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Antimatter has a property that has taken physicists decades to measure. CERN just did it a hundred times better than anyone else

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Antimatter is fascinating not only because of its essence; It is also due to the still enigmatic role he played in the origin of the universe. Scientists still do not have the necessary tools to understand with any precision the role of this form of matter in the formation of the cosmos and the mechanisms that govern the tenuous line that delimits the imbalance between matter and antimatter. Fortunately, what they do know are its constituent elements and some of its properties. Understand what is antimatter It’s not difficult. And we can observe it as an exotic type of matter that is made up of antiparticles, which are particles with the same mass and spin as the particles we are familiar with, but with the opposite electrical charge. In this way the antiparticle of the electron is the positron or antielectron. And the antiparticle of the proton is the antiproton. Antimatter has a surprising property: when it comes into direct contact with matter, both annihilate, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of high-energy photons, as well as other possible particle-antiparticle pairs. It is currently being studied in many of the most important research centers specialized in particle physics in the world with the hope that knowing it better will help us understand some of the mysteries of the cosmos that remain out of our reach. The hyperfine cleavage of antihydrogen has been revealed CERN’s antimatter factory produces this form of matter by firing high-energy protons from an adjacent synchrotron at a metal block. This process generates a cascade of secondary particles, and among them antiprotons arise. These latter particles can then be cooled to be used in the facility’s experiments. ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus or antihydrogen laser physics apparatus), which is one of them, is specialized in producing antihydrogen by fusing antiprotons with positrons. Researchers then use magnetic fields to trap the antihydrogen for further study. An antihydrogen atom is composed of an antiproton in its nucleus and a positron orbiting around it, in the same way that a hydrogen atom contains a proton around which an electron orbits. Deuterium and tritium, the two isotopes of hydrogen, also have one or two neutrons in the nucleus respectively. The researchers of the ALPHA experiment have achieved something amazing: have measured hyperfine division of the ground state of the antihydrogen atom with a precision of 4 parts per million, improving the previous result by two orders of magnitude. This milestone is very important because it allows very rigorous tests to be carried out in the field of quantum electrodynamics. Hyperfine splitting of the ground state of the antihydrogen atom is the small splitting of the lowest energy state of the atom due to the magnetic interaction between the antiproton and the positron. According to the fundamental symmetries of nature, this measurement should be identical to the equivalent effect observed in hydrogen. Be that as it may, this milestone is very important because it allows very rigorous tests to be carried out in the field of quantum electrodynamics, which is the most precise theory that explains the interactions that occur between charged particles and light. Jeffrey Hangst, the spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment, explains that “the hyperfine splitting of the ground state of hydrogen is the origin of the so-called 21 centimeter lineso prized by radio astronomers and researchers searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (…) When the antimatter factory was conceived in the 1990s, the hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen was one of the key measurement objectives justifying the construction of the facility.” “The current measurement represents the culmination of many years of effort,” Hangst pointed out. “We have pursued the precise determination of the hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen since we demonstrated how to trap antimatter atoms in 2010. And now another group in the antimatter factory, the ASACUSA collaboration, is also trying to study this very important transition. Their technique, if demonstrated, has the potential to achieve even greater precision.” Thanks to ALPHA’s high level of precision, the measurement of hyperfine cleavage is sensitive to the effects of the internal structure of the antiproton at the center of the antihydrogen atom. In any case, this result is a very important step in the effort to further explore the nature of antimatter. Image | CERN More information | CERN In Xataka | European science gets serious: EUROfusion and CERN will work together on nuclear fusion and new colliders

China is taking away all its scrap paying up to five times more

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The scene seems like something out of an industrial espionage thriller, but it takes place in broad daylight. As anticipated Financial TimesChinese buyers are making appointments in the parking lots of stores like Home Depot in the United States to discreetly purchase lots of scrap metal valued at more than $20,000. This is the front line of a silent war for global resources. According to this same media, Asian intermediaries are sweeping up American scrapyards and paying up to five times the usual price, snatching the material from local recyclers. The director of a recycling company in Texas sums it up bluntly: “it’s a secret war that no one talks about.” Why so much interest in residual remains? The answer lies in the metal that makes them up. As explained The Conversation, Tungsten – whose name means “heavy stone” in Swedish – has the highest melting point of all known metals, reaching 3,422 °C. Furthermore, its extreme hardness and resistance to thermal shocks make it an absolutely irreplaceable material for manufacturing everything from aerospace technology to armor-piercing military ammunition. Market strangulation. China currently controls almost 79% of global tungsten production. As detailed in an analysis by expert John Connortension erupted in February 2025, when Beijing tightened its export controls in retaliation for US tariffs, cutting its shipments to the West by a drastic 40%. The economic impact of this decision was devastating. The restriction caused a strangulation of the market and a brutal increase in prices, which shot up 557% to reach $2,250 per metric ton. The great paradox is that, while the global shortage of virgin tungsten is caused by Beijing’s quotas, it is China itself that hoards recycled American scrap—such as worn-out industrial drill bits—to take it back to Asia through third countries such as Canada or Dubai. Industry analysts warn of imminent danger: If China officially reopens its doors to direct imports of scrap metal, the result will be a disaster for supply in the rest of the world. The global board. Today, almost absolute control of these supply chains gives China immense commercial and geopolitical power. This dominant position allows Beijing to use critical technologies and materials—so-called “bottlenecks”—as a lever of international influence that it can pull at will. Faced with this drain on resources, the debate has reached the highest levels. The report of Financial Times collect voices within the recycling industry and the US Congress demanding an immediate ban on the export of tungsten scrap to China to protect national security. However, the United States faces a temporary impasse: the country currently lacks the processing capacity necessary to convert all that exported scrap into useful finished products for its industry. In search of extraction. As Connor explainsthe solution inevitably involves diplomacy and investment abroad. The expert points out that Kazakhstan, which has the largest reserves of tungsten outside China (estimated at about two million tons), has become the center of the US strategy, attracting government-backed investments to develop local mines. But the race is head to head and Beijing has not sat idly by. In fact, China has already moved ahead in the Central Asia region, having started commercial production at the gigantic Boguty mine in Kazakh territory. At the same time, new Western actors are trying to close the gap. The financial portal Trading View informs that companies such as the Canadian mining company Allied Critical Metals are committed to revitalizing historic European projects, such as Borralha in northern Portugal. The company has a clear objective: to start the production of tungsten concentrate before the end of 2026 to meet the urgent demand in the West. Industrial ingenuity versus dumping. The middle The Conversation provides a historical parallel extremely interesting: during World War II, faced with the critical shortage of molybdenum caused by attacks by German submarines on maritime convoys, engineers from the British company Vickers managed to innovate by recycling the metal directly from mining drill bits. Today, that same logic applies to tungsten, which has a very high recycling rate of 42% globally. In Western markets this figure shoots up to an impressive 70%, driven precisely by the need to compensate for Chinese dominance over the primary mineral. In addition to technical innovation, state protection strategies gain prominence. In March South Korean Sangdong mine opened; Once at full capacity, this facility could produce more than 80% of the world’s non-Chinese tungsten. The most notable thing about this project is that the Seoul government has established a guaranteed minimum price for the mineral, thus protecting the operation from possible practices of dumping. Flooding the market to artificially depress prices is a tactic China has used successfully in the past to bankrupt Western investors in the critical minerals sector. An imminent warning for the West. The clock is ticking and the consequences of inaction could be fatal. An imminent and dangerous reality stalks the West: the Third Gulf War has consumed munitions at a staggering rate and depleted US stockpiles of tungsten-dependent missiles such as the Patriot and THAAD systems. taking them to historic lows. Without a stable and massive supply to quickly replenish these arsenals, the US military risks a true military disaster should a larger conflict break out, such as a direct confrontation over Taiwan. As a final reflection, andThese restrictive tactics from Beijing should be read as a stern warning. The current tungsten crisis should force Western governments to wake up once and for all and “de-risk” (de-risk) urgently their supply chains. Only by building an independent industrial network can the Western world avoid making its security and economy dependent on the monopoly of a single country. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The US is withdrawing soldiers from Europe. His plan to reassure her is to leave something much more disturbing in front of Russia.

In atomized times, the Spanish generation Z is finding a strange refuge in ‘Los Serrano’ and ‘No one here lives’

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“I’m looking forward to the long weekend and finishing the season. The Serranos“A 15-year-old student I recently taught recognized me. Yes, 15 years. Possibly the combination of that phrase and that idea gives us a short circuit: we are talking about a series that ended in 2008; when she hadn’t even started kindergarten. I couldn’t contain myself and as someone who did grow up with Diego Serrano, the brush and the boom for Fran Perea, I had to ask him where that passion had come from. It came through clips on TikTok. That content of a few minutes and loose decontextualized fragments were not enough, and they turned something that began as a simple curiosity into a true marathon to know in detail what happened to Eva and Marcos, the most famous stepbrothers on TV in the 2000s. A fiction as iconic as that, but for generation millennialhad found its new primary audience in Generation Z. I was surprised, of course, but the idea stayed in the back of my head, like a specific issue to which I should not give more importance. Like when your friend tells you that she is pregnant and suddenly you start noticing people on the street and you discover something that we could almost classify as a baby epidemic; Shortly after, another teenage student, whom we will call Victoria, shows me her pending homework on her tablet. Between irregular verbs and vocabulary to learn, I look at the wallpaper: nothing less than ‘Santa Justa Klan‘, the fictional (and not so fictional) group that was formed in ‘Los Serrano’. At this point, I was already ‘mode’Queen’s Gambit‘, projecting theories on the ceiling about something so strange to understand and that he was also seeing everywhere. Just a few weeks ago, at the next table in a restaurant, a group of university girls revealed in their talk that this is not just about ‘The Serranos‘. To a certain extent, declaring yourself a fan of ‘There is no one who lives here‘It is understandable with the common thread that it has with an already veteran series, but still in broadcast, like ‘The one that is coming‘. The thing is that they start quoting ‘The boarding school’, ‘Physics or Chemistry‘, ‘The ship’ or ‘Paco’s men‘, debating passionately about how the revival Prime Video of the first one does not have one bit of the quality of the original. Once again, I could not contain myself, and I assailed them with my doubts about how they had arrived at these fictions so typical of my generation and not so much of theirs. The same pattern: discovery on social networks, the possibility of watching all seasons on platforms or even through those fragments, and the echo chamber that is created in classes and groups of friends. That week-by-week phenomenon effect that we’ve barely seen since ‘Game of Thrones‘, is being achieved organically in the middle classes of Spain. Some actors are still relevant today, and although it is difficult to think that all the youth have come to ‘El Barco’ by looking at the IMDb of Mario Casas or ‘El Internado’ doing the same with Ana de Armascould make sense in certain cases. None of that: it is the series itself is what hooks you so many years later. This is how Catalina, one of these girls, recognizes it: “I’m finishing The Boarding School; When I do it I plan to tell my little sister to start it.” The generational contrast is more than evident, and the lapidary phrase that unsettles an entire generation millennial who, like me, has grown up with ‘Three meters above the sky‘ and ‘SMS without fear of dreaming‘ is pronounced by Sara, to whom her friends were highly recommending ‘El Barco’: “Ah, but Mario Casas went out there? I had no idea.” From meme to marathon The furor over the story of Lucas and Sara from ‘Paco’s Men’ or the crazy theories that ‘El Internado’ sparked now do not begin on television, waiting week after week for a new chapter. Rather the opposite occurs; Like almost everything in recent years, it all starts with the mobile. If before you watched a series and then it was when the meme festival began on the networks, now the journey is the other way around, from the meme it goes to television. And whoever says meme says fancams or fragments of interviews that awaken interest in those fictions dosmileras. “I started watching the story of Teté and Guille in parts on TikTok and I couldn’t stop,” one of my students reminded me. So, the clip opens the door and the series does the rest, becoming almost an involuntary trailer. And, really, this fragmented and instant format is very much in line with the current consumption model. Everything has to be quick, that captures your attention in the first seconds and encourages you to consume something, of whatever nature. So it is no coincidence that the algorithm works as a perfect cultural programmer for generation Z, a tool that prioritizes the high emotional or humorous charge it has in the love drama of Lucas and Sara or in the phrases from Bethlehem to his greatest ally. This resurgence poses a very curious paradox: in the era of rapid consumption, these young people return to long, choral series designed to be watched without any rush. We are also talking about fictions that achieved audience figures that were unthinkable on current television (‘There is no one who lives here‘ either’ The Serranos‘ reached 7,000,000 spectators), so all the merit of their revival It cannot fall on social networks or on the virality of certain clips. In a sea of ​​platforms and on-demand content, available at any time, something unique and special must have that 2000s television imagery. One of the keys is probably the ID with the characters. Even today, many university students from Generation Z find in Belén or Emilio from ‘No one lives here’ that reflection of work … Read more

We believe that the refrigerator can handle everything, but reheating the same container several times is a feast for bacteria.

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Something that can be common in many homes, especially when all its inhabitants work daily, is cooking on the weekend for the rest of your life. This practice today is called “batch cooking“and logically it involves a very common practice: take a large container out of the refrigerator, heat it a little, let the rest cool down and put it back in the refrigerator. Everything changes. Although food may look and taste the same to the naked eye, at a microscopic level, each cooling and reheating cycle turns the container into a real amusement park for bacteria. The danger. To understand the problem of reheating the container several times, you must first know a basic concept in food safety, which is ‘danger zone‘. This is nothing more than a temperature range that goes from 5 ºC to 60 ºC, where the bacteria present in food multiply at a high speed. Regarding this, there are different studies that indicate that every time we take the container out of the refrigerator, it heats up and cools down again to consume it later; the food slowly passes through that “danger zone.” If done several times a week, minutes are adding up and hours in which microorganisms have free rein to proliferate. There is more. Although when we get sick we can automatically blame bacteria, the truth is that sometimes the pathology can be generated by thermostable toxins generated by bacteria such as Bacillus cereuswhich produce a characteristic gastroenteritis that many of us have been through. This means that, even if we cook a food and kill the bacteria, its virulence product is still there and causes illness when consumed. Even if it boils. More than one reheated. Different scientific models have studied what happens when cooked foods suffer what is called “temperature abuse.” Here the science suggests that the fluctuations from going from the refrigerator to the counter, heating and cooling again, trigger the microbial load and sink the sensory quality of the dish. The case of rice It has undoubtedly been one of the most listened to, especially because of the danger it entails. Here science indicates that each reheating and cooling cycle exponentially increases the microbiological risk if adequate temperatures are not reached and maintained. One of the big problems of rice it’s in the bacteria Bacillus cereus, whose spores survive cooking and germinate if the rice is left at room temperature. The issue here is the toxins it generates, which end up with very serious gastrointestinal poisoning, which makes it dangerous to reheat rice from one day to the next when it has not been stored correctly after preparation. The chemical problem. Beyond the safety of the food, it is also important to focus on the container that contains it, since the constant cycles of intense cold and extreme heat in the microwave can degrade plastics. With this, it is achieved that the migration of chemical compounds towards food, especially fatty foods. That is why the jump to glass containers can be very interesting to improve food safety at home. How to do it right. To avoid these gastric scares, it is best to divide the food into different containers that correspond to an individual portion, even if it means washing many more pots on a daily basis. Also, when cooking, you should not leave the pot on the counter all afternoon, but rather it is better to cool it quickly and quickly place it in the refrigerator within a maximum of two hours. The temperature at which we reheat is also important, highlighting the need to reach 70ºC throughout the food for a minimum of 15 seconds in order to reduce the risk of contagion. Images | freepik In Xataka | Against tupperware: more and more voices think that storing food in plastic is not a good idea

We would need to detonate Earth’s nuclear arsenal 130 times to release the energy that caused the Moon’s great cannons.

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The Moon has its own “Grand Canyon of the Colorado”, and doubly so. Only these two canyons were not caused by the slow erosion of a river like the Colorado: 15 minutes of destruction were enough to leave these two enormous scars on the surface of the Moon. 10 minutes of destruction. A 2025 study analyzed in detail two enormous geological strips located in the vicinity of the south pole of the Moon. The analysis has determined, among other conclusions, that they were formed by the impact of an asteroid or comet and that the impact was such that these canyons were formed in less than 15 minutes of destruction. Two large cannons. Their names are Schrödinger Valley and Planck Valley and they are two enormous geological strips that radiate in a straight line from a point located in the Schrödinger basin, near the lunar South Pole, not far from the place chosen by NASA to the return from humans to the Moon. The study has offered us new data on the magnitude and morphological characteristics of these two sores on the surface of our satellite. These two canyons have a length of 270 and 280 kilometers; and 2.7 and 3.5 kilometers deep, respectively. An immense force. In addition to analyzing the characteristics of these two strips, the study tried to characterize the impact that caused them. By studying the way in which these were excavated, they determined that the process lasted between 4.9 and 15 minutes in one of the cases and between 5.2 and 15.4 minutes in the other. That is, they only needed about 10 minutes so that the impact would destroy tons and tons of lunar rock. The impact would have been enormous. According to the team responsible for the study, the energy required to produce these cannons would have been 700 times greater than the energy released by the nuclear tests of China, the United States and the USSR, and 130 times greater than the energy in the world inventory of nuclear weapons. Details of the study, like this last one, were published in an article in the magazine Nature Communications. The best analogue of the Chicxulub crater. The impact would have occurred billions of years before the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth. However, the team responsible for the study maintains in their article that this lunar impact is the “best analog expression on the surface” of the Chicxulub crater. In Xataka | Earth has lost its minimoon, but it posed for a photo before leaving (and promised to return soon) In Xataka | ESA wants to take its ships into space with nuclear reactors: this is how the Rocketroll project works Image | NASA\SVS\Ernie T. Wright A version of this article was published in February 2025

It is 1,000 times faster than current semiconductors and does not heat up

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A research team at the University of Tokyo (Japan) has reached an impressive milestone in the field of semiconductors. And, as he has collected Nikkeihas developed a device capable of processing information 1,000 times faster than the current most advanced CPU. It seems like science fiction, it’s true, but it’s not. It’s just science. Of course, this is frontier science. And the non-volatile quantum switching device that these scientists have developed uses quantum physics to carry out its purpose. Most strikingly, this device represents bits using the magnetic properties of electrons rather than the flow of electricity itself, which is what the integrated circuits we are familiar with do. In fact, its capabilities lie precisely in this strategy. Current semiconductor technology It takes about a nanosecond to register a single bit before overheating becomes a critical issue. However, this innovative device processes one bit of information in just 40 picoseconds. In practice this means that you invest one thousandth of the time in this process that conventional methods require. Interestingly, it combines tantalum and manganin to convert electrical signals into magnetic information, so its composition is very different from that of the silicon chips that reside inside our electronic devices. Heat is no longer a problem Laboratory tests carried out by researchers at the University of Tokyo have yielded surprising results. In their ingenious device, an electrical signal passes through the tantalum layer, so that the device registers that signal in the manganin in the form of the direction of a tiny magnetic force. Precisely this address represents a single bit without depending on the continuous flow of electric current. Its performance improves as components become physically smaller During the first tests, this device has worked completely stable even after processing information more than 100,000 million times. However, these Japanese researchers have verified that their performance improves as components become physically smaller. For this reason, if this technology finally makes it out of the laboratory, it could reduce energy consumption when processing information to just one hundredth of current levels. Here’s another impressive fact: this device has processed information 100,000 million times without making a mistake. However, a current CPU or GPU would have overheated after just 10 million clock cycles if it had run at a similar speed. There is no doubt that it is a notable achievement. Be that as it may, we cannot ignore that moving this technology from the laboratory to a chip factory is a real challenge in the field of engineering. The physics works, as these Japanese scientists have shown, but large-scale manufacturing poses challenges that are not present in a single device produced in a university laboratory. Even so, Disruptive technologies are usually born this wayso although the future of this innovation is uncertain, there is a possibility that it will manage to leave the laboratory and reach the chip manufacturing plants. The prototype is planned for 2030. Fingers crossed. Image | Satoru Nakatsuji (University of Tokyo) More information | Nikkei In Xataka | China has reached one of the holy grails of quantum physics. So says Peter Zoller, father of quantum computers

Giving seven times more vitamin D during pregnancy improves children’s memory at 10 years old. The problem is in the fine print

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During pregnancy, the recommendations of supplementation They are an area where science advances with lead feet, since the most important thing is always to guarantee safety. One of these supplements that is heard the most is vitamin Dtraditionally known for its role in calcium absorption and bone health, but which has been in the spotlight for years for its possible impact on neurodevelopment. A new study of Danish origin has put its objective on this statement to be able to clarify what happens when a mother supplements with vitamin D during pregnancy. Through its publication in JAMAtells how, to achieve good results, almost 500 children were analyzed for several years until finally being able to see if they had cognitive improvement during their childhood. What were they based on? To understand this discovery we have to go back in time to a randomized clinical trial titled as COPSAC2010whose initial results were published in 2016. This trial sought to evaluate whether vitamin D prevented the risk of suffering from asthma or persistent wheezing in babies, and to verify this the researchers divided the mothers into two groups from the 24th week of gestation: One group would receive the standard recommended dose of vitamin D of 400 IU per day. The other group had a “megadose” of vitamin D of 2,800 IU daily. The discovery. Taking advantage of this valuable group of 498 children, the research team decided to get more out of it, since when these children reached 10 years of age they were subjected to rigorous cognitive tests to see if the fact of having given vitamin D to their mother during pregnancy had left its mark on their brain. In this way, two objectives were covered with a single investigation. Here the results revealed that children in the high supplementation group showed a modest but significant improvement in verbal and visual memory compared to the children of mothers who took the standard dose of vitamin D. Although something important to note is that it puts to rest any idea that this supplementation is a machine to “create geniuses”, because there were no differences in IQ and they only saw that the ability to retain information was improved. The small print. Given such a finding, it is tempting to think that all pregnant women should multiply their vitamin D intake to give their children an advantage over others. But here we must pay attention to different problems, such as that the original trial was designed to measure respiratory problems and not neurological development. This means that drawing conclusions from here reduces the statistical robustness of the discovery. But this is not the only problem, since we have seen that the effect is “modest” without seeming to give children a great advantage. And furthermore, the study is based on women who already had normal vitamin D levels before the study, so it is not clear how this dose would act in populations that truly have some type of chronic deficiency of the vitamin. Will there be changes? At the moment, these studies do not justify the need to recommend that all pregnant women supplement their diet with vitamin D, as is the case with other supplements such as folic acid. The real value of this research is not to give us an immediate new prescription, but to open the door to future clinical trials specifically designed to unravel how what happens in the womb continues to shape our brains a decade later. Images | amylla battani In Xataka | We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

Mozilla just revealed how many times Firefox was chosen

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For years, choosing a browser has been one of those decisions that seemed to be in our hands, but in practice were quite conditioned by the device we took out of the box. On the iPhone there was Safari. On many Android phones, Chrome. And although we have always been able to install alternatives, the truth is that changing a hidden setting is not the same as receiving a clear question at the right time. That is precisely the crack that Digital Markets Act (DMA) has tried to open in Europe: to turn a theoretical choice into a visible decision. The data that puts figures. Mozilla assures thatsince the DMA obligations began to apply in March 2024, Firefox has accumulated more than six million selections through browser selection screens. According to the organization that develops the browser, that equates to one election every 10 seconds. The movement does not stop at downloading or installing: it also states that retention is five times higher when users reach Firefox that way. The difference. The jump, however, has not been the same on all devices. Mozilla cites academic analysis which compares daily active users of Firefox in the EU with 43 non-EU countries and places the impact on iOS well above that of Android: 113% more than would be expected without the DMA compared to 12%. One thing to keep in mind: on iPhone and iPad the screen appears when you open Safari for the first time, while on Android it appears when you start a new device or after resetting it from the factory. Mozilla adds that, on Android, Firefox started from a higher usage base and that the deployment has been more uneven. A real victory? In its post, Mozilla insists that the DMA is bearing fruit in some areas, but “not everywhere, not perfectly, and not without effective enforcement.” That nuance matters because choice displays alone don’t eliminate years of vertical integration, default settings, and usage habits. TechCrunch pointed out in 2024 such as Aloha, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, also recorded significant increases in the first days and weeks after the application of the European standard. The mobile moves, the desktop not so much. For Mozilla, the advance in mobile phones leaves one question pending: what happens with computers. The organization maintains that the desktop remains “largely intact” and estimates that some 310 million desktops and laptops in the EU do not have an equivalent selection screen. Their criticism is especially directed at Windows, where, according to Mozilla, users are exposed to deceptive design tactics and are not given an active choice. Beyond the numbers. What Mozilla announced leaves us with invaluable information: when the choice appears before the user, inertia stops being so automatic. It doesn’t mean that everyone will abandon Chrome or Safari, nor that selection screens alone will solve digital competency problems. But it does point to something measurable: if the alternative is clearly shown, there are users who choose it. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | Europe changes the standards for mobile batteries in 2027. The striking thing is that no manufacturer has complained

NASA prepares chips 100 times more powerful

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Human beings explore because they need to understand what lies beyond. We have done it by crossing oceans, climbing mountains and, for decades, sending machines to places where we cannot yet be. But a space mission has more to do than get there. For example, collecting data, interpreting it and sending it to Earth to do science. This is where the great challenge appears, because space requires computers capable of functioning for years in an environment that punishes electronics like few others. High Performance Spaceflight Computing. This is the name of the response that NASA is preparing. According to the agencythe project seeks to develop together with Microchip Technology a new space processor capable of offering up to 100 times more computing capacity than current space computers. We are not talking about a chip designed for a laptop or a mobile phone, but rather a system on a chip, or SoC, called to be integrated, once certified for space flight, in future ships, orbiters, rovers, manned habitats and deep space missions. SoC, a familiar term. This is the type of architecture that is common in our smartphones and tablets: small devices that concentrate essential elements of a computer in a single piece. The difference compared to an isolated processor is precisely there. An SoC is not limited to executing instructions, but can integrate CPUs, computing support units, advanced networks, memory, and input and output interfaces. On Earth we use it to gain efficiency and reduce size. In space, moreover, it has to survive. The challenge. As we say, space punishes electronics in a way that we rarely see down here. According to NASA, a processor intended for real missions must withstand electromagnetic radiation, extreme temperature fluctuations and high-energy particles capable of altering the operation of the systems. We are not just talking about losing performance, but about errors that can force a ship to enter “safe mode”, with non-essential operations turned off until mission teams resolve the incident. A key phase. Now comes the time to check if everything that is promised on paper holds up when taken to the physical field. JPL began testing in February and will maintain the campaign for several months, with radiation tests, thermal cycles, shocks and functional evaluations. The agency ensures that the processor is working as designed and adds a striking fact, although still within the framework of the tests: the first indications show that it operates with a performance 500 times higher than the radiation-hardened chips currently in use. More autonomy away from home. Space exploration has a limit that is not resolved with a larger antenna: distance. Between Earth and Mars, ua signal may take a while between 3 and 22 minutes to travel in one direction, depending on the position of both planets in their orbits. That means we can’t drive a rover like someone drives a remote-controlled car. We have seen it in the Martian landings, the famous “seven minutes of terror”, when a ship enters, descends and lands, executing a choreography by itself that from Earth we can only know when it has already happened. On-board computing. NASA proposes that this type of processor will allow future ships to use artificial intelligence to respond in real time to complex situations, analyze large volumes of data, store it and transmit it more quickly. Let’s remember the case of Perseverance which already combined orbital data of Mars, its panoramic camera and a Snapdragon 801 to compare what he saw with information obtained from space and refine his position on the Martian surface. If we want to continue exploring Mars and look further, we will need more and more systems capable of making decisions without always waiting for an order from Earth. Technology that returns. The history of space exploration is also the history of ideas that are born to solve very specific problems and then find a place on Earth. In this case, NASA points to possible adaptations for sectors such as aviation and automotive, in potential uses such as drones, electrical networks, medical equipment, communication services, artificial intelligence and data transmission. It does not mean that we will see this processor in a consumer product tomorrow, but it does mean that the effort to make it more powerful, efficient, scalable and resistant can go beyond a ship on its way to deep space. Images | POT In Xataka | The biggest problem with living on the Moon is its nights. NASA believes it has found the solution to avoid running out of electricity

They dedicate four times more time to their children, but mothers are still on the brink of collapse

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Let’s imagine for a moment the classic picture of a living room in the 1950s. The father, fresh from work, barricades himself behind the newspaper or asks for silence to listen to the radio. His parenting figure is peripheral, an economic provider whose emotional absence is normalized. Let’s now jump to 2026. Today’s father kneads gluten-free pancakes on a Tuesday morning, manages the third grade WhatsApp group, reads positive discipline manuals and monitors every millimeter of his offspring’s cognitive development. If we traveled back in time, today’s fatherhood would be unrecognizable to a father from the “Silent Generation.” However, this revolution, which a priori should have created the most balanced generation in history, hides a deep structural trap. If today’s parents sin something, it is not that they are absent, but rather the opposite. And this hyperpresence – crossed by a fierce demand of class and gender – is triggering the anxiety of children and causing unprecedented exhaustion, especially in women, who continue to support the invisible scaffolding of the home. The sociological data is compelling. According to analyst Derek Thompson in your newsletterparents millennials in the United States spend approximately four times more time caring for their children than parents of the generation of the baby boom. The hours of male involvement have taken a historic leap. However, this phenomenon is deeply fragmented by socioeconomic status. The research of economists Guryan, Hurst and Kearney They already warned of an astonishing paradox: The higher the educational level and purchasing power, the more hours are invested in parenting. The famous study The Rug Rat Race (The Rat Race)created by Valerie and Garey Ramey, hits the nail on the head by explaining why. This hyper-involvement responds, to a large extent, to the anxiety to ensure the future success of minors in the face of a savage academic and labor market. It has become a status symbol; a frenetic competition where free time is sacrificed on the altar of extracurricular activities. In Spain, this desire for presence has been supported by the institutions. From Moncloa trace the evolution: we have gone from the ridiculous two days of paternity leave prior to 2007, to consolidating ourselves in 2025 as a European reference model with 19 paid and non-transferable weeks per parent (and 32 weeks for single-parent families). The father, by law and by cultural change, is at home. But what happens behind closed doors? In Spain, the dynamic is identical. Studies on time use like those of the sociologist Pablo Gracia confirm that Spanish parents with higher education dedicate significantly more time to the physical and interactive care of their children. A will to be present that has also been supported by the institutions. The Moncloa figures trace undeniable progress: we have gone from the ridiculous two days of paternity leave prior to 2007, to consolidating ourselves as a European benchmark with 19 paid and non-transferable weeks per parent (and 32 weeks for single-parent families). The father, by law and by cultural change, is at home. But what really happens behind closed doors? The mirage of the distribution Headlines celebrating the “new super dad” demand critical reading. Researcher Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play, warns in the magazine Lounge of the trap of traditional surveys: they measure execution time, but ignore cognitive effort. Today’s men “help” more, yes. But the mental load—conceiving, planning, and continually anticipating family needs—continues to fall on them. Today’s mothers feel, in Rodsky’s words, “overwhelmed and bored” by having to act as directors of a project where their partners often act as kind subordinates waiting for instructions. The x-ray of this inequality in Spain reveals an exhausting panorama: Chronic overload: 78% of Spanish mothers declare themselves overloaded, assuming 64% of domestic tasks, regardless of whether they work outside the home. according to data from Make Mothers Matter. Class gap and vulnerability: The situation becomes dramatic for single-parent families and women with precarious jobs, who lack the network and resources to outsource care. Fear of penalty: A report of TELOS evidence that, when push comes to shove, more than 90% of mothers use up their entire birth leave, compared to 85% of fathers, still inhibited by the culture of corporate presenteeism. This systemic pressure to achieve everything invariably results in burnout or parental exhaustion. The psychologist Silvia Álava It is estimated that 7 out of every 10 Spanish parents They are exhausted by the effort to achieve perfection. Worse still, clinical research on this syndrome (such as the psychometric analyzes of Suárez, Núñez et al.) warn that extreme exhaustion ends up causing serious emotional distancing. It is the final paradox: parents try so hard to be present that they end up emotionally disconnecting from their own children for pure mental survival. The bill is paid by the minors We live in the era of “helicopter parents” and “lawnmower parents”: those who, as illustrated in the magazine International School Parentthey compulsively pave the way so that children do not even stumble. And the great irony of this intensive parenting, spurred by the suffocating showcase of social media, is that it is devastating those it seeks to protect. The great irony of this intensive breeding is that it is devastating those it is intended to protect. A Norwegian review of 38 studies has detailed that between 70% and 90% of research associates excessive parental control with profound mental distress in children. Avoiding frustration deprives them of the tools to be functional adults. A Norwegian review of 38 independent studies makes it clear: Between 70% and 90% of research associates excessive parental control with profound discomfort in children. Avoiding frustration deprives them of the basic tools to be functional adults. In fact, neurology confirms that taking constantly Decisions for children stunt the development of their prefrontal cortex, the area of ​​the brain responsible for solving problems and regulating emotions. The brain literally needs to fall down to learn to get up. In Spain, the clinical alarms are ringing loudly: Psychiatric admissions: The magazine … Read more

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