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six companies, hundreds of millions of dollars and 25 missions to conquer the South Pole

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NASA has already launched phase 1 of construction of your moon base. They have not yet taken a new batch of humans to the Moon, but it is important to prepare the ground, which is why this Tuesday they announced the first steps they are taking to do so. And, as it could not be otherwise, it all starts with million-dollar hires. 6 companies in total. At the moment, NASA has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in hiring six companies that will be in charge of developing the technologies necessary to launch the first phase of the lunar base. The companies in question are Blue Origin, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost and Firefly Aerospace. In general, in this first phase of construction of the lunar base it is expected to explore the south polar region, test various technologies and prepare surface operations. All of this will be carried out through 25 missions that will include 21 moon landings. Moon Base 1. To begin with, the first three missions are expected to launch this year. The first, Moon Base 1, will be carried out by Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos’ company will take its lander to the Moon Blue Moon Mark 1the “brother” of the Blue Moon Mark 2 that is preparing to become the human landing system for the Artemis missions. As payload will include the Stereoscopic Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies to study how thrusters interact with the lunar surface, and the Laser Retroreflective Array, which helps spacecraft in orbit determine a more precise location using reflected laser light. The mission will take place in autumn 2026 if all goes well. Since it will be the first to land in the Shackleton crater, where the base is to be built, it will also be in charge of checking the viability of lunar landings near the lunar base. Moon Base 2. The second mission, which will also travel to the Moon at the end of 2026, will be carried out by Astrobotic. It will send its Griffin lander to the Moon, loaded with 500 kg of instrumentation, including a rover to study the surface on which the base will be built and mature the mobility systems for future manned vehicles. Moon Base 3. The third mission to be sent in 2026 has been granted to Intuitive Machines. This company will take its Nova-C Trinity lunar module there, which will be in charge of studying lunar eddies and the behavior of materials under extreme conditions. Furthermore, this mission will not be 100% private, as it will include payloads from the European Space Agency and the Korean Institute of Astronomy and Space Sciences. Some of the models that NASA showed during the press conference Boogies to move around the Moon. So that future astronauts who travel to the lunar base can move around it, they want to take two manned lunar vehicles there. Said so that we can all understand each other, two boogie-type strollers, designed to move around the lunar surface, both with and without a crew. Its development has been entrusted to the companies Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, also as part of this first phase. Delimitation drones. The company Firefly Aerospace has been entrusted with taking the 4 Moonfall drones to the Moon, whose main mission will be to inspect the area in search of the best landing places for the astronauts. Although they will also have a much more peculiar mission. As explained At NASA’s press conference, its executive director of the lunar base program, Carlos García-Galan, these drones will also be stationed in the corners to delimit the perimeter of the lunar base. Next phases. This first phase will last until 2029. Then the next phase will begin, which will end in 2032. In this, the permanent infrastructure of the lunar base will begin to be built, including electrical installation. From then on, it will only be necessary to refine more and more details and little by little receive the astronauts of the Artemis missions of the future. Without a doubt, this is the beginning of a new era of space exploration. Image | POT In Xataka | We knew there was water on the Moon, but not why some craters were empty. Finally we have the answer

South Korea has just entered the most exclusive club on the planet. And China and North Korea are not exactly calm

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In 2004, South Korea admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency that years before it had rperformed secret experiments of uranium enrichment without officially declaring them. That caused a small diplomatic crisis and revived a question that has been chasing Seoul for decades: how far it is willing to go to not be left behind in Asia. Now he has taken an unprecedented step. The great leap. South Korea just gave one of the most important strategic steps in its recent military history: entering the small club of countries capable of operating nuclear powered submarines. Until now, this terrain was reserved for powers such as the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom or India. He Jangbogo-N project It completely changes Seoul’s position in Asia because it stops being only an advanced industrial and technological power and also becomes a naval actor with oceanic ambitions and a much more sophisticated deterrence capacity. The decision has an enormous symbolic component, but above all practical: A nuclear submarine can remain submerged for months, travel enormous distances and operate with a freedom impossible for traditional diesel models. For China and North Korea the message is clear. South Korea no longer wants to limit itself to protecting its coasts; It wants to have a permanent presence and response capacity throughout the regional board. Announcement of the project in the South Korean defense ministry Seoul’s great obsession. He official argument revolves around the North Korean threat and especially the growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea has been developing ballistic missiles launched from submarines and working on their own naval nuclear propulsion programs with possible Russian help. In this context, South Korea considers that its current diesel submarines are no longer sufficient to maintain a credible long-term deterrence capacity. The new nuclear models would allow the waters near the peninsula to be monitored for much longer and guarantee second attack ability much more difficult to neutralize. Even without nuclear weapons on board, the simple possibility that these platforms could disappear under the sea for long periods makes any enemy military calculation much more complex. China in the equation. Although North Korea is the immediate threat, the greater strategic background clearly points towards China. They remembered the TWZ analysts that Beijing has been expanding its submarine fleet and strengthening its naval presence for years throughout Asia-Pacificas South Korea watches the regional competition shift away from focusing solely on the Korean Peninsula. The construction of nuclear submarines reflects precisely this mental change in Seoul: the country is beginning to see itself as a regional maritime power with much broader interests. Hence China has publicly criticized the program and has insisted on the obligations non-proliferation. Beijing understands perfectly what it means this technological leap. A neighbor with its own nuclear submarines implies a presence that is more difficult to track, a much deeper surveillance capacity and a navy capable of operating far from its ports. The most delicate detail. Impossible to pass by, because South Korea insists that does not intend develop nuclear weapons and will use low-enriched uranium under supervision international and coordination with the United States and the IAEA. However, the movement remains extremely sensitive because historically almost all countries with nuclear submarines also ended up developing atomic arsenals. Therein lies a good part of the regional concern. Although Seoul maintains officially your commitment With non-proliferation, the project brings it technologically closer to capabilities that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. Furthermore, the international context has changed. Blind trust in the US military umbrella It’s not so solid anymore. As before, in South Korea the debate has been growing for years about whether the country needs a more autonomous deterrence capacity against Pyongyang and against an increasingly powerful China. A gigantic industrial bet. The program is also a statement of industrial power. South Korea wants to build the submarines within its own territory using its naval, nuclear and technological industries, something that fits perfectly with the country’s obsession with gain strategic autonomy. The government estimates that the project will last more than forty years between construction and operation, it will generate tens of thousands of jobs and strengthen key sectors such as modular reactors, advanced shipbuilding and military engineering. Market reactions have made the expected impact clear: the large South Korean naval companies they shot in the stock market after the announcement. Seoul understands that this project not only redefines its military strength; It may also establish the country as one of the few nations capable of designing and maintaining complex nuclear naval systems on its own. The silent race. The most important thing is that the movement of South Korea can further accelerate the submarine and nuclear race in Asia. Australia now advances with AUKUS To obtain nuclear submarines, North Korea seeks its own with Russian support and China continues to expand one of the largest submarine fleets on the planet. Now Seoul officially joins to that strategic underwater competition. If you also want, the region is entering a stage where the ability to disappear under the ocean for months has become one of the maximum symbols of military power. And South Korea just announced that is going to be part of that exclusive group, even if that means further altering the security balance in East Asia. Image | x In Xataka | Russia has built an imposing nuclear submarine with one mission: to launch one of the most extreme weapons ever devised In Xataka | North Korea has cleared up doubts about its alliance with Russia: it has just announced its first nuclear submarine

When King Charles III commissioned a map of South America and then banned it because it was too accurate

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TO Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla professional zeal played tricks on him. When in 1764 took charge of Charles III To create a map of South America, the good geographer put so much effort, so much into the project and so precise was it. the end result That upon seeing it the king was frightened. His map was a true cartographic gem, but it ended up condemned by the Bourbon. By express order of the count of Floridablanca The few copies of the map disappeared, as if they had never existed: the Government suspended the printing of the map and collected all the copies it could to keep them under lock and key. The reason: good work in bad times. The order of orders. At 30 years old, the cartographer and geographer Juan de la Cruz Cano received between 1764 and 1765 an assignment that would make any of his colleagues salivate with excitement. He Marquis of GrimaldiMinister of State, entrusted him with the ambitious task of drawing a large map of South America. The result had to be precise and capture the territories of the Spanish Crown, well positioned and in relation to the possessions controlled by Portugal. As if the mission were not challenging in itself, the minister was acting by order of the monarch Charles III himself. “Geographic map of South America” ​​by Juan de la Cruz Cano. A long decade of work. The assignment was difficult and required Juan de la Cruz Cano to make a considerable investment of effort and time. More than ten years he dedicated to the mission, according to details the National Library of Spain (BNE), which assures that to shape the map the geographer carried out meticulous data collection work, consulted testimonies from explorers and colonizers, dedicated himself to verifying sources and of course made “a magnificent cartographic layout.” After many headaches and relying on the studies of Jorge Juan and Antonio de UlloaJuan finished the work in the 1770s. The map was first stamped at end of 75. “One of the most important”. He in quotes It is again from the BNE, which insists that Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is one of the most important of South America that was printed in 18th century Europe and even served as the basis for many other plans that were published later. So accurate was it that its initial reception was good. And it is logical that this was the case: the map was made up of eight enormous plates, measuring 2.6 meters high by 1.85 m wide and presented a scale of 1:4,000,000. If you examined it carefully, you could also see annotations, abundant toponymy and a detailed representation of the hydrographic and road network, as well as drawings that completed it as artistic work: allegories of America and Europe, the symbol of the order of Charles III, shields and even the illustration of a column profusely decorated with the bust of Columbus. The older he incorporated calculations for the drawing of demarcation lines between the Portuguese and Spanish domains according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portrait of Charles III. Good, dangerously good. The initial satisfaction generated by the map soon turned into a very different and much less uplifting sensation: fear, worry. 1775 was not a good time to show a map of South America as exact as the one Juan de la Cruz had made. Spain was in full negotiations with Portugal to reach a new treaty on the delimitation of its possessions in America, an effort that would lead to the Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1777, and that map of South America did not exactly benefit the Spanish position. “The data on the map favored Portugal’s aspirations. For this reason, the Government ordered to suspend printing and collect the distributed copies,” reports the BNE in the file dedicated to the plan, known as Geographic map of South America. “Wrong limits”. The history of the map was short-lived. After three editions and given the discomfort that that fortunate map generated for the Crown, in 1789 the Count of Floridablanca ordered that all copies be made to disappear. The effort did not go badly. The Country precise that today only a handful of copies are preserved, distributed by the National Library, the Royal Academy of History and private and public collections. “151 maps and the copper plates were kept in the Royal Calcography, with the prohibition that no copy be sold because the limits between the Spanish and Portuguese domains were erroneous,” the Cerralbo Museum specifies. That was the official version, of course. The reality was quite different: the Government feared that the precision of the work would harm the position that Spain had defended before Lisbon after the first Treaty of San Ildefonso. “The map implied a recognition of Portugal’s territorial usurpations,” slide the museum. A bittersweet ending. That of Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is a peculiar story. Its finish too and leaves a bittersweet taste. The enormous cartographic work that he developed over the years would end up receiving recognition inside and outside of Spain and today it is claimed as a historical gem and one of the maps most important that were printed in Europe in the 18th century, but all that praise was of little use to those who had dedicated themselves to the project, including Juan de la Cruz Cano himself, who died in 1790, a year after Floridablanca ordered any sample of the map to be swept away, as if it had never existed. Auctions. “The engraver, who had invested his entire fortune in this work, was compensated, but died bankrupt and discredited as a cartographer,” reminds the Ministry of Culture. However, not all the zeal of the Spanish Crown could prevent some copies of that work from ending up traveling through Europe and even reached Thomas Jeffersonfuture president of the United States and at that time American ambassador in Paris. Despite Floridablanca’s efforts to prevent it, … Read more

The complex of the wide face and the unusual solution that obsesses South Korea: elf ears

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Jung Da-yun was not satisfied with what the mirror returned to her. At 31 years old, this influencer South Korean woman felt she had an unusual defect: her ears were not big enough. According to a report from Wall Street JournalJung went to a clinic in Seoul, paid the equivalent of about $70 and underwent hyaluronic acid injections into his cartilage. The result was immediate: his ears leaned forward, rising above his face. Suddenly, his face looked slimmer, younger, and proportionate. “I was very happy with the results,” she confessed. This scene, which in the West could seem like the script of a satire, is a latent reality in East Asia. While in the United States or Europe, people with prominent ears go to the surgeon to hide them or glue them to their heads — a practice that in Korea is “creepy” in the eyes of some, as explained by the influencer Korean-American Krystal Lee—in Asia, the projection of the ears has become the Holy Grail of aesthetics. The magazine MEGA has baptized him such as “silent retouching”. “When I was in China, one of the dermatologists told me that this is one of the procedures he performs the most, and I couldn’t believe it,” dermatologist Jenny Liu tells the same medium. And the true art of this intervention lies in sculpting the face, hiding the trick in plain sight: behind the ear. Although they have coined it with the name “elf ears”, the goal is not to emulate the sharp and fantastic point of the elves of The Lord of the Rings. The clinical and informal term is closer to the concept of “fairy ear” (fairy ear), a procedure that seeks to alter the natural position of the pinna. According to Dr. Jung Gyu-sik in the studio Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery – Global Openthe technique consists of injecting between 1 and 2 milliliters of hyaluronic acid filler in the most lateral part of the helix and in the auriculocephalic sulcus. The goal is to increase the angle between the skull and the ear. It is fast, non-invasive, almost painless and its effects last between 6 and 12 months. Dr. Jung himself confesses in it Wall Street Journal having performed up to 20 of these injections in a single day. Where did this fever come from? The trend germinated in China about five years ago, where the hashtag “Aesthetic elf ear surgery” today exceeds 780 million views on the social network Weibo. However, the definitive outbreak occurred in South Korea when Mimi, a well-known singer of the K-pop group oh my girlconfessed to using special adhesive tape to simulate this effect. Overnight, searches for “ear filler” exploded 1,200% on BarbieTalka popular South Korean aesthetics platform. Those who don’t want needles turn to these adhesive tapes that cost just $3. The terror of “pancake face” To understand this fashion you have to look away from the ear and focus on the cheek. South Korean researcher and academic Leem So-yeon sums it up perfectly in Wall Street Journal: “It would be reductionist to frame it simply as an obsession with ears. Ultimately, it’s a procedure to make the face appear smaller. The ears are just the middle.” This is an optical illusion trick based on negative space. Dermatologist Danny Guo details in the magazine MEGA Asian patients often have naturally prominent cheekbones (zygomas). Since they do not want to increase the volume of their cheeks, injecting behind the ear creates a “lateral structure” that visually slims the contour of the face. All this is born from a deep cultural complex. In East Asia, wide faces and large heads are heavily penalized. While in China they make fun of what they call “tortia faces”, in South Korea a sharp “V” shaped jaw is idolized, details the WSJ. But it is not a mere narcissistic whim; It is a tool for work and social survival. As John P. DiMoia explainsa professor at Seoul National University, young people do not operate out of ego: “It’s about looking my best for my job interviews.” This pressure It is better understood under logic that, in South Korea, “presenting the best version of oneself is a sign of respect for others.” The “Bai Fu Mei” canon Science supports that although there are universal beauty traits such as facial symmetry, the perception of attractiveness varies dramatically by ethnicity. A study of the medical journal Clinics in Dermatology points out that traditional Asian beauty prefers wider faces but with lower vertical height, an inverted triangle shape and a reduced projection of eyebrows and chins. Hence the obsession with fine-tuning the structure at any cost. But the sociological background is even darker. As we detail in XatakaSouth Korea’s strict standards are a form of “cultural racism.” It is a system that excludes different bodies and skin tones under the protection of neo-Confucian traditions, where whiteness and delicacy symbolized social status (the Chinese concept bai fu mei: white, rich, beautiful). By going global through K-pop and K-dramas, the Korean aesthetic or K-Beauty industry has attempted to impose an exclusive standard on the rest of the world. In fact, Korean brands They had to apologize publicly or drastically expand their makeup palettes (such as the TIRTIR brand, which increased sales by 55,000% by offering 40 shades after complaints from black content creators) because, simply, the most innovative industry in the world did not make products for dark-skinned people. “Elf ears” are not born in a vacuum. They are the symptom of a hypertrophied body modification industry. Seoul hosts the “Belt of Beauty”a neighborhood smaller than Central Park but with more clinics than Los Angeles, Miami and Rio de Janeiro combined. As much of the Korean population has already widened their eyes, raised the bridge of their noses and sharpened their jaws, the industry desperately needs to invent new areas of growth. And foreigners are answering the call. According to data from the Ministry of Health cited by the specialized platform Seoulzin … Read more

In 1953, North Korea and South Korea spoke the same language. In 2026, they begin to be two different

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The abrupt political changes, the traumatic measures imposed by force of military mandate on a people, can have unexpected effects visible in the short term and leave wounds that do not heal until long after the end of the discord. We saw it very clearly in the two “Germanies” that the Cold War left us and we see it clearly today in another country: Korea. Traveling to the present, and although we know the mark that the battle between the capitalist and communist blocs is leaving on the Korean population, there is a dimension of cultural inequality that may have gone more unnoticed: idiomatic. As a recent study showed, and after just over seven decades of separation, Korean is no longer the same between the north and the south. 45% of the population surveyed He had problems understanding the dialogues of Koreans from the opposite area, and in 1% of the cases the North Koreans did not understand at all what the South Koreans were telling them. In conclusion, and as linguists dedicated to this company have stated, at least a third of everyday vocabulary is no longer the same, especially that referring to professional and business topics. This is how their vocabularies have varied The main difference between both territories is that in North Korea the language has remained purer, with slight grammatical incursions from Chinese and Russian, while South Korean has embraced many neologisms from English without hesitation. While over time in South Korea companies have created various terms to say “paper”adapting to new and different formats and materials, in the north the original term is maintained exclusively, which they must use for all variants. In the south, and to speak of football terminology, penalty goals are scored with a “penalty kick”expressed literally in English, while in the north the Koreans triumph by making an “11 meter punishment.” Southerners, when they want to have a juice, ask for a “juice”, while northerners talk about “sweet fruit water”. to wish you “good luck” to someone, those from the south have adopted an English-speaking expression in colloquial speech, “hi-team”something that those from the north do not understand at all. North Koreans “have a headache,” while those in the south, who in recent decades have discovered the concept of stress, talk much more about the pain of “suturese”stress in the corrupt slang konglish. The new lexicons also show the ideological transformation between the two nations, between their political systems and their social structures. Since the separation, the word “dongmu”which meant friend, fell out of use in the north in favor of the Soviet term товарищ, “comrade.” “Sun-mul”, a term that means “the action of introducing your friend”, is now prohibited from being used among the general population, and its privileged use was reserved for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong il. The problematic oral life of deserters These changes have already had recognizable consequences and it is logical that it becomes a more pressing problem every day. During the 2018 Olympic Games, for example, the two countries decided to launch a reconciliation message to the world by allowing its women’s hockey teams to compete in the same group head to head. As the athletes from the south commented later, there was quite a few communication problems that harmed their final strategy: apparently, the coach, from South Korea, used technical words in English, something that is most common in sports disciplines anywhere in the world, but the players from the north were not able to follow her lessons because of this vocabulary that, for them, was indecipherable. Something more serious than the lack of coordination for a sporting event is what many of them have had to experience. the 28,000 deserters who traveled from north to south in recent years. Their language unintentionally betrays them in their new country of residence. In the best of cases the locals They laugh at their outdated dialect. That they do not know how to adapt to the jargon of a post-war and globalized reality. At worst, they can have many problems getting into schools or getting jobs and live a second life as sacrificed as the one they tried to leave behind. Language preservation: a national trauma Because, in addition, Korean has great emotional and identity relevance for the 75 million citizens that both fronts have together. After the dramatic occupation of the peninsula by Japanese forces between 1910 and 1945, the locals were subjected to Japanese linguistic norms as a strategy to control the population and eradicate their culture. They imposed themselves “scientific” speeches that they defended their language was little more than a dialect descended from Japanese (a controversial claim for any linguist with a neutral vision), and that therefore it was not worth preserving a perverted use of a language superior in its purity. T After the Pacific War, teaching in Korean was strictly prohibited, its vocabulary was extinguished, people who spoke it daily were reprimanded, and intellectuals who tried to preserve its legacy were executed. With the end of the Second World War, the two resulting nations partly had to re-empower their language. There are attempts to reunify the language Both governments have been working bidirectionally for several years on a unified glossary project. It is known as the Gyeoremal-kunsajeon, or the Dictionary for People’s Understanding of Korean, and is the plan under which future generations will be educated. These 70 years of linguistic change They have gone much further than the transformation of some terms. There is even conversational structures that have been modified. It would be a change as abrupt as uniting people of a language with those who use one of its dialects. It is not just the fact that neither of the two States want to give in, it is that any modification of the linguistic structures that are not careful could cement syntactic inconsistencies or phonetics in the future. The company’s objectives, furthermore, are achieved at irregular rates, since relations between both nations have cooled … Read more

South Korea overtakes China as ASML’s largest market. Sanctions are already changing the world

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In the first quarter of 2026, South Korea has accounted for 45% of ASML salesthe Dutch manufacturer of lithography machinery without which no advanced chip exists. China, which until now led the same ranking with 36%, has fallen to 19%. The order of the semiconductor world has been inverted in the duration of a ‘Q’. Why is it important. ASML is the only company on the planet capable of manufacturing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machinesessential to produce chips less than 7 nanometers. Whoever controls access to ASML controls, to a large extent, which countries can manufacture elite semiconductors. That is why the figures for the first quarter of 2026 are not just another balance sheet but a way to understand the geopolitical map in real time. Or at least with “only” three weeks of latency. In figures: South Korea: 45% of ASML sales in Q1 2026 (up from 22% in the previous quarter). China: 19% (up from 36%). Taiwan: 23% (up from 13%). ASML’s total net sales in the quarter: €8.8 billion. Net profit: 2,760 million euros (+17% year-on-year). Sales forecast for 2026, revised upwards: between 36,000 and 40,000 million euros. The context. The United States has been building a sanctions architecture for years designed to disconnect China from access to advanced semiconductor technology. ASML, a Dutch company but with technology whose development has also involved American and British partners, stopped selling its EUV machines to China years ago. In 2023 added restrictions on more advanced DUV/UVP systems. What the first quarter data show is that this fence already has measurable effects on real sales flows. Between the lines. South Korea’s jump is not explained only by the Chinese fall. Samsung and SK Hynix They are in full race to build high-end memory capacity (the type of chip that powers AI data centers), and both companies have accelerated their orders for EUV machines. SK Hynix has committed nearly 12 trillion won (about 8.2 billion euros) in EUV lithography equipment for its Cheongju and Yongin factories. And Samsung, for its part, has placed a bulk order for approximately 20 EUV machines as part of a larger purchase of 70 systems for its P5 plant in Pyeongtaek. The underlying message is that the demand for AI is already sold in advance. According to ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, customers in the memory segment have already exhausted their capacity for the entire year. Supply will not meet demand in the foreseeable future and prices continue to skyrocket. Main loser? China, without access to EUV, has been using older DUV systems for years and multiple exposure techniques to approach the 7 nanometer nodes. This translates into chips that are more expensive to produce and have lower yields. Companies like SMIC, ChangXin or Yangtze Memory Technologies operate under increasing financial pressure: the more exposures you need to compensate for the absence of EUV, the worse the production economics. The big question. Can China build its own ASML? There are prototypes in development and the ambition to achieve mass production of EUVs before 2030 is public and no one hides it. That doesn’t mean we can take it for granted: neither Nikon nor Canonwho have dominated lithography for decades, have managed to develop EUV systems. ASML is where it is because it spent years working to achieve it, and it also did so with a very well-coordinated ecosystem: Carl Zeiss optics, specialized laser technology, thousands of components from suppliers around the world… Replicating that from scratch, under sanctions, in less than five years, is a titanic task even for a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants and an excessive ambition. Yes, but. The restrictions, in fact, have not sunk China, but have forced it to adapt. SMIC produces 7 nanometer chips using alternative techniques, although at higher cost and on a smaller scale. The pace of state investment in semiconductors has not slowed down. And the fact that several engineers who have worked at ASML have ended up in Chinese projects has raised alarms on the other side of the Pacific. China has built its current position on a long-term mindset. The sanctions close the shortest path, but that does not mean that other paths do not exist. In Xataka | China prepares a 2nm AI chip to end NVIDIA’s dominance. Your problem is how you are going to manufacture it Featured image | ASML

If you are going to install air conditioning, remember what happened to South Korea. It was the architectural disaster of the millennium

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In the 1990s, some of Asia’s densest cities reached concentrate millions of people in urban areas built in just a few decades. In that same period, several studies began to warn that a significant part of the buildings erected during the great economic booms had serious structural deficiencies. In fact, in some inspections after major accidents, it was estimated that only a minority of buildings fully complied security standards. When you grow faster than you can build. In a few decades, South Korea went from the devastation of war to becoming an industrial and urban powerwith a speed of growth that was hardly unprecedented. Furthermore, during the economic boom in the 1980s, the country was chosen to host the 1988 Olympic Games, and an exorbitant number of buildings were built to meet these new needs. That impulse translated into a construction fever where building architectures mattered more than doing them well, and where practices such as cutting costs, accelerating deadlines or ignoring technical warnings became common. In that scenario was born Sampoong Department Storenot as a project exceptionally flawed from the beginning, but as a typical product of an era when progress was measured in square meters and not in safety standards. Air conditioning as a wick. The key point of the tragedy that was about to take place and that ended up turning the department store into the millennium architectural disasterit was not a single error, but a chain of decisions that ended up concentrating all the fragility of the building in an apparently secondary detail: the air conditioning system. As? Apparently, the equipment installed on the roof They weighed tens of tonsfar above what the structure could support, and their accelerated installation did not even follow normal procedures, as they were dragged on the roof, damaging the structure itself. From that moment on, a terrifying image: every vibration when you turn them on widened invisible cracks that toured the building. What should have been an element of comfort became a lethal burden that ended up acting as the final trigger for the collapse, concentrating years of accumulated negligence in a single point. The department store before the disaster Condemned from the plans. The disaster began long before anyone heard creaking in the ceiling. The original project It was a residential block four floors, but was transformed by Lee Joon, future director of the Sampoong Group, to turn it into a large shopping center without properly redesigning the structure. Plus: Due to bans in Seoul that prevented foreign companies from signing contracts in the city, these monstrous buildings were awarded to a handful of South Korean companies. Overwhelmed by pressure, companies decided that it was best to accelerate the pace of work, regardless of the cost. Thus, the diameter of the pillars was reduced from 80 to 60 centimetersand the distance between them was increased to increase the useful surface, columns removed to install escalators, its thickness was reduced to gain commercial space and a fifth floor was added that was never planned. Each modification increased the weight and weakened the resistancewhile companies that warned of the danger were fired and replaced by more accommodating ones. The result was a chaotic building that, on paper, no longer had a safety margin even before opening its doors. Cracks getting bigger. In the months before the collapse, the building gave multiple warnings that something was wrong. Visible cracks appeared, floors vibrated, employees felt dizzy, and engineers warned of a imminent structural failure. The management’s reaction was to close some areas, turn off the air conditioning at the last minute and continue operating normally in the rest of the building. The reason was so simple as devastating: Losing a day of sales in a complex that received thousands of people was unacceptable. Even on the day of the collapse, with cracks of several centimeters and obvious signs of danger, it was decided do not evacuate customers. Images after the collapse The collapse. On the afternoon of June 29, 1995, the building did not explode nor was it the victim of an external attack: he just gave in to the crazy number of negligence. The air conditioning equipment ended up passing through the weakened roof, the columns could not support the accumulated load and the building collapsed. collapsed in a matter of 20 secondscrushing entire plants on top of each other. More than 500 people died and more than a thousand were trapped, many of them in a space that, just a few hours before, symbolized the country’s economic success. It was a destruction so rapid that it turned a shopping center full of life into a mountain of rubble in less than half a minute. Images after the collapse An avoidable tragedy. Rescue efforts continued for weeks, with survivors found even more than two weeks later under the remains of the building. But the magnitude of the disaster revealed an even more disturbing reality: many victims did not die only from the collapse, but due to subsequent failures in emergency management. Meanwhile, investigations confirmed the most obvious: there was not a single cause, but one after another.accumulation of avoidable errorsfrom the use of low-quality materials to business decisions that prioritized immediate profit over any safety criteria. Monument in memory of the collapse Corruption, punishment and a system in question. The collapse not only destroyed a building, but exposed an entire system. Those responsible, starting with owner Lee Joon, were convicted, including several officials involved in corrupt practices, but the impact was much broader. Subsequent inspections revealed that a significant portion of Seoul’s buildings had very serious structural problemswhich forced us to review regulations and reinforce controls. The Sampoong ceased to be an isolated case and became in a symbol of what happens when a society builds too quickly and too badly. The legacy. Today, where the building stood there is no visible trace of the tragedy, but its lesson remains crystal clear. The disaster was not the result of bad luck … Read more

Until now Cantabria was only a transit area for flamingos. They have been refusing to fly south for three years

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When we talk about climate changewe automatically think of melting glaciers or crops altering, but we must also take into account that biodiversity maps are being redesigned in real time. This is what we are seeing in the north of Spain, where southern flamencos have begun to consider Cantabria as your new residence of winter. What the census says. In order to see how the habits of flamingos are changing, we have to turn to the census of wintering waterfowl in Cantabria, which indicates that right now there is a stable population of about 25 southern flamingos who have been settled in the region for three consecutive winters without emigrating. These specimens arriving from the Mediterranean Sea have decided that the climate and conditions of the Cantabrian Sea are sufficient to avoid having to continue their journey to the warmer southern latitudes. And the culprit of this is climate change. The problem of winter. The theory tells us that this type of animal species usually always go to places with optimal temperatures, causing them to be in the north in summer and in the south in winter. But this has changed radically, and these migratory birds are slowly becoming one of the best thermometers of global warming. The explanation here lies in the fact that winters on the Cantabrian coast are increasingly milder, causing this thermal increase to eliminate the barrier of extreme cold that traditionally forced these species, such as the flamingo, to flee to the south of the peninsula or North Africa. Adaptation of the species. By not facing severe frosts that freeze water and limit access to their food, flamingos find the energy expenditure of a long migratory journey unnecessary. They simply “stick” here to an area that is now hospitable. A perfect refuge. For a species to decide to stay, it is not enough for it to be less cold, but food and shelter are also needed. Here Cantabria has one of the richest and most important estuarine complexes in northern Spain. The flamingos in this case have concentrated their colony in two key points of the Cantabrian geography: the bay of Santander and the estuarine complex of the Marinas of Santoña, Victoria and Joyel. Here the high wetland quality It guarantees an ecosystem rich in the small crustaceans and microorganisms that these birds feed on. Images | Jannes Jacobs In Xataka | These birds travel more than 3,000 kilometers every year to reach Spain. The curious thing is that some arrive without fingers

in the south of Spain

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On the one hand, the image of a Sierra Nevada piste (Spain) before the four meters of snow next to the Laguna chairlift. On the other hand, skiers Vail Mountain (United States) descending on brown slopes in the scarce 11% that is open. One winter, two completely different images. The snowiest season in Europe. It is mid-March 2026 and, against all odds, the snowiest snow season in Europe is in the province of Granada. Furthermore, according to its own data, Sierra Nevada would be the fourth in the world only behind Mt. Baker in the US and two Japanese stations. And yes, the thicknesses of 400 cm in the Veleta sector are an impressive figure, but it is much more so if we take into account that the US is going through the worst snow drought in more than 30 years and the Alps have very low thicknesses. What happened in Sierra Nevada? It has been the eighth wettest winter since 1961. In fact, according to the Nevasport rankingthree of the ten ski resorts with the most snow in the world are on the peninsula (Sierra Nevada, Ordino Arcalís and Candanchú). The Catalan stations that manages FGC They have just been living the best time in the last 10 years. The Granada case is more interesting because it is less common. The station is so far south that it is only viable due to its altitude. On this occasion, the weakness of the Azores Anticyclone has allowed storms to move much further south than usual. But it has done it in an unusual way, the truth is: January has historically been the month rainiest in the last 25 years. But is there so much snow in Granada? The 400 cm figure is not an average for the season, or anything like that: it is the amount accumulated in a specific area. One of the big problems of this season is that snow levels drop very quickly as the temperature drops. The same Nevasport users commented that on the Río track, the lowest, the stones are already emerging. What it says about the future of snow. In recent years, we have been very concerned about the future of snow in Spain. Quite systematically, snow accumulations have been reducing in recent decades and this affects the future of the seasons. This year’s data, I fear, does not change this fear much. It is possible that the rains are here to stay and the changes associated with global warming turn Andalusia into an orchard and the Baetics into the new Alps, but in the meantime… we better prepare for what happens again. Image | Yeray Sanchez In Xataka | Ski resorts without snow at the end of the century: the most pessimistic models show what could happen in our high mountains

Data centers have run out of “plugs” in central Europe, so they are migrating north and south

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The insatiable appetite of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redrawing the map of Europe. Historically, the European data center market has been dominated by a handful of metropolitan areas known in the industry as the “FLAP-D” markets: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. The main attraction of these cities was their proximity to large demand centers, which allowed extraordinarily fast data transmission. However, current forecasts indicate that this historical dominance is beginning to crumble. Technology developers are packing their bags and the reason is purely physical: there is not enough energy. The collapse of the giants. The driving force behind this technological exodus is the sheer congestion of the electrical grid in the traditional epicenters. Unlike a conventional factory, data centers present a brutal challenge for any infrastructure: they are huge, hyper-localized loads that operate tirelessly and have the ability to skyrocket their consumption faster than almost any other industry. The local impact of these installations is astonishing. According to Greenpeacein 2023 data centers consumed between 33% and 42% of all electricity in cities such as Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt. The most extreme case is that of Dublin, where they accounted for almost 80% of electricity consumption. The situation became so critical that Ireland was forced to impose a moratorium de facto to new data centers in its capital until 2028. The exodus to the North and South. As a direct consequence of this bottleneck, the proportion of installed capacity in FLAP-D markets will fall from the current 62% to just 51% by 2035. according to a report by Ember. This drop marks the beginning of a new era in which developers flee from bottlenecks. The new map would look like this: The big winners: The Nordic countries top the expansion list. They offer some of the least congested networks in Europe, low electricity prices, minimal carbon intensity and cold climates that reduce the need for cooling. Demand is expected to increase 4 or 5 times in this region. The awakening of the South: On the other side of the continent, countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain also project explosive growth, driven by their potential in renewable energy. The laggards: There are nations that, despite having strong economies and plenty of IT talent, are falling behind. Poland and Czechia are the best example. As detailed by Paweł CzyżakDirector of the Europe Program at the analysis center Embertheir electrical systems are still tied to coal and gas (Poland emits about 600 gCO2/kWh and the Czech Republic about 400 gCO2/kWh). With no clean energy to offer, investors prefer to look to their greener neighbors. Don’t underestimate the south. While the north squeezes the Scandinavian cold, Spain faces this exodus from a privileged position, breaking daily renewable generation records. However, its electrical network suffers a serious administrative “thrombosis”: There is plenty of clean energy, but there is a lack of cables to transport it, leaving 130 GW trapped in a bottleneck. Faced with the avalanche of data centers that threatened to collapse the system, the Government and the CNMC They have applied emergency surgery. The solution involves pioneering “flexible access permits” – which allow these plants to use residual capacity by accepting outages in emergencies – and the non-negotiable requirement that they withstand “voltage gaps” to shield the electrical stability of the entire peninsula. Planning and more planning. None of this happens by chance. In places where the network flows smoothly, there are years of work behind it. The Norwegian operator, Statnett, has been preparing the ground for some time to assume three times the electricity demand from data centers by 2030. In Denmark, Energinet began building high-voltage substations in 2017 in anticipation of precisely this scenario. Beyond the cables, the internal technology dictates the sentence. The key indicator is the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), which measures the technical efficiency of each installation. Paweł Czyżak points out in your newsletter that the difference is abysmal: the leading centers consume 24% less electricity and emit four times less CO2 than an average plant. Google has the best student in the class in Fredericia (Denmark): it averages a spectacular PUE of 1.07 and runs on 91% clean energy. The technological paradox. There is, however, a fascinating irony in the background: the same Artificial Intelligence that today saturates the cables could be the salvation of the electrical system. According to calculations by the consulting firm Deloittethe efficiency improvements that this technology will bring will save more than 3,700 TWh globally by 2030. Put into perspective, the deployment of these algorithms will save almost 4 times the energy consumed by all the data centers on the planet combined. Examples from other latitudes support this theory: in Southeast Asia (ASEAN), It is estimated that integrating AI in the management of its electrical systems it will save more than 67 billion dollars and avoid the emission of almost 400 million tons of CO2 between now and 2035. Infrastructure decides the future. At the bottom of this complex puzzle of cables and algorithms, what is at stake is pure and simple economic competitiveness. They are not minor figures. In the Netherlands, the data and cloud sector already attracts 20% of all foreign direct investment. In Germany, estimates calculate that the contribution of these centers to GDP will jump from the current 10.4 billion euros to more than 23 billion in 2029. The warning for legislators and regulators is clear: the technology giants have no patience to wait for new cables to be buried. They will move their billions to where the network already has space. As Czyżak saysthe country that wants to seduce the industry must guarantee clean energy in abundance and plugs ready to use. In the frenetic race to dominate the technological future, having a ready electrical grid is no longer an advantage; It is the only entry ticket. Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan on Unsplash and IRENA Xataka | Iran is directing its attacks where it knows it hurts the West: energy and data centers

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