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It’s time you had a button that allows you to filter AI-generated music

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Music created by AI is generating millions of dollars on platforms like Spotify, making royalties from real artists decrease. The platforms More than 75 million songs have already been uploaded of this type in the last year, and rivals such as Apple Music acknowledge that more than a third of the songs currently uploaded They are generated by AI. You can’t put doors on the field, but putting your hand in the matter seems inevitable. The new step. Spotify is starting to add verification badges for real artists, a badge that guarantees that the artist profile has been reviewed and is an “authentic” musician. The platform explains that those profiles that generate music using AI cannot be verified. The platform takes into account recent concerts, social networks, fan activity and profile behavior to determine whether or not it is real, a fairly fallible method. The world upside down. Spotify has decided to take the opposite path to rivals like Deezer. Their solution to stopping songs created with AI is to verify real artists, while Deezer is betting on a much more aggressive solution AI Music Detection Tool from Suno AI and Udio Removal of AI songs from recommendations Labeling of all songs created with AI According to Deezer, 44% of the total daily music delivery on the platform corresponds to songs created with AIstating that 97% of users are not able to detect between AI-generated music and human-generated music in a blind test. The underlying problem. Spotify’s approach reverses the burden of proof: instead of detecting fake content, it tries to certify authentic content. An independent artist without many numbers, without recent concerts or intensive activity on social networks has a hard time achieving verification, even if his music is completely human. The badge does not measure authenticity, it measures the relevance of the artist, and Spotify is also home to emerging artists. Furthermore, the criteria that Spotify explains are metrics that can be easily modified in AI times, precisely. The system has holes from day one. The damage to artists. The structural problem is not that there are users generating songs with AI, but rather the proportional distribution model that these platforms use. Each artist charges based on their number of plays over the total: the more AI songs accumulate listens, the more diluted what a real musician can earn. Cases like that of ‘Walk My Walk’or how a song generated by AI became the most listened to in the United States, make it clear that the phenomenon is here to stay, and raises the debate of whether AI itself should learn from what it knows: It is the artists who have taught her to compose. In Xataka | You make music with AI, one day you go to download your songs and you discover that you can’t anymore. That’s what just happened with Udio

Samsung just surpassed TSMC for the first time in eight years. The problem is that it is a mirage

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We are in the middle of the results presentation season. Listed companies share how the last fiscal period went and, although it sounds boring, it allows us to learn interesting details about the business. For example, Apple thinks that the components crisis is going to get much worsebut also where the companies are. Samsung is one of those that can show the most chest due to its good results this beginning of 2026so good that it has achieved for the first time in eight years look face to face at your great rival in chip manufacturing: TSMC. The asterisk is that it is a mirage. a fortune. As we read in the South Korean media The Chosun Dailythe semiconductor division of Samsung Electronics is in luck. During the first quarter of this year, they achieved sales worth 81.7 trillion won with an operating profit of 53.7 trillion won. It is the first time that the division has achieved an operating profit of more than 50 billion won, but the most curious thing is the enormous leap they have made since last year. In the same period in 2025, Samsung reported sales of 44 trillion won with an operating profit of 16.4 trillion won. In fact, the company has earned more in these three months than during all of 2025. to the podium. This best performance has placed the South Korean company as the second best performing semiconductor company in the world. Who is above? Your best friend: Nvidia. The company that is the glue of AI reported an operating profit of 66 trillion won in this period and the two have gone hand in hand in this period. Memory (of course). Samsung got a little lost in the memory race for AI due to the good work of its great rival in this segment, also South Korean SK Hynix. However, he did not waste time and took the opportunity to research how to create the best HBM4 memory modules. This is the high-bandwidth memory that is used by artificial intelligence platforms such as those from Nvidia. In fact, a few weeks ago we told how Samsung had managed to convince Nvidia so much as to AMD to choose their HBM4 chips. Thanks to that impulse, dump all your production to memories for artificial intelligence equipment (regardless of what happens with the consumer market), the company has managed to see sales grow by 69.16% year-on-year and operating profits soar by 756.1%. In fact, the South Korean media points out that, even taking into account the number of devices that Samsung manufactures, the semiconductor division is the one that represented 93.8% of the company’s total operating profit. Very far away. Now, there is an even more interesting fact. All that amount of money has made Samsung the only semiconductor company that comes close to Nvidia, even surpassing, by far, the largest global semiconductor foundry: the Taiwanese TSMC. However, although the South Koreans’ goal is to dethrone the Taiwanese, things are going to have to change a lot because they are very far away in terms of market share. Because Samsung is making a lot of money, but there is a huge gap when it comes to contract chip manufacturing for external customers. This means that Nvidia, Apple and many others continue to come to TSMC first than to Samsung to manufacture its chips. Putting it down with numbers, it is estimated that TMSC took 70% of the market share last year compared to Samsung’s 7%. The plan. And there is a problem in all this: the AI ​​superboom. Because Samsung is doing great selling its memory to hyperscalersbut it is not attracting clients at the same rate and, if at some point the memory market deflates, accounts will begin to decrease. Samsung is moving to prevent this from happening by opening new chip manufacturing plants, partnering with American companies on American soil to develop the market outside Asia and flirting with being the foundry that manufactures chips for Nvidia or Apple in the United States. Other sectors. It is evident that the semiconductor arm is going like a rocket, but… what happens with the rest? On mobile and networks, Samsung reported sales of 38.1 trillion won with an operating profit of 2.8 trillion won. This is where investment comes into play. 6G networksbut also recent releases such as those of the family Galaxy S26 that they have not left as much money in the coffers due to increases in memory costs (Samsung already pointed out that They were not going to favor their own division and that if memory is more expensive, it is for everyone). In Display (TVs and monitors), sales fell 14% year-on-year with operating profits of 400 billion won due to the price of RAM, among other factors, and home appliances had an operating profit of 200 billion won. It is obvious where the goose that lays the golden eggs is and it is not surprising that Samsung wants to exploit it thoroughly. Image | Applied Materials In Xataka | The ratio of CPU to GPU in data centers is approaching 1:1. Intel knows exactly what that means

Murcians and Castilian-La Mancha have been fighting for nothing for years. Whatever happens with the transfer, what we are really losing is time

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Ultimately, this is the story of a deception. Since 2019, the Supreme Court has been saying exactly the same thing: the application of the European Water Framework Directive forces Spain to change the way it manages its transfers. And he hasn’t said it once, no: if we talk about the transfer of the Tagushe has said it, at least, six times. Despite this, the different administrations have been interpreting a political melodrama for years that has prevented the design of a system that minimizes the problems that the directive may create. And the result is that Murcians and Castilian-La Mancha They have been fighting for nothing for years. Fortunately or unfortunately, this race forward seems to end on May 5. What happens on May 5? If everything goes as planned, on May 5 the Supreme Court will decide the future of the Tajo-Segura Transfer and the Tajo Hydrological Plan 2022-2027. That day, the high court will decide what happens to the appeal of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueductthe last major judicial process that remains open against the changes that the Government approved in 2025 to adapt to the regulations. It is, so to speak, the last legal bullet left for the irrigators of the eastern peninsula. And what can we expect? Bit. The president of the union himself, Lucas Jiménez, has publicly admitted ‘cold spirits’ and ‘without great expectations’, given the meaning of previous pronouncements. And at this point, the issue being debated is whether the new ecological flows (which, according to the University of Alicante, will entail an average loss of 105 hm³/year from 2027) come into force now or may be staggered. But, the unpopularity of the measure in large areas of the country has caused everything to be postponed. To the point that the National Court just admitted to processing Castilla-La Mancha’s appeal for the Ministry’s inaction in publishing the new rules: in fact, if Scrats’ appeal is overturned tomorrow, there will be no rules to apply the transfer. And then? The conflict will enter a new phase: given the eventual rejection and with the transfer cuts legally consolidated, all that remains is to discuss technical details and compensation measures. We must not forget that the Transfer supplies almost 150,000 hectares irrigation in Murcia, Alicante and Almería. This is water that is already de facto granted to irrigators and the State will have to compensate them. Although, of the 1,450 million euros that Moncloa committed to cushion the blow, it seems that only around 5% has been executed. The story that never ends. We have been fighting over water in Spain for decades and we have been unable to create a system that reorganizes the country (and adapts it to real water). Almost the opposite: for more than 30 years, it has never been like this. As explained in Datadista“since the deep drought of the 1990s, each dry period has served to implement emergency measures (…) or allow practices that were not eliminated when the rains returned, they were used to expand irrigation, increasing the problem of overexploitation and contamination of aquifers and the wetlands they feed.” And the bill for all that is what we are paying now. Image | Trent Haddock In Xataka | The Tagus reservoirs have reached their maximum level. The response of the authorities has been to empty them immediately

That bug has been waiting for its moment in Spain for 60 years. And your time is now

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In 1964, someone decided it was a good idea to release a handful of estrildas in Portugal. Before the end of the decade, this small opportunistic bird from sub-Saharan Africa had already settled in Extremadura and Andalusia. By the 80s, it had already reached the east of the peninsula. For 60 years, estrildas had remained in a discreet background. It had taken root, but they weren’t getting traction. However, that has begun to change: in the last 15 years, Valencian estrilds have multiplied by 10 and in Catalonia the population has tripled. AND, to the surprise of the expertsthe key to the boom has been two other invasive species. What has happened? In recent days, several media have begun to publish reports announcing that the African bird “has already arrived” in Spain. However, the common estrilda has been here for decades. What is new is not that: what is new is that in recent years the proliferation of uncultivated plots (one in five are) is becoming the perfect breeding ground for two other exotic species, the common reed and the Pampa duster. And those species make the perfect habitat for estrildas. Do they eat them? No no. That’s why I say it’s curious: the researchers they have realized that it is not that birds consume these plants. The plants provide shelter, roosting sites and perfect structures for this species. The strilas have been surviving for years in a very hostile territory, now they have found some areas that suit them like a glove. The story, as you can see, is more complex. Above all, because it has an agricultural substrate. Without the profound changes of recent years in the countryside, neither the Pampa duster nor the common sugarcane would have reached where they have. In this sense, what is truly worrying is not the estrilda (a bird that, as far as we know, is not affecting the local fauna either). What has experts worried is the chain of invasions. You just have to think about it a little to understand: the feather duster is South American, the common reed is Asian, and the estrilda is African. Together, they have managed to become strong in southern Europe. Fauna and flora have logics that we are still unable to understand in depth. In the end, the key is always in the same place: that there is a moment when we are going to have to assume that the only way to get out of all the problems we are creating is to start comprehensively managing the field. Image | XRTF In Xataka | England is experiencing an unprecedented invasion. The problem is that they are octopuses, and they are devouring everything they can find.​

Although there are scientists saying the opposite, it is time to recognize it: continents do not exist

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For a couple of years and from time to time, a very specific type of article has gone viral: one that repeats that there is a group of researchers from the University of Derby has found a new (micro)continent in Davis Strait. That is, between Greenland and North America. And yes, it sounds a little Martian. How could we have lost an entire continent in the 1,143 kilometers that that strait measures? It has its explanation What the hell is a continent? The most intuitive answer is “a large area of ​​land surrounded by water”; But the truth is that it only works in theory and, when we tackle the problem, everything gets complicated. Therefore, if the question is “how many continents are there in the world?”, the only logical answer is this: “it depends.” What do you mean “it depends”? The reasons behind many of the divisions we handle are “purely historical and cultural.” In fact, as Miguel García explains“the educational systems of different countries establish different continental divisions”: In Anglo-Saxon countries, it is most common to say that there are seven continents (Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Asia, Antarctica and Oceania); On the other hand, in Romance language countries, the most common answer is that there are six continents (uniting the Americas into one); Six continents are also explained in the countries of the ex-Soviet orbit (although they keep America separate and what they unite is Europe and Asia). There are more options, of course. For example, we could unite Asia, Africa and Europe on a single continent and, together with America, Australia and Antarctica, there would be four. By proxy, we could even remove Antarctica because, well, without its snow cover it would become an archipelago (whose largest island would be smaller than Australia). It’s time to admit that continents do not exist. They are social constructs, like municipalities or provinces. Hence, as García explainsFrom a geological point of view, it can be concluded that continents do not constitute a scientific concept. In any case, we can talk about tectonic plates (and, although defining their number is also a hassle, we would not talk about less than 15). So what are the Derby researchers talking about? Now it’s time to get into the matter: what researchers have used is something elsethe thickness of the Earth’s crust. In general, there are two types of Earth’s crust: continental (about 35 kilometers thick) and oceanic (between 8 and 10). Of what they have realized is that as the tectonic plates between Canada and Greenland have shifted, the Earth’s crust has been reconfigured. The result has been a protocontinental (i.e. extremely thick) crust on what should be an oceanic crust. And what is all this for? It must be admitted that, once we get the matter down, everything seems more boring. However, the finding is very interesting: we actually don’t know very well how tectonic dynamics work. We have very developed ideas and models, yes; But when it comes down to it, there are more questions than answers. Being able to study in detail the formation of a protomicrocontinent is a unique opportunity to understand phenomena such as the one that is dividing Africa in two. And we have already seen that, unlike what we tend to believe, this has a real impact on daily life of millions of people. Image | Kate Ter Haar In Xataka | A huge crack has opened in Kenya’s Rift Valley and it seems it’s just the beginning This article was originally published in 2025. We have updated its content.

The problem that we read less and less is not a lack of time or discipline: it is that we do not do ‘habit-stacking’

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We all know the scene: a pile of books gathering dust on the nightstand and a silent promise that, this weekend, we will finally get around to reading. However, Sunday night arrives and we have barely turned a couple of pages, so our relationship with reading has become in an “aspirational disenchantment”. We want to read, we long to get into the habit, but in the event of any temporary unforeseen event, the book is the first thing we discard. We usually punish ourselves by thinking that we lack willpower or that we don’t have enough free time. We wait for the holidays to devour novels, believing that reading requires large blocks of uninterrupted time. But behavioral science has bad news for our ego and great news for our routine: it’s not a discipline problem, it’s a design problem. The solution is not in motivation, but in a neurological “hack” known as habit-stacking or habit stacking. The motivation trap. When we don’t achieve our wellness or intellectual goals, “it’s not because we don’t care enough or aren’t disciplined,” explains Dr. Eve Glazier. to Washington Post. Failure comes because we rely too much on ephemeral motivation and lack a realistic implementation plan. This is where the habit-stacking. Popularized by behavioral experts such as BJ Fogg (creator of the method Tiny Habits at Stanford University) and James Clear (author of the best-selling Atomic Habits), this technique consists of linking a new habit that we want to incorporate to a habit that we already do automatically every day. As James Clear detailsthe formula is astonishingly simple: “After a ‘current habit,’ I will make a ‘new habit.’” Applied to our problem, the goal is to stop saying “I’m going to read more”—an abstract and overwhelming goal—and use everyday anchors. For example: “After I turn on the coffee maker in the morning, I’ll read a page,” or “After I brush my teeth at night, I’ll pick up my book.” In Xataka They are not your imagination: the best-selling books are increasingly simpler and contain less elaborate sentences The biological “hack”. As James Clear explains Based on neurobiology, our brain experiences a phenomenon called “synaptic pruning.” As we age, the brain eliminates the neural connections we don’t use and strengthens the ones we repeat daily (like showering or making morning coffee). By “stacking” reading on top of an already strong and established neural pathway, the new habit travels first class. The brain uses signal-based learning (cue-based learning), dramatically reducing friction and decision fatigue. You simply no longer have to remember to read; your coffee maker reminds you. And achieving it has an impact that goes far beyond general culture. As we analyzed recently in Xatakaa 12-year study with more than 3,600 participants showed that reading books reduces the risk of mortality by 20%. Readers have a 23-month survival advantage over non-readers, thanks to the fact that deep reading improves cognitive reserve. And no, you don’t have to read for hours: the study suggests that 30 minutes a day are enough to obtain these benefits. The voice of the experts: start in miniature. If the theory is so good, how do we apply it without failing in the attempt? The experts consulted by the main media agree on several golden rules to design our habit-stacking: It starts ridiculously small: Psychologist Beena Persaud, cited in Washington Postwarns against drastic changes. Don’t aim to “read a whole chapter”, aim to “open the book and read a paragraph”. Make the tiny habit guarantees that you comply even on your worst days. The anchor must be unbreakable: Psychologist Melissa Ming Foynes explains to Real Simple that the anchor must be bulletproof. If you want to read at night but your children constantly interrupt your sleep routine, using the night as an anchor is a mistake. Find something you do “rain or shine.” Forget the 21 day myth: As stated Dr. Axscience has shown that forming a habit takes between 18 and 254 days (with an average of 66 days). Patience is vital. Use the “Principle of “Premack”: Dr. Lauren Alexander recommends applying immediate rewards. When you achieve your micro-reading habit, give yourself a small reward so that your brain releases dopamine and closes the positive reinforcement cycle. Beware of mirages. However, before starting to pile up habits, it is important to understand our context. In Spain, 65.5% of citizens claims to read for leisure (an all-time high), but this figure may be inflated by “social bias”: we like to brag that we read because it gives us prestige. Furthermore, reports of The Economist they point out that the best-sellers current ones have a readability equivalent to that of a 16-year-old teenager. We read less deeply than we think. Added to this is the danger of misunderstanding the habit-stacking. How to warn Guardian, Now there is a viral trend on social networks known as bedtime stacking. It consists of going to bed at 8:30 p.m. but taking an arsenal of tasks: the laptop, the iPad, the skincarea snack and the gratitude journal. Far from being a productive habit stack, it’s a disaster for sleep hygiene and destroys our circadian rhythm. {“videoId”:”x7zmsee”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”11 WEBSITES to DOWNLOAD FREE EBOOKS for your KINDLE Xataka TV”, “tag”:”Kindle”, “duration”:”321″} Consistency vs. intensity. At the end of the day, in behavioral psychology “consistency always trumps intensity”. Great personal transformations are not born from marathon reading weekends, but from ridiculously small daily actions repeated over months. We are not bad readers nor do we lack discipline. We have simply been using the wrong tools to fight a hyperconnected life. By chaining reading to our toothbrush or our coffee, we stop depending on capricious inspiration to finally put our own biology to work in our favor. Image | Photo by Matias North on Unsplash Xataka | Science has calculated the real impact of reading books on your brain. And it has a very simple recipe: 30 minutes a day (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); … Read more

There have never been more salmon in the world. It’s time we declare them a threatened species

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Last year, global production of farmed Atlantic salmon amounted to 3.12 million tonnes. That amount is 8,000 times the catch of wild salmon and it is logical: to the extent that aquaculture has become the “pretty girl” of the fishing industry, these are not good times for wild salmon. And no, it is not something that only affects the cold waters of the Norwegian fjords. In Spain, in 2024, only 130 copies were sealed. He all-time low since control of the Asturian rivers began in 1949. And lthe situation is going to get worse. Why is it going to get worse? The reason it’s not obvious. When we talk about this problem, the first intuition is to think that it is a simple question of ‘attention’. Before we needed to take care of wild salmon habitats to ensure we could catch them. Now that aquaculture has made the wild supply dispensable, the incentives to maintain it have disappeared. But, in reality, it is worse. Because the truth is that the dynamics of aquaculture are actively working on the collapse of the wild population. We have well located the three big problems: 1) the hybrid salmon escapes (who have better farm fitness, but worse ocean survival) than They mix with wild animals and produce genetic problems.2) the spread of sea ​​louse because the concentration of fish in cages amplifies the parasite load and, finally, 3) the need for forage fish to feed the farms removes resources for other fish. And the consequences are visible to all. In Asturias it is not only that the season has started two weeks later than usual, it is that the first salmon (campanu) the latest day in history has arrived. But that’s only part of the story. In Norway, for example, only 323,000 wild salmon were observed in 2024. The previous year, the figures They amounted to 481,463 copies. In fact, last year fishing was prohibited in 42 rivers and three fjords. In Scotland, another of the great salmon-growing countries, the population of wild specimens has fallen by 80% since the 1970s. Is it only a problem related to aquaculture? No, it would be unfair to say this. The decline is global and has a lot to do with climate and food chain problems. But the evidence tells us that not even repopulating is of any use: we have been taking counterproductive initiatives for decades that reduce genetic diversity and make the species increasingly fragile. Image | Bruce Warrington In Xataka | We are drugging the salmon with cocaine and anxiolytics. And that’s causing them to behave strangely.

science explains what happens to your body (and your brain) depending on the time you choose

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In social circles, the truth is that there are sometimes very interesting debates about common customs, such as whether it is better to shower first thing in the morning or just before getting into bed. Here, while there is a group of people who defend tooth and nail the revitalizing power of water in the morning to “start” the day, others say that there is nothing like hot water at night to conclude sleep. And here science has something to say. It makes us sleep better. If you have trouble falling asleep, the science here suggests that a nighttime shower may be a good idea, and explained in a meta-analysis published in 2019 in the magazine Sleep Medicine which analyzed 17 different studies. Here it was concluded that bathing or showering with hot water between one and two hours before going to bed reduces the time to fall asleep by approximately 36%. Because? Here hot water is our main ally, since it warms the skin and, therefore, increases blood flow to the extremities such as the hands and feet. From here, when you get out of the shower, that heat dissipates quickly, causing a drop in the body’s core temperature. And this is the key, because this thermal drop mimics the natural cooling that our body experiences before sleeping, which sends an unequivocal signal to the brain to release melatonin, which is the sleep hormone, and reduce levels of cortisol, which is related to stress. It depends on the time. From a psychological point of view, morning and night showers fulfill completely opposite functions and it depends precisely on the time at which we take them. In the case of the morning showerthe goal is increase performance with the activation of the sympathetic system by stimulating muscle tone and, above all, preparing us for the stress of the day. In the case of the night shower, as we have said before, an attempt is made to activate the parasympathetic system with a longer and more leisurely duration of the shower with the aim of reducing the accumulated physical and mental tension, fulfilling the function of an authentic ritual of transition and disconnection. According to psychology. Here we enter territory that is not so clear, but which indicates, for example, that people who prefer a shower at night do so because they have a lower tolerance for dirt, which is why they prefer to remove all the sweat of the day before going to bed. But it is also noted that people who prefer solitude tend to prefer nighttime showers, precisely because, after a day full of stimuli, the bathroom becomes a capsule of sensory disconnection. In the end, it is a way to relax from everything that has happened throughout the day. Images | freepik In Xataka | Cooling down is the forgotten step in our exercise routines. And that affects how we shower

The most predictable ocean system in the Pacific has collapsed for the first time in 40 years. And no one really knows why.

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For the first time in at least 40 years of systematic records, the Gulf of Panama’s “seasonal upwelling” (the mechanism that pushes cold, nutrient-rich water from the bottom to the surface every first quarter of the year) collapsed in 2025. 2026, fortunately, is not repeating the pattern. But what researchers are discovering is no more reassuring. Has the outcrop “gone”? Not exactly: it didn’t completely disappear; but it started 42 days late, lasted only 12 days (compared to the usual 66) and cooled the waters to 23 degrees (instead of the average 19). And yet, it is counterintuitive. First, because La Niña (the ENSO phase that ruled in 2025) It usually favors blooms in the eastern Pacific. Second, because until now we thought that warming intensifies large outcrops. And, third, because the upwelling has returned this year (with some collapses in between). None of this fits with what we have learned over 30 years of direct ‘in situ’ measurements (and satellite images). But wait a second, what is this “outcrop” thing? It is an effect of the increase in intensity of the ‘Panama low-level jet‘; a jet that pushes surface water deeper and allows cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths of the Gulf of Panama to rise. This outcrop is key to the life of some 60,000 km2 of the Pacific. The fact is that it is also the most predictable system in the Pacific. Since we started measuring it, he had never missed his appointment. What happened in 2025. The allies did not have the strength to break the thermal stratification of the surface and, therefore, were not able to activate the outcrop other than as a simulation. And why should we care? To begin with because, according to the same researcherss, “more than 95% of Panama’s marine biomass comes from the Pacific thanks to the rise of nutrients”: that is 2.76% of the GDP of the Panamanian republic. But it goes beyond the Central American country: the upwelling areas occupy less than 1% of the world’s ocean surface, but They generate around 50% of fishing catches of the planet It also has an important oceanic and climate impact, of course; but it tells us very interesting things about what we can expect in the future. Because if, suddenly, a phenomenon that we thought was very stable (and that we have known about for as long as we can remember) can disappear, what can happen? What, in reality, is the Gulf of Panama telling us? Image | O’Dea et al. (2025) In Xataka | 2023 was the year in which El Niño and climate change competed. In the Amazon we already know who won

the last time all humans were on Earth

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It sounds like the beginning of a work of science fiction, but it is a quiet milestone in the history of our species. On Tuesday, October 31, 2000 marked the last day in which every human being on the planet was on this side of the atmosphere. Since then, there has not been a single moment in which all of humanity has been confined to our home planet. A historic launch. That October 31, 2000, A Soyuz spacecraft took off from the Baikonur Cosmodromein Kazakhstan, carrying Expedition 1 of the International Space Station on board: American commander Bill Shepherd of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko of Roscosmos. The crew arrived at a fledgling ISS on November 2, 2000. It only had a couple of modules (the Russian Zarya and the American Unity, assembled in 1998), but since then, the orbital laboratory has been occupied continuously. For 24 and a half years, there is always a human floating about 400 kilometers above our heads. A quarter of a century. The International Space Station is a collaborative project between five space agencies (the American NASA, the Russian Roscosmos, the European ESA, the Japanese JAXA and the Canadian CSA). It is not only a symbol of international cooperation, but an unparalleled scientific laboratory, which orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at a speed of almost 28,000 km/h. In this quarter of a century, the orbital station has reached a habitable volume greater than that of a six-bedroom house, with a wingspan of 109 meters and an average of seven people always on board. It can dock up to eight spacecraft simultaneously and has hosted almost 3,000 investigations from more than 108 countries, taking advantage of microgravity to study everything from particle physics to the effects of space travel on the human body. The ISS passes the baton. Aged and with age-related ailmentslike the air leaks that cause headaches for its operators, the ISS partners plan to abandon it in 2030, before a ship developed by SpaceX tow it to a safe place for atmospheric reentry. NASA’s strategy is clear: move from being the primary owner and operator to becoming a key customer, thus ensuring continued human presence in low-Earth orbit. This will allow further research in microgravity (which is crucial for future missions to the Moon and Mars), maintain international collaboration and foster a commercial space economy. USA announced last year its intention to reduce the budget allocated to the ISS hoping for a quick transition to new commercial space stations. Companies like Axiom Space (with its Axiom Sation project), Blue Origin (with its Orbital Reef) or Voyager Space (with Starlab, in collaboration with Airbus) are developing new private orbital platforms. What if they are not ready on time? If commercial stations do not arrive by 2030, humanity will continue to inhabit low orbit thanks to China. Banned from the ISS, China has expanded its presence in space with Tiangong space stationcontinuously inhabited since 2022. Not only does China plan to double its size from three to six modules in the coming years, but it is already opening its doors to international cooperation, as demonstrated by the recent agreement to train and send Pakistani astronauts to the Chinese space station. With NASA focusing on a business model and deep space exploration, Beijing is strategically positioned as a central player and potential alternative in low orbit, especially for nations seeking to collaborate outside the American framework. A changing environment. But there is another reason why the United States has focused on the Moon and Mars. Low Earth orbit faces the increasingly critical challenge of space debris. Millions of objects, from dead satellites and rocket upper stages to small undetectable fragments generated by collisions or anti-satellite missile tests. This debris travels at enormous speeds and represents a constant and potentially catastrophic collision risk for astronauts. The ISS itself has had to carry out numerous evasive maneuvers in recent years. Managing this problem through better tracking systems (especially for small objects), active removal of the most dangerous debris and, above all, prevention and mitigation in the generation of new space debris (such as rapid deorbitation of rocket stages) will be essential to ensure the safety of future crews in the long term. For now, and for just over 25 years, we continue to inhabit the space. October 31, 2000 was the last day of an era in which humanity was anchored exclusively to the Earth. Since then we have been, without interruption, a species with an extraterrestrial presence. Human permanence off Earth seems assured, but its sustainability will require even more effort and global cooperation. Image | THAT In Xataka | Elon Musk has made public his latest recommendation for Trump: deorbit the International Space Station in two years In Xataka | Boeing has lost: NASA will cancel the SLS rocket and look for a cheaper alternative to colonize the Moon and Mars A version of this article was published in May 2025

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