secret

While everyone was looking at Hormuz, Russia has found a much bigger secret route. And drones do not stop arriving in Iran

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During the Cold War, Western intelligence services came to suspect that some Soviet freighters that apparently transported grain or machinery were actually hiding military equipment and technology sensitive under false covers. The problem was that, once inside certain internal routes controlled by Moscow and its allies, tracking them became extraordinarily difficult even for the greatest naval powers on the planet. While the world watches Hormuz. For months, the Strait of Hormuz has become the perfect symbol of Western pressure on Iran: US aircraft carriers, oil tankers diverting routes, marine insurance fired and constant threats on one of the great energy bottlenecks on the planet. However, while all international attention was focused there, Russia and Iran have been consolidating a much less visible and probably much more uncomfortable route for Washington: the Caspian Sea. It The New York Times said the weekend. This enormous space of inland water in northern Iran, usually ignored in geopolitical analyses, is being transformed into a true strategic highway to move goods, drones, military components and technology away from the direct reach of the United States. The photo. The most revealing image came when Israel bombed the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali, in the heart of the Caspian, in one of the most significant attacks of its campaign against Iran. The target was not in the Persian Gulf or Hormuz, but hundreds of kilometers further north. It was a clear sign that real logistical warfare no longer revolves solely around the most famous strait on the planet. The route that keeps Iran alive. The importance of the Caspian for Tehran has grown spectacularly since the pressure on Hormuz intensified. Russian and Iranian ships now transport wheat, corn, sunflower oil, animal feed and all kinds of of essential supplies who previously arrived via more vulnerable routes. Four Iranian Caspian ports are working at full capacity to absorb this growing traffic, while Moscow has begun to redirect millions of tons of goods that previously crossed the Black Sea. It turns out that the true strategic core is not in the cereal. According to US officials, Russia is using that route to send drone components to Iran to help it rebuild part of the arsenal lost during the last fighting with Israel and the United States. The relationship is especially symbolic because for years It was Iran that supplied Russia with Shahed drones for the war in Ukraine. Now the flow has partially reversed: Moscow manufactures its own versions under license and returns technology, components and military expertise to Tehran using the Caspian as a protected corridor. A perfect sea to avoid sanctions. The great advantage of the Caspian for Russia and Iran is that it is an extraordinarily difficult to control from outside. Unlike the Persian Gulf, where the US naval presence dominates much of the maritime traffic, in the Caspian they can only operate the five coastal countries. The United States cannot intercept ships there or impose direct blockades. Furthermore, a large part of the ships sail with transponders offdisappearing from satellite tracking systems and feeding an increasingly opaque network of “ghost ships.” In fact, Western analysts describe the Caspian as the ideal place for discreet military transfers and sanctions evasion. Dark shipping traffic has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and both Moscow and Tehran have perfected methods to hide real shipments, routes and operators. It is no coincidence that Ukraine attacked the Russian port of Olya in 2024, accusing it of being a logistics center for the transfer of Iranian drone components. Nor that Israel Bandar Anzali will hit. Everyone seems to have understood that a logistical rearguard is being built there that is much more resistant than it appears. Moscow’s strategic obsession. Plus: for the Kremlin, the Caspian is not just a temporary solution derived from sanctions or the war in Ukraine. Russia and Iran have two decades imagining a gigantic trade corridor that connects the Baltic with the Indian Ocean, crossing Russia, the Caspian and Iran to avoid routes controlled by the West. The project includes new portsrailway lines and renewal of aging fleets, although many of these plans remain on paper due to lack of resources and the geographical difficulties of the Caspian. Still, the war has accelerated the strategic logic behind that idea: creating an alternative system of commercial and military circulation outside the reach of Western sanctions. For Putin, furthermore, the balance is delicate. Needs to support Iran as a regional ally and military partner, but do so in an all-too-visible way could deteriorate even more so its relationship with Washington and with several Arab countries important for Russian energy trade. The Caspian offers precisely that: sufficient support, but far from the media and military focus that Hormuz dominates. America’s great blind spot. Much of the Western concern arises from a very uncomfortable feeling: for years, the Caspian hardly occupied any space in American strategic planning. Experts in Washington recognize that the region functions almost like a black hole diplomat divided between different military commands and bureaucratic departments. Thus, while the world observed aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf or drones over Ukraine, Russia and Iran took advantage of an immense, opaque and difficult to monitor geographic space to weave a logistics network that connects both conflicts. The problem for the United States is not that the Caspian completely replaces Hormuz, because it cannot do so, especially in massive oil exports. The real problem is that even under extreme military pressure, sanctions and naval blockades, Iran continues to find ways to stay connectedrearm and receive outside support. And each drone, each component and each shipment that silently crosses the Caspian reinforces an increasingly evident idea: while everyone was looking at the Strait of Hormuz, Russia and Iran they were building an alternative route much more difficult to stop. Image | PexelsNASA In Xataka | We sensed that Iran’s attacks on the US had been important. In reality, they were devastating In Xataka | While the whole world looks at … Read more

We believed that the secret to rest was sleeping eight hours. A study has shown that we forget a big element

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One of the mantras most repeated ad nauseum in the field of health is related to the need to sleep at least eight hours nightly. A goal that has been widely studied with the repercussions that failure to meet it may have. But now we have seen how the regularity in sleep is a much more powerful preacher of long-term health than mere duration. It’s when you sleep. Although we had very ‘glorified’ how much sleep we have to, trying to make up for lost hours on the weekendthe reality is that the important thing is to have good consistency, as is the case with many other processes. The regularity. The scientific consensus on this paradigm shift is gaining strength, and the last major proof is published by the National Sleep Foundation with an article that points to this regularity as one of the most forgotten components of our nocturnal habits. The key here lies in the internal clock, since we must remember that the time of waking up and early exposure to natural light is what activates our internal system with the cortisol release. In this way, by maintaining a constant reference, we ensure that critical biological processes, from hormonal secretion to body temperature, are regularized. When we don’t respect it. Just like when we travel to another country and we follow schedules very different from ours, the same thing happens here. We have the classic situation on the weekend, where we go to bed late and get up two or three hours later than usual, and surely the feeling when we get up is exhaustion. This is what is now known as ‘social jet lag’ or ‘Monday jet lag’, responsible for that mental fog, lack of alertness and low cognitive function with which we start the week. A shield. Unlike total sleep duration, regularity is a direct marker of the integrity of our circadian system, since when the internal clock and the demands of the environment become out of sync, known as chronodisruption, the body suffers. Just like when we travel between countries or experience time change. Here, a study published in Health Data Science HE dedicated analyzed more than 88,000 adults in the United Kingdom and found that irregular sleep patterns are associated with a greater predisposition to suffer from up to 172 different diseases. In fact, actigraphy studies have shown that intra-individual variability in our sleep hours is a direct marker of all-cause mortality, so trying to accumulate hours on Saturdays and Sundays not only does not save the furniture, but it puts us at risk. The impact of irregularity. In this sense, a linear relationship can be seen between sleep instability and the risk of suffering a cardiac event. But trying to “compensate” for tiredness on the weekend also results in worse insulin sensitivity and ends up altering glucose metabolism, which causes the bill to be quite expensive in the long run. Furthermore, the lack of a clear sleep routine causes a chronic pro-inflammatory state. This alteration compromises our immune response to pathogens, worsens the regulation of autoimmune diseases, and decreases the ability of our cells to repair themselves and eliminate metabolic waste. In summary, following set hours of sleep is essential if we really want to have optimal results in our daily lives. Images | diana.grytsku in Magnific In Xataka | We have accepted that “deep sleep” is the standard for sleep quality: science points in another direction

the secret is in the hidden map of the nose

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We have known for decades how what we see, what we hear and what we touch works. Science has been mapping these senses for a century, so that each sensory signal has a known direction, a path traced from the organ to the brain. A couple of examples: this retinal map either east of the cochlea. There was one pending subject: smell. Not because no one had looked for it but because the olfactory system has enormous complexity: more than a thousand different types of receptors and twenty million neurons in the nose of a mouse. A biological chaos that a Harvard research team has managed to draw a map. What the map says. The scientific team has discovered that olfactory neurons are not distributed randomly in the nasal cavity, but rather form a spatial code based on overlapping stripes organized by the type of receptor and distributed from the upper to the lower part of the nose. This pattern is practically identical in all the animals studied, so it is a conserved and reproducible biological architecture. The most surprising thing is that this banding arrangement is a mirror of the map of the olfactory bulb in the brain. That is, there is topographic continuity: the position of a neuron in the nose determines exactly which area of ​​the brain it will send its signal to. This means that the brain “reads” odors based in part on the geographic location of the cell that detected the molecule. havard Why is it important. Because it is the missing piece to understand neuroplasticity and the regeneration of smell. In practice, because the loss of smell currently lacks effective treatments: by knowing the original design of the system, researchers can now understand why connections fail after trauma or a viral infection, something that revealed COVID-19. If the architecture of the system is not understood, regeneration goes blindly. As Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard’s Blavatnik Institute and principal investigator of the paper, points out, without understanding this map, attempts to develop new treatments are doomed to failure. Context. Mammalian olfaction is a complex system. In the case of the mouse, it has 20 million olfactory neuronseach expressing one of more than a thousand different receptor types. To get an idea, human color vision is only supported by three types of photoreceptors. This complexity meant that for decades science tended to associate the distribution of receptors randomly. Linda Buck and Richard Axel discover olfactory receptors in 1991 it earned them the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2004but that told us what detected the odors, not where or how they were organized. The good news is that with the advances in molecular biology today it is possible to analyze individual cells in their original position using techniques such as spatial transcriptomics. How have they done it. The Harvard team analyzed approximately 5.5 million neurons from more than 300 mice by combining two techniques: single-cell sequencing to know which receptor each neuron expresses and spatial transcriptomics to know exactly where it is located in the tissue. The study also identified the mechanism that builds that map: retinoic acid. By manipulating the chemical gradients of retinoic acid during embryonic development, they observed that the stripes of these receptors shifted, confirming that this acid functions as a kind of molecular GPS that tells each neuron where to position itself and which receptor to express. Yes, but. The first major limitation of the study is evident: it was done in mice, so as the research team itself acknowledges, they still do not know if the same organization applies to humans. Although the olfactory system of mammals is mostly conserved, humans have significantly fewer functional receptors (approximately 350 compared to more than 1,000 in the mouse) and a different nasal anatomy, so the existence of these stripes in humans still needs to be validated experimentally. Furthermore, although the map explains the wherestill does not fully explain the because of that specific order. We do not know if the stripes are grouped by the chemical structure of the odors or by their biological relevance, for example the smell of food versus odors of danger. Resolving what logic obeys that order is the next big challenge. In Xataka | We have been wondering for decades why Neanderthals became extinct. So we’re studying your nose In Xataka | Nasal strips are back in fashion in sports. Science has already passed judgment on them Cover | Angela Roma and Data Lab

It is the secret entrance to the safest place in the US

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In 1942, in the middle of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered construction under the White House a secret refuge with concrete walls and steel doors, a space designed to disappear from the surface in a matter of seconds if Washington was attacked. For decades, that place barely appeared in official documents and its existence moved between rumors and stories fragmentary. But the idea left by that project remains disturbing: in certain buildings, the most important thing is never in sight. A building that hides much more. The White House has always been an example of architecture where appearance is deceivingwith a design that hides beneath its surface a complex network of technical and security spaces developed over decades. That logic remains in the major reform proposed until now, which not only transforms its visible silhouette, but also takes advantage of the constructive opportunity to intervene in what is never seen. As has happened in other major renovations of the complex, the true scope of the project is measured more underground than in what protrudes above the grass. From ballroom to strategic infrastructure. The new projected hall, of about 90,000 square meters and capacity for a thousand people, is officially presented as a solution to lack of space for large events within the presidential complex. However, from the beginning it has been linked to a security argument, especially after recent incidents that have highlighted the limitations of external venues such as hotels. The idea is not only to concentrate events in a controlled environment, but to integrate them within a space designed from scratch with criteria advanced protection. President Trump showed a mock-up of the planned new East Wing to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on October 20, 2025. Architecture as an excuse. The key element of the project is that it is not in the room itself, but in what it allows build under it. Various official statements have described the hall as a structure that “covers” a much larger complex, designed with explosion-resistant materials, anti-drone systems and secure communications. This approach responds to a logic known in the White House itself. throughout history: take advantage of any surface work to expand or modernize underground infrastructure without excessively altering the visible historical complex. Mockup of the proposed East Wing/Ballroom of the White House (photo released by the White House on October 22, 2025) The heir to the safest bunker in the US. I remembered a few days ago time that under the demolished east wing was the Presidential Emergency Operations Centerthe historic bunker built during the Second World War and expanded in successive renovations. This space, conceived as shelter and command center in the event of a crisis, it has evolved with each generation to adapt to new threats, from nuclear war to terrorism. The current reform aims to replace it with a more advanced versionmaintaining its function as the safest point in the country in extreme situations. Vice President Dick Cheney with senior officials at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on September 11, 2001 A complex beyond a simple refuge. The known plans describe a facility that combines multiple functions in the same underground core. Includes hardened shelters, medical facilities, biosecurity systems, and high-security communications centers capable of sustaining government operations. in critical conditions. From that perspective, more than a traditional bunker, it is an environment prepared to operate during prolonged crisesintegrating military and civil capabilities in the same protected space. Between legality, heritage and security. It is one of the great debates in the nation at the moment, because the project has generated a legal and political conflict significant in considering the extent to which a president can transform the White House without approval congressional. While preservation groups they denounce the demolition of the east wing and the impact about historical heritagethe administration defends that the work it is essential for national security. The courts have opted for an intermediate solution, partially blocking the visible construction while allowing progress on the elements considered critical for protection. The perfect moment. There is no doubt, the recent security incident in an official event it has served as argument to reinforce the urgency of the project on the part of the administration, by highlighting the vulnerabilities of external spaces. From this perspective, the new room not only responds to a logistical need, but also to a change in the way presidential security is managed. The combination event and protection in the same place is presented as a solution that avoids depending on less controlled environments. The discreet entrance to the safest place. Altogether, the controversial reform aims to redefine the White House as a dual structure where the visible fulfills a representative function and the hidden concentrates the true core of power and security. The new ballroom thus acts as the architectural piece that, if necessary, allows access, coverage and meaning to an underground infrastructure. much more ambitious. Perhaps for this reason, more than an aesthetic or functional extension, the project is understood as a discreet door towards the better protected space of the United States, a bunker anti everything where the continuity of the government is guaranteed in any imaginable scenario. Image | White House, National Archives In Xataka | After the Guggenheim fever in Bilbao, Alcorcón wanted to replicate its success with a megaproject in 2004. It ended very badly. In Xataka | The biggest disaster in sports history dates back to the Roman Empire: the tragedy of the Fidenae “VIP boxes”

We’ve found the secret ingredient for using desert sand in construction: sawdust and a giant sandwich maker

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At a time when humans do not stop building and erecting large buildings, there is a problem that should concern us more and more: there is a lack of sand to make concrete. But here anyone can laugh, since we have great deserts on the planet where there is a huge amount of sand that we could use without any problem. But it’s not that easy. The problem. Today, traditional concrete is quite exquisite, since river sand is necessary to achieve a good result. And it has to be that way, because the desert sand is too round and fine to be able to “stick” well. But the truth is that we were running out of this sand so necessary to continue building. 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 We have a solution. The University of Tokyo and the University of Norway they have hit the key to turn the tables, and the solution is not only to use the desert sand that a priori we have left over, but rather it is to mix it with plant waste to create a material that has received the name Botanical Sandcrete. The recipe. The recently published study details a process that deviates from traditional cement setting, using a hot-pressing technique instead. And for this you only need two ingredients: Fine desert sand which, as we have said before, is useless for conventional concrete due to its morphology. Wood particles and plant additives that act as organic “glue.” All this, together with a temperature of 180 ºC and high pressure, means that the wood components help create a solid matrix that traps the grains of sand and transforms them into a handful of powder in a block that has great mechanical properties. {“videoId”:”x7znesx”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Self-consumption building THIS IS HOW THEY WORK – Solar panels in apartment blocks”, “tag”:”solar”, “duration”:”564″} What is it for? Here we should not be happy to find an alternative to a problem that we already had on our heads, since we are not going to be able to build skyscrapers with these tomorrow. Here the researchers point out that the material, as it is right now, is a non-structural alternative.  In this way, its use is mainly focused on pavements, urban tiles and enclosure blocks or outdoor furniture. Things that are ultimately not pillars for large buildings, but do allow us to save river sand. Your advantage. Having an alternative, although it cannot be used in everything, allows us to drastically reduce dependence on quarries and the transportation of river sand. An action that results in the destruction of river ecosystems around the world by removing a fundamental element. In addition to all this, using wood waste and plant additives means that it has a much smaller potential carbon footprint than concrete based on classic cement. In Xataka 30 years ago the US was the country that dominated rare earths. This graph shows how China devastated at dizzying speed Its importance. To date, most attempts to use desert sand involved expensive chemical treatments or mixing them in very low percentages with conventional sand. But the focus of these researchers involves the use of biomass, making us a perfect example of a circular economy. And if we see the full context of the situation, we are taking advantage of a resource that is very abundant but a priori useless like desert sand, along with a byproduct of the logging industry. But logically it still remains to be seen how it behaves over time and how well it endures adverse conditions. Although a priori we are facing great news. Images | Keith Hardy rawpixel.com In Xataka | A 29-year-old young man has invented a cement that makes magnetic walls: a solution to hang things without a drill or screws (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news We’ve found the secret ingredient for using desert sand in construction: sawdust and a giant sandwich maker was originally published in Xataka by José A. Lizana .

the secret “eye” of its most advanced anti-missile system

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In modern conflicts, some military systems operate at speeds greater than Mach 5 and they are capable of distinguishing targets in mid-flight without emitting a single signal, guided only by the heat they detect hundreds of kilometers away. These technologies, designed to be invisible and virtually unrecoverable, rarely leave any trace when they fail. But when they do they are a danger from what they say. The chance find. Yes, because someone in Syria has found something completely unexpected in the desert and has uploaded a video to the networks: nothing less than one of the secret “eyes” of Washington’s most advanced anti-missile system, a key piece of the THAAD system which should rarely appear outside of highly controlled environments. The discovery, supposedly in the southwest of the country near areas where US batteries operate in Israel and Jordan, shows not only the infrared sensor but substantial parts of the interceptor in a surprisingly intact state, pointing to a failure during an interception in the midst of the regional war and turning what should have been an invisible process into a tangible, recorded event and potentially exploitable. How the THAAD “eye” works. As we said, the component found is not a simple fragment, but the system that allows the interceptor to “see” its target, an advanced infrared sensor that guides the kill vehicle call after separating from the booster rocket and freeing itself from its front cover. This system detects the heat of the missile enemy without emitting signals, which makes it resistant to electronic interference, and works together with a complex set of small propellants that adjust their trajectory with millimeter precision to achieve a direct impact at hypersonic speeds, all without the need for explosives, in a process where each microsecond and each adjustment determine success or failure. THAAD A failure that changes everything. And here comes the importance of the discovery. The fact that both the kill vehicle and its cover appeared together and relatively intact suggests that something went wrong in the sequence of interception, although it is not clear whether it was a technical problem, a loss of target or a systems failure self-destruct devices designed precisely to avoid this type of situation. In any case, what was supposed to disappear in the sky has ended up on the ground, and that detail is crucial because it breaks one of the fundamental premises of these systems: that their most sensitive technology never be exposed in sight of no one. The strategic value of the meeting. Recovering this type of technology offers any adversary a unique opportunity to analyze from within one of the most sophisticated air defense systems, if not the most, unraveling how it detects targetshow it discriminates threats and what its real limitations are, something that could translate into new countermeasures, improvements in own systems or even attempts at replication. For countries like Iran, Russia or China itself that they already observe the system’s performance in current combat, the possibility of having physical access to its components would multiply the value of that intelligence and reduce the American technological advantage. A war that leaves traces. If you will, the episode also reflects a reality that is increasingly evident in modern conflicts: the intensive use of advanced weapons increases the probability that critical pieces will end up by the wayside. in unwanted handswhether due to failures, demolitions or simple operational wear. We had already talked about the problem that Washington has with the demolition of their radars more advanced by Iran, and with THAAD being used constantly against ballistic missiles in the Middle East, it is not ruled out that scenes like this are repeated, turning each failed interception into something much more serious than a tactical error for the American side: a possible knowledge leak strategic for his enemies. Image | x, US Army In Xataka | To rescue the pilot lost in Iran, the US has told a story worthy of Spielberg. Some explosive images tell a very different story In Xataka | The US is going to end its war in the Middle East with a very uncomfortable reality: Iran had years of advantage underground

The James Webb Telescope has finally discovered Saturn’s best kept secret

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Saturn has become a headache for scientists since the Cassini probe in 2004 took action of its rotation speed that did not coincide with the figures accepted in the scientific community. Little by little, new data has been discovered that helps explain this inconsistency, but it has been necessary for the James Webb Space Telescope to come into play to find the definitive answer. Cassini’s incoherence. In 2004, the Cassini probe took advantage of its visit to Saturn to measure some important dataas its rotation speed. Normally this is calculated by analyzing parameters that occur periodically, such as radio emission pulses. It is a very consolidated method, which has been used to calculate the rotation rate of many planets. With Cassini, it was expected to obtain a figure that would coincide with what the Voyager 2 probe had previously taken in 1981. However, to the surprise of the scientists who studied the data, the numbers didn’t add up. A mysterious push. A planet cannot speed up or slow down without an external force driving it. There should be something driving those changes in rotation speed. Or, at the very least, some unknown factor that was falsifying the results. All this was a mystery until 2021, when a team of scientists from the University of Leicester published a study in which new clues were provided. The auroras enter the scene. For a month, scientists at the University of Leicester measured infrared emissions in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. This allowed them to map a series of variable fluxes of activity in the ionosphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which ionized particles are abundant. That is, atoms that have gained or lost electrons and have acquired a negative or positive charge, respectively. These flows were related to the formation of auroras. However, there was something strange. Unlike on other planets, including Earth, a good part of these auroras were produced by the action of rotating winds within Saturn’s own atmosphere, not only by the influence of the magnetosphere. A reminder about the auroras. The auroras are formed when charged particles interact with the atoms that make up a planet’s atmosphere, exciting them and causing the emission of light. Normally, these charged particles come from solar activity, as happens on Earth, or from volcanic eruptions on nearby moons, as happens on Jupiter. Be that as it may, they are concentrated in a region external to the planets, known as the magnetosphere. In the case of Saturn, the 2021 study showed that auroras were also forming within the planet’s own atmosphere. On Earth, auroras are formed by solar activity A puzzle still incomplete. The interaction of molecules and atoms in the atmosphere with charged particles does not only cause the emission of light. It also causes the emission of radiation in other regions of the spectrum. For example, radio pulses. Let us remember that these pulses are the ones that were used to measure the rotation of Saturn. The auroras could be falsifying them. These auroras, as we have seen so far, are produced by the action of rotating winds in Saturn’s own atmosphere. But where do those winds come from? The rock star arrives. The James Webb Space Telescope is the rock star of space telescopes. A state-of-the-art instrument, capable of reaching where other telescopes could not. Therefore, thanks to him, the necessary measurements could be taken to find the origin of Saturn’s winds. Specifically, it has captured the glow caused in the infrared by a molecule in Saturn’s upper atmosphere, called trihydrogen cation. This is very useful, because it acts as a kind of thermometer. It is very susceptible to environmental conditions, so its ionization state helps to know the surrounding temperature. By carefully analyzing its state in different regions of Saturn’s northern hemisphere, it has been possible to make a map of both temperatures and particle density. The missing piece. The temperature and particle density patterns match those predicted in a series of computer models 10 years ago. In these models, these patterns originated when the auroras themselves acted as a heat source. The endless cycle. What happens is this: the auroras, with all their display of light and radiation, heat the atmosphere at a specific point. This heating causes the movement of particles between points at different temperatures, generating a wind charged with electricity. This wind, in turn, propels electrically charged particles, which cause more auroras to form. It’s a vicious circle or, as the authors of the study explaina planetary heat pump. A perfect system that feeds itself. And, of course, the mysterious external factor that upset scientists trying to measure Saturn’s rotation. Image | NASA | Bruce Waters (Wikimedia Commons) | Vincent Guth (Unsplash) In Xataka | James Webb has been detecting red dots in the universe for years: the only problem is that we don’t know what they are

We have a surprising new “secret weapon” against climate change: beavers

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When we think about ways to capture carbon from the atmosphere, we often imagine huge, expensive technology installations; However, nature has its own systems to be able to clean the environment. One of these systems, as a new study has shown, is that beavers are true carbon sequestration machines thanks to the dams and canal systems that these rodents build. A Swiss experiment. Until now, we knew that humid ecosystems were important, but precise data was lacking to understand why. Now we know that the key was precisely in these animals, as a study has shown published in Nature. Here the researchers analyzed in detail an 800-meter stretch of a stream in northern Switzerland that had been modified by a beaver colony. What they saw was that the river corridor, after transforming it, acted as a net sink that could retain around 100 tons of carbon per year. In perspective. These figures are equivalent to trapping 26% of all the carbon inputs that enter that system, so over 13 years the wetland created by the beavers has reached store a whopping 1,194 tons of carbon. In short, this means that the area stores up to 10 times more carbon than similar river stretches where these rodents do not live, with a sequestration rate of approximately 10.1 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare per year. How they do it. One might think that carbon is stored in accumulated wood or swamp plants, but the reality is much more complex. The study attributes that more than half of the carbon that has been removed from the environment is trapped below the surface, in the subsoil of the wetland. Added to this is the burial of organic carbon in the form of particles in the sediments. By flooding the area and slowing the flow, the beavers created the perfect conditions for carbon to settle and be locked underground for the long term. The methane problem. When we talk about creating new wetlands, any climate expert might raise an eyebrow, since these areas of stagnant water are known to be large emitters of methane, which is one of the gases involved in the greenhouse effect. On top of that, much more powerful than CO₂. However, the authors of the study also measured this factor and were pleasantly surprised: methane emissions in this system were surprisingly low, representing less than 1% of the total balance. But in addition, the carbon dioxide emissions that came from the sediments were also much lower than the carbon that the system managed to sequester. In this way, it can be concluded that the beaver wetland is a sink, not a source of emissions. Meeting objectives. The data collected in this Swiss stream opens an exciting door for climate migration policies, as encouraging the return of beavers can dramatically increase the resilience of our riverbanks. In fact, calculations suggest that the recolonization of floodplains by beavers could offset between 1.2% and 1.8% of Switzerland’s annual carbon emissions. Images | Francesco Ungaro In Xataka | Franco introduced an exotic sheep to Teide to please the hunters. Now it is destroying its ecosystem

Ukraine and the secret of its energy shield

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In 1973, a political decision was enough to unleash a global energy crisis. Today, that same effect can be caused by a swarm of drones or a few naval mines. Meanwhile, the infrastructures that support the world’s supply remain, in many cases, enormous facilities designed for another era, when the greatest danger came from the sky in the form of missiles, not small, cheap and constant threats. The five-day countdown. Five days leftactually slightly less than four troops, so that a specific threat can change the global energy balance, and it all starts with a tactical move: the United States has gone from a 48-hour ultimatum to bomb Iranian power plants to a five day break supported by diplomatic contacts that are still very weak. We are talking about a maneuver that does not imply real de-escalation but time gained to avoid a step that could trigger immediate retaliation throughout the region and, above all, convert the energy infrastructure in priority objective of open war. The real fear. The key to these hours is not only in the military fronts, but in the possibility that the conflict begins to knock down energy nodes systematically. The United States has come to put the attack on the table to electrical installations Iranians. For its part, Iran has responded by threatening to mine the gulf routes Persian and turn the area into an almost blocked space. Between one thing and the other, the message is more or less clear, because the war no longer revolves only around bases, scientists or arsenals, but around cables, terminals, pumping stations, along with oil ports and maritime corridors without which the entire planet begins to tremble. Kharg, Hormuz and the heart of the industry. The Kharg island appears in this story like a lot more than a point on the map. It is the great exit center for Iranian crude oil. It is also one of the places where a military offensive would a direct effect on global oil flows. Plus: it adds to the other decisive name of this war, the Strait of Hormuzthrough which a gigantic part of the world’s crude oil trade passes. When both places enter the equation at the same time, what is at stake stops being a one-off retaliation and becomes the real possibility of a prolonged shock to the global energy industry. Ukraine, again. That’s why everyone is looking at Ukraine again. I remembered this morning the new york times that the planet does not do it only because its war turned drones into absolute protagonists of the battlefield. It does so also because it was one of the first places where it was understood that modern energy infrastructure could survive only if it was transformed into a stepped fortress. Because Russia was hitting refineries, gas plants and critical nodes for years. And Ukraine responded building a shield made of electronic warfare, interceptor drones, physical defenses, dispersion of equipment and hardening works that sought one very simple thing: to continue functioning even under constant attack. The secret: hold on. From that perspective, the main Ukrainian lesson is not to have found a perfect defense, because that may not exist. Rather, it consists of having assumed that the enemy will hit again again, and in reducing damage, protecting the most expensive components, bury part of the facilitieserect concrete barriers and add layers of jamming and interception to complicate each attack. In short, it consists of moving from the old logic of protecting large infrastructures as if they only had to resist a major bombing from the last century, to a new logic in which you have to resist repeated waves of small, cheap and constant threats. The Gulf discovers the Ukrainian problem. Because the Gulf countries had thought above all about missiles. Ukraine it took time adding to the equation the drone swarms cheap. This difference is decisive because taking down low-cost threats with very expensive systems is not sustainable for a long time. And that is where the Ukrainian experience becomes valuable for the Middle East: not because of a miraculous technology, but because it has developed a layered defense. more flexible and cheaperadapted to an enemy that can saturate the sky with relatively simple but devastating devices for gigantic and very vulnerable installations. Few days to understand where the war is going. If you like, the central idea of ​​these hours is brutally simple. There are few left less than four days to check if the pause announced by the United States It serves to cool down the war or only to bring it closer to its most dangerous phase. If it fails, the focus will no longer be just on who bombs who, but on whether the region’s energy industry can continue standing. And in that scenario, Ukraine reappears as an unexpected reference one more time. First It was the laboratory of drone warfare, and now aims to also become the emergency manual to protect power plants, plants and terminals in an era in which energy has become one of the most delicate and decisive targets on the board. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | Iran has led the world to desperately search for energy sources. So China has made an irrefutable proposal to Taiwan In Xataka | A ship has just arrived in Iran with the most dangerous mission: to fulfill the radical plan that the US had 40 years ago

Before the Incas, a civilization created an impregnable empire in the heights of Peru. His secret: feces

by

The coastal desert of southern Peru is one of the most arid environments on the planet, but this was not an impediment for a civilization that was able to prosper here with more than 100,000 people and before the arrival of the Inca empire. Their secret here was seabird guano, and science has now just demonstrated to what extent bird dung was the real economic and demographic driver. of the Chincha Kingdom. The feeding problem. During the Late Intermediate Period, approximately 1000 to 1400 AD, the Chincha Valley became a pre-Inca superpower. But to sustain its growth and maintain some 30,000 workers, it was logically necessary to produce food on a large scale, and more specifically corn, which was the basis of their diet. The problem is that the Peruvian coast is not exactly the most fertile place in the world, so the population faced a serious food problem. But here the solution was to look at the sea and the islands full of guano birds, and more specifically towards their feces and their ability to fertilize. Something that made them begin to prosper and become very strong in the region. The confirmation. To confirm this theory, a scientific team analyzed stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur in 35 ancient corn cobs and 11 seabirds found in tombs in the Chincha Valley. Here it was possible to see how clearly plants that absorb nutrients from fertilizers derived from marine animals show a very specific chemical signature with high levels of nitrogen 15. The results. Here the conservative limit to determine the use of guano in the experiments was located at a value of +20%, but in Chincha corn the average values ​​were +19.4%, reaching peaks of up to +27.4%. Thanks to radiocarbon dating, scientists have been able to place the beginning of this large-scale agricultural practice around the year 1250 AD.a date that coincides millimeters with the rise and expansion of the Chincha Kingdom. What we knew. Modern chemistry only confirms what archeology and history already hinted to us, since the iconography of the time is full of references to this agronomic practice. In textiles, friezes and ceramics of the Chincha culture, corn appears constantly represented alongside guano-producing birds, such as the guanay cormorant, the Peruvian booby and the pelican. Even Spanish colonial chroniclers, such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, recorded this practice when describing how the indigenous people applied the guano to corn through irrigation systems and they documented the strict taboo laws later imposed by the Incas to protect these birds that for them were the focus of fertilization of their fields. This is why killing a guano bird or disturbing its nests was a crime punishable by death. A great revolution. The mastery of guano technology not only filled the stomachs of the Chincha, but made them a key player in Andean geopolitics. In this way, when the Inca empire began its expansion, they did not conquer the Chincha because of their great strength, and instead they formed a strategic alliance. The Chincha here had control of the precious fertilizer and dominated the maritime trade routes, exchanging the guano for luxury goods such as prized shells. Spondylus. This agricultural base allowed the Chincha Kingdom to negotiate its integration into the Inca empire from a position of power and privilege. Images | Ames Wainscoat In Xataka | Prehistory was also ‘woke’: a woman from 7,000 years ago suggests that gender was not an immovable barrier

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