslo patient’ follows a pattern that is increasingly familiar to scientists, similar to that of the famous ‘Berlin patient’ in 2009. Diagnosed with HIV at the age of 44, the patient developed severe hematological cancer in 2020, for which he had to receive a stem cell transplant with the aim of regaining normal blood cell genesis. But here the key to success was that the donor of these stem cells was his own brother, who had a rare and coveted genetic alteration known as the CCR5-delta32 mutation. Because. When we see the term ‘mutation’ we automatically go to the negative meaning and all the diseases that having a mutation in the DNA can cause. But the reality here is that the CCR5-delta32 mutation acts as a cellular “shield” by modifying the receptors of a type of defense cell, T lymphocytes, so that HIV be unable to anchor to them and infect them causing its destruction. In this way, by replacing the patient’s immune system with his brother’s cells, doctors not only treated the cancer, but “rebooted” their defenses, making them immune to the virus. From here, HIV could not access its defensive cells, which is the mechanism it uses to become chronic and become ‘undetectable’ to the immune system. What happened next? As the researchers report, two years after performing the transplant, the medical team decided to withdraw antiretroviral therapy under strict monitoring, since it is a truly critical moment for patients. From here, and several analyzes later, it was seen that there was no sign that the virus was multiplying again. In the end, viral DNA was not detected either in peripheral blood tests or in biopsies of intestinal tissue, which usually acts as a “reservoir” where the virus hides. And this is where the Spanish group, through IrsiCaixa, has had a lot to say, since its research teams are currently monitoring 40 participants in similar conditions. What does it mean? Although it seems that we have achieved the definitive cure, the reality is that this is not the case. Right now we must understand that hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a very high-risk and extremely clinically aggressive procedure that initially leaves the patient without any defenses and then they trust that the transplant will work and they will not reject it. All of this makes its mortality rate very high, so it is only ethically and medically justified in patients suffering from a potentially fatal blood cancer, not as a standard therapy for people living with HIV, who today can lead a normal and healthy life thanks to daily antiretroviral treatments. It’s the way. Although it is not the definitive therapy, it does open the way to developing genetic therapies such as CRISPR or cellular treatments such as therapies CAR-T that manage to imitate this immunity in the patient’s own body in a safe, scalable way and without the need to undergo a transplant from an external donor. Although to get here there is still a long way to go for science. Images | National Institute of Allergy In Xataka | The HIV epidemic never left Africa. Now a new treatment wants to make a difference

We had been searching for the genetic inheritance of Chernobyl for almost 40 years. A new study has just found it

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For decades, one of the great unknowns of science after nuclear accidents like Chernobyl has been whether prolonged exposure to radiation leaves a genetic mark that can be passed on to offspring. And although until now I had not found anything relevant, advances in different genomics have begun to shed light on the fact that it is not as harmless as we thought for the different generations that are passing. New evidence. This is precisely what a team from the University of Bonn has pointed out when publishing an article in which they point out that they have found evidence of a “mutational signature” that passes between different generations in the children of men exposed to radiation after the Chernobyl disaster. How it was done. To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the complete genomes of different groups to search for genetic material. Here, sequencing data from 130 children of Chernobyl liquidators, who received radiation exposure of up to 4080 mGy, were reanalyzed. Additionally, 110 children of former German military radar operators exposed to radiation up to 353 mGy were recruited. In order to compare the data, the control was a group of 1,275 children from families that did not have exposure to ionizing radiation. What was wanted? The easy thing here could be to look for generic mutations that are ‘common’, but the team focused on the mutations de novo grouped. These are nothing more than multiple new mutations in a very short segment of DNA, specifically within a range of 20 base pairs. The results. What they found here was that the rate of these clustered mutations is significantly higher in children of parents who have been exposed to radiation. Specifically, in the group of people from Chernobyl a rate of 2.65 mutations per offspring was observed and in the group of radar operators (who received less radiation) the average drops to 1.48 grouped mutations. In the control group, that is, those people who had not received any radiation, these mutations were 0.88, which serves as a basis to begin comparing and drawing conclusions. Interpretation. With all this data, the researchers point out that the number of these mutations increased proportionally to the radiation dose to which the father had been exposed. And to know why, we have to look at the reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are generated due to this radiation and that induce breaks in the DNA chain of humans. This is fundamental, because when this damage affects the germ cells in the sperm and the repair mechanisms are activated, different errors occur that accumulate mutations that end up being transmitted to the next generation. Its consequences. The fact of having a mutation in your DNA due to radiation does not mean that you will have offspring with three eyes, and here science indicates that the probability of these alterations triggering a genetic disease in your children is minimal. In fact, science points to a much more everyday risk factor such as the father’s age, since paternal aging naturally adds between 1 and 2 mutations. de novo isolated for each year of age at conception. Images | Jorge Fernandez Salas Dasha Urvachova In Xataka | We have been searching for radioactive “monsters” for decades. What we have found is a rapid evolution

We have been searching for radioactive “monsters” for decades. What we have found is a rapid evolution

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When we think about animals and radiation, our minds may imagine a three-eyed fish from The Simpsons or gigantic beasts from science fiction movies. But the reality is that those areas of the planet that have suffered a radioactive disasterpresent a much more complex and often more fascinating reality from an evolutionary point of view. The data. Decades after the accidents Chernobyl in 1986, Fukushima in 2011 and the historic disasters in Mayak, science has begun to collect enough data to understand what occurs when the fauna returns “exclusion zones” that have been abandoned by humans. The most recent studies tell us that there are no monsters, but there are accelerated genetic changes, forced adaptations and physiological scars. The Chernobyl case. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become an involuntary nature reserve, since, without humans, fauna has proliferated, but genetic studies tell a story of invisible stress. One of the most classic and revealing studies focuses on the barn swallow, Since far from being immune, these birds have acted as bioindicators of the disaster. Research has documented an unusually high frequency of partial albinism in its plumagean external sign of genetic instability. In this case, an increase in the germline mutation rate of between 2 and 10 times has been recorded compared to control areas in Italy or uncontaminated rural Ukraine. As a consequence, between 1991 and 2006, were documented high frequencies of physical abnormalities in adults, suggesting that radiation continues to exert a constant selective pressure. The case of the dogs. In Chernobyl, perhaps the most surprising discovery in recent years comes from the descendants of pets that were abandoned during the evacuation. A genomic analysis A recent study of feral dogs living near the nuclear power plant shows a different genetic structure from dogs living in the city of Chernobyl, just a few kilometers away. In this case, scientists have identified changes in candidate genes such as XRCC4, essential for DNA repair. This suggests a multigenerational selection where the dogs with the best mechanisms to repair cellular damage caused by radiation are those that have managed to survive and reproduce. In this case, a meta-analysis covering 45 studies and 30 species confirms that the effect on mutation rates is large and persistent, being curiously stronger in plants than in animals. The case of Fukushima. If we go to Japan, it is where we find one of the most recent nuclear disasters and it is where we have been allowed to observe the immediate impact and the medium-term adaptation of nature. One of the most notable points is found in a new study published in January of this same year, which tells how thousands of domestic pigs escaped from their abandoned farms and began to mate with wild boars in the forest. Here it is pointed out that this encounter not only produced hybrids between pigs and wild boars, but also has accelerated the biology of these animals. And we are not facing “radioactive mutants” like the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, but rather something biologically more interesting: a accelerated play machine that has managed to dilute its domestic genes in record time. How it looked. The researchers analyzed the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother, and also the nuclear DNA of 191 wild boars and 10 pigs in the area between 2015 and 2018. The results suggested that, although the hybrids look like wild boars, many hide a secret in their maternal lineage. The key to this is the biological difference between both species, since, although the wild boar has a strict annual breeding season, domestic pigs have a continuous reproductive cycle to breed all year round. From here, it has been seen that hybrids that descend from a mother pig They inherit this rapid reproductive cycle, which has caused a rapid generational rotation, detecting more than five generations of hybrids in just a few years after the disaster. In short, wild boars have seen their reproduction accelerate when a few years ago it was much slower. A genetic paradox. Here comes the most curious part of the study, since if these animals reproduce so much, why don’t we see pigs everywhere in Fukushima? The answer is in the massive backcrossing in the field genetic. And the population of wild boars in the area is immensely higher than that of pigs escaped from farms, so hybrids almost always end up mating with pure wild boars. In this way, if hybrid mothers have many offspring thanks to their domestic “engine” and those offspring are crossed again with wild boars, the result is that the pig’s nuclear DNA, which defines appearance and most traits, is quickly diluted. An evolutionary improvement. With this dilution, the study indicates that, although the mitochondrial DNA reveals the domestic origin of these new wild boars, the nuclear genome and its appearance are almost indistinguishable from that of a wild boar. This is why they are, for all practical purposes, reproductively “improved” wild boars that have erased their visual domestic pig trace. The case of the butterfly. If we continue in Fukushima, we find ourselves another interesting case in the butterfly pale grass blue which was monitored between 2011 and 2013. In this case, a reduction in the size of the butterfly’s wings and a delay in growth was observed, which was combined with the appearance of deformities in the eyes and wings. After the initial spike of anomalies, the population appeared to stabilize, but this suggests a “purge” process: the most sensitive individuals died quickly, leaving a more resilient surviving population, an example of accelerated evolutionary adaptation. The Mayak disaster. Although few people know it, before Chernobyl there was this disaster that received very little media attention and which had protagonist to the Techa River in the Urals (Russia). Here, between 1949 and 1952, waste was dumped, creating a historical laboratory for chronic exposure. Technical reports and dose modeling in aquatic organisms such as fish in the Obi-Techa river system remind us … Read more

We have been searching for the origin of life in hot puddles for years. Bennu has shown that radioactive ice works just as well

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When the capsule OSIRIS-REx mission landed in the Utah desert in September 2023, NASA knew it had a treasure on its hands. We are talking about a bit of black dust that was collected millions of kilometers from Earth and that was about to rewrite one of the most important chapters of science: the origin of life. What we knew. Until now, the predominant theory regarding the origin of life told us that for “cook” all the basic components of life, such as amino acids, heat and liquid water were needed to make a kind of hot chemical soup. However, science has just flipped the script: the bricks of life They are not only formed in heatbut they can be born in the most extreme cold and under gamma radiation. And that completely changes our understanding of how we got here, and also of the possible presence of life in any corner of the Universe. The importance of Bennu. Definitely is the protagonist of this whole story, and it is nothing more than an asteroid of about 500 meters in diameter which functions as a fossil from the early solar system. But the most interesting thing is that it is approximately 4.6 billion years old, the same age as the Earth, although, unlike our planet, its surface has not melted or been drastically altered by geological processes throughout its ‘life’. And little by little we are learning more about this asteroid thanks to the samples brought by OSIRIS-REx that had already been confirmed in preliminary analyzes an unusual abundance of carbon, nitrogen, water and organic compounds. But what the team led by Penn State University has now found goes one step further. The surprise. This same team, when analyzing the isotopic composition of the amino acids present, especially glycine, came across a chemical signature that did not fit with the classical theory of formation in hot water. A radioactive freezer. Until now, we thought that amino acids in asteroids were formed primarily through aqueous alteration processes: ice melts from heat, liquid water interacts with rock, and voilacomplex organic chemistry. However, science now suggests that liquid water is not necessary for amino acids, an essential molecule of life, to form. Simply from simple ice they can arise without much problem. And there are many of these in the universe. The catalyst. The other important factor in this formation was the energywhich in this case came from gamma radiation emitted by radioactive elements that were abundant in the early solar system. And the energy could not come from thermal heat, since this process occurs in icy environments, long before the asteroid was compacted or heated enough to have liquid water. This explains why we found amino acids both in asteroids that underwent a lot of water heating and in those that remained “drier” and colder. Life, it seems, is more stubborn than we thought and can begin to develop in the most hostile conditions of the vacuum of space. An increasingly complex menu. But we are not just talking about simple molecules, since analyzes of Bennu samples have identified a variety of compounds. Among these is tryptophan, which is an essential amino acid, much more structurally complex, and vital for terrestrial life. Besides, DNA and RNA components have been detectedin addition to ammonia and amines, surpassing in richness many samples of famous meteorites such as that of Murchison. Backlash to Panspermia. If amino acids can easily form in irradiated ice grains in the solar nebula—before the planets even formed—it means that these “ingredients” are spread throughout the solar system. The fact that Bennu, a B-type carbonaceous asteroid, is packed with these compounds reinforces the idea that Earth didn’t have to produce all the components of life itself. A constant shower of asteroids and meteorites during the late intense bombardment could having “sown” our planet with a pre-made deep space biological starter kit. That is why in the end looking at a grain of Bennu dust is looking at ourselves. Or, at least, to the chemical great-great-grandparents who made us here today. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | NASA has just announced that this large asteroid has a 1% chance of impacting Earth. That’s not normal

They became millionaires searching for dinosaur feces

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Finding gold, diamonds or oil has been the origin of many of the greatest fortunes in history. A stroke of luck or investing in excavations in the right area and at the right time were the key to amassing an enormous fortune. However, sometimes that fortune comes with much less “glamorous” finds. In the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th century, coming across the remains of a dinosaur was very striking. But encounter his feces could become a lucrative business made many millionaires lucky. There’s a new gold: dinosaur dung At the beginning of the 19th century, the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning He came across some strange dark and irregularly shaped nodules on the coast of Dorset, a county in the south of England. The paleontologist studied these strange fossilized remains and discovered that they were full of fish scales and small fragmented bones trapped in their structure. That intrigued experts who began studying them in more detail. In 1829, the geologist William Buckland examined them and determined that these remains were fossilized feces of ichthyosaurs and called them coprolites, kopros (dung in Greek) and lithos (stone). These fossils from the Lower Cretaceous (110 million years ago) were preserved in soft, phosphate-rich seabeds. As the writer Martin Sayers highlighted in an article in History Extraalthough they looked like common rocks, their high mineral content triggered a unexpected “gold rush” to find them. in 1845 John Stevens Henslowa Cambridge professor, revealed that these curious fossils not only had a paleontological interestbut they also contained up to 40% phosphoric acid that they had absorbed from the clay soil, and it was perfect for compost after grinding it and treating it with sulfuric acid. William Buckland analyzed coprolites After the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom, like the rest of Europe, suffered a pressing shortage of food, so the fertilizer use that increased crop productivity skyrocketed. In this context, finding raw materials to manufacture these fertilizers became a lucrative business. That is where the depositions that the dinosaurs were dispersing throughout what is now southwestern England come into play. Coprolite fever According to Sayers’ account, in 1858, Robert Walton leased land in Cambridge for £200 per acre per year, which was in itself a small fortune. His intention was to create one of the first open air mines to extract in an industrialized way the numerous coprolites that had been found in the area. The starting signal was given for a business that made many seekers millionaires. Coprolite mine in Trumpington (Cambridge) According the studies At St Mary’s Twickenham University in London, thousands of miners flocked to the area and deep shafts were dug to extract the coveted dinosaur droppings. With its extraction not only did the businessman earn a lot of money, he also paid very juicy salaries. A miner earned 10 shillings a day washing and sorting coprolites, twice as much as a farmer. This caused all agricultural activity in the area to become mining, industrializing the southern part of the United Kingdom. The demand for labor was such that workers and coprolite seekers began to arrive from all corners of the country, making the “coprolite fever“. Fossilized dinosaur poop fetched £3 a ton, and a mine like the one Walton had created produced around 300 tonnes of coprolite. That is to say, if you had enough money to pay the rent for the land and the labor, the profitability of the extraction could make you earn a lot of money. This unleashed madness in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Bedfordshire. From 1850, local and foreign miners flooded the county, excavating areas of southern England like burwellReach or Coldham’s Common with simple methods: dig holes 6 to 10 meters deep and scoop out clay with buckets or carts to filter its contents and find the valuable coprolites. According to the historical recordslocal production reached 90% of British phosphate, some 54,000 tons annually in 1877, valued at more than £150,000 a year. The data points Because, in 1874, the dinosaur dung industry contributed around 628,000 pounds annually to the British economy, exceeding by more than 20,000 pounds the contribution made by materials such as tin, which in those years was a key product in United Kingdom exports. The risk of extraction was very high because the clay terrain made the excavations prone to collapses, burying the workers, and diseases from contaminated water plagued the camps of coprolite seekers. Even so, the fever lasted decades and was revived during World War I, driven by demand for phosphorus to make ammunition for the army. However, once declared the armistice in 1918the coprolite mines in the United Kingdom were sealed again and all the product was imported from the US, where the coprolites were closer to the surface and their extraction was much simpler and cheaper. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | Unsplash (David Valentine), Wikimedia Commons (United States Geological Survey, Diego Delso, National Portrait Gallery), Cambridgeshire Collections

The technology industry has been searching for the “next smartphone” for a decade. Now he thinks he found it with AI

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In the last decade, wearables have become intrinsically associated with health care and sports. And although in 2025 we can make the same association, there are a growing number of companies and devices that have committed themselves to turning them around to turn wearables into vehicles for AI. The leaders of some of the main big tech companies already They have glimpsed the end of the mobile and between the options (in practice, still very green) these wearables with AI appear, which today are more of a complement. In search of the new iPhone. In any case, the industry has been looking for mass hardware after the smartphone for almost two decades. The glasses seem to start by advantage, but the initiatives are many and very varied. In any case, it is no longer just about becoming the winning format, it is about materializing a device that covers needs yet to be defined and where the smartphone has set a very high ceiling. In fact, smartwatches have not come close to overshadowing it. AI glasses have an advantage. Of course, they are the best positioned. In the past CES 2025 we saw ‘smart’ glasses (although that semantics typical of the era of the failed Google Glass has already been banished in favor of the surname ‘with AI’) even in the soup with the promise of immersive and hands-free experiences, but Meta is the one who has landed and sold its product best. Makes perfect sense: Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated who believes that glasses are the ideal format for AI. And for Meta, AI is his new Multiverse. After all, as we have seen, glasses are a discreet and convenient way towards multimodality: visual, through their lenses; and oral, with its integrated microphones and speakers. But it doesn’t matter if we talk about Meta’s glasses or those of Googlethe new glasses smart They no longer look like a hulk, they are designed to be worn all day and their purpose is to interact with AI. Pendants, pins and everything else. Other gadgets that accompany you throughout the day for constant listening come into this mixed bag: from the Bee AI bracelet to the LimitLess pendants or Friend passing through the ring Stream Ring or the difficult to describe Plaud NotePin: it looks like the capsule of Xiaomi bracelets and as such, it can be worn on the wrist, on the neck and even as a tacky pin. These initiatives have not gone unnoticed by the large companies, which have made a move by opening their portfolio: Bee AI bought Amazon in summer and LimitLess did the same Goal just a few weeks ago. old acquaintances. AI is also being integrated into existing devices: Samsung and Google have put Gemini on their WearOS watches, Garmin has a premium subscription to analysis with AI for its watches, Fitbit is testing an AI trainerthe same thing that Apple does with its Watch or the AI translation on AirPods. Even the rings Oura they have their advisor with AI. Every breath you take…We mentioned above that AI glasses were born to be worn all day, something that can be extrapolated to the bulk of the devices that we have been listing. For AI assistants to work well and offer something extra on the mobile, they need to know a lot about the user and there is no better way to do this than on a wearable that is with you 24/7. Disturbing but true. In this field there are unknowns such as what format will be successful and whether it will be as successful or more successful than the smartphone (even if it is buried), but there are two unquestionable facts: that there is a war to have hegemonic AI among big tech and that the industry has seen wearables as the ideal vehicle to implement it. In Xataka | Pendants, bracelets and “buttons” on the forehead: new AI wearables listen to you (and record) all day In Xataka | The voice recorders seemed dead. AI and new hardware are making them irresistible again Cover | Javier Lacort and Applesfera

We have been searching for dark matter for 90 years. Now a Japanese man believes he has found his “fingerprint”

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Since Fritz Zwicky suggested the existence of dark matter in 1933, the reality is that it has been one of the great ghosts of modern physics, generating many debates about its existence. The little we know indicates that this matter is there because we see how its gravity pushes galaxiesbut we have never been able to see it or touch it. It is invisible. Or at least, that’s what we believed until now. And to ‘see’ this matter you have to be a true superhero, since it does not emit, absorb or reflect light. Something that makes it completely invisible to telescopes around the world. But it is not something that is a small part of what surrounds us, but which makes up 85% of the total matter in the universe. But now there is hope to have more information about this great mystery of physics thanks to a study Professor Tomonori Totani of the University of Tokyo claims to have found the first direct evidence of this elusive substance. He has not seen it directly with his own eyes, but he has detected the “smoke” of his gun: a very specific gamma ray signal emanating from the halo of our own Milky Way and that eerily coincides with theoretical predictions of how dark matter behaves. A large amount of data. To understand the discovery, you have to look at the sky with gamma ray eyes. Totani has used a total of 15 years of data accumulated by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (LAT). But the important thing was undoubtedly knowing where to look: in the galactic halo. That is, the ‘quiet’ outskirts of the Milky Way, excluding the galactic disk to avoid interference. What he found when cleaning the background noise was surprising: an excess of gamma rays with a very specific energy peak, located at 20 billion electron volts (20 GeV). The importance. So far so good, but… Why is it important? Basically, because it doesn’t fit what we would expect from normal astrophysical sources, like pulsars or supernova remnants. However, it fits like a glove for the WIMP theory. This is a theory that basically suggests that dark matter It is made up of WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). According to physical models, when two of these particles collide, they annihilate each other, releasing a cascade of energy in the form of gamma rays that would be detected in the universe now. And that is their conclusion: the detected signal is compatible with WIMP particles that have a mass of 500 times that of a proton. This would, therefore, be the fingerprint that gives the most information about dark matter, although it does not stop there. The shape is not a point on the map, but a soft, spherical halo that surrounds the galaxy, just as dark matter is distributed in the cosmological simulations that physics has made. The same goes for consistency, since the signal persists even when different background models are used and other known sources of noise in the universe are removed. There are precedents. This isn’t the first time someone has yelled “Eureka!” In the past, excess gamma rays have been detected at the Galactic Center (known as GCE), but the scientific community has tended to think that this signal comes from undetected millisecond pulsars, rather than dark matter. The key to Totani’s study is that he has looked where no one was looking in such detail. By moving away from the center and analyzing the diffuse halo, it is where he has found a much cleaner signal that does not invite so many doubts about its origin. There are still doubts. The study itself admits that the calculated cross section (the probability of interaction) is higher than the upper levels established by the observation of dwarf galaxies, which are often used as scale for dark matter. This means two things: either our models of the density of dark matter in the Milky Way are incorrect (which is possible, since there is a lot of uncertainty in the profile of the halo), or we are looking at a new and unknown astrophysical phenomenon that mimics dark matter. A great mystery. If this finding is confirmed, we would be facing one of the greatest discoveries in physics of the 21st century. It would confirm that dark matter is composed of particles that we can detect (and not primordial black holes) and open a new door for physics. go beyond the standard model. But as we say, this still needs to be verified by a second laboratory such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) that may have the ability to detect these gamma ray spectral lines. Image | A. Schaller (STScI) In Xataka | Exactly 100 years ago we began to understand how the world works. Quantum physics has radically changed our lives

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