world

Chile has the lithium necessary to save the world from fossil fuels. The problem is that you are extracting it blindly

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The world desperately needs to move away from fossil fuels. To achieve this, electric vehicles and large renewable energy plants require a vital component for their batteries: lithium. This global emergency has set its eyes on one of the most inhospitable and fragile places on the planet, the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is home to about 25% of the world’s reserves of this mineral. But this “salvation” has a dark side. As deep research reveals published by MongabayChile is accelerating the blind exploitation of its salt flats. Under the institutional promise that this mineral will be the “new salary of Chile”—as It was defined by former president Gabriel Boric by promising wealth with strict environmental respect—the reality in the territory is diametrically opposite. The productive desire is crushing the socio-environmental knowledge that is required to avoid destroying the same nature that, ironically, the world is trying to save. The pact that seals the future. To capitalize on this demand, the Chilean State launched the National Lithium Strategy (ENL)seeking to consolidate the country as the undisputed leader of this market. In this context, an unprecedented mining agreement was forged. According to The Confusionthe state mining company Codelco and the private giant SQM sealed a historic pact to extract lithium in the Salar de Atacama until 2060 under a new joint venture: NovaAndino Lithium. With the aim of avoiding the local resistance that usually paralyzes these megaprojects, the agreement included an unprecedented governance model. This scheme promises the Atacama indigenous communities (the Lickanantay people) million dollars annually in profitsseats at dialogue tables and power of environmental oversight. A model that the industry celebrates as the standard for future “green mining”, but which in the territory has lit a fuse with unsuspected consequences. The disproportion of 33 to 1. Promises of environmental balance crumble when looking at the fiscal wallet. The figures are devastating: for every peso that the Chilean State invests to protect the fragile ecosystems of the salt flats, it allocates 33 to promoting productivity and mining technology. Through the Production Promotion Corporation (CORFO), the State has injected more than 166 million dollars in technological development for the industry. In dramatic contrast, the scientific investment to understand the impact of lithium on water, microorganisms and threatened species – such as Andean flamingos – is barely close to 5 million dollars. Yovisibility territorial. Added to this institutional blindness is territorial invisibility. As the media explains South Slope when documenting the scientific project LiOness Ringthe public eye has become obsessed with evaporation pools, ignoring the off-sites: the areas outside the salt flats. Transportation routes, port terminals and transit communities silently absorb equal or worse impacts under “the excuse of green development,” researchers warn. For the National History Prize winner, Lautaro Núñez, cited by the same media, the key is being lost in the debate: “The salt flats are Chile’s heritage.” Thirst in the desert. As millions flow into technology, the ecosystem depletes. Extracting lithium requires pumping and evaporating enormous amounts of ancient water. As detailed The Confusioncurrent operations consume up to 12,500 liters of industrial water for every ton of lithium, causing the salt flat to sink up to two centimeters per year. Faced with this threat, the injection of money has caused the greatest historical fracture of the Lickanantay people. The communities went from blocking routes in January 2024 to fighting each other for the millionaire loot, which could reach up to 150 million dollars annually for the region, according to data from the Chilean government. Social fracture. Rudecindo Espíndola, local farmer cited by The Confusionassures that participating in this agreement is a form of “participation justice” because, after 12,000 years of inhabiting the territory, they will finally have physical access to the plants to supervise the mining companies. However, others see the destruction of their social fabric. Sergio Cubillos, president of the Peine community, recognize the same publication that “the fact that today communities receive money is what has led to this division.” Sonia Ramos, a respected 83-year-old healer, is even more blunt. in his interview with Climate Home News: “We are land and water (…) but today there is fragmentation. Everything has become unbalanced.” For her, the mining megapact does not bring progress, but “death, the total destruction of the Salar.” So what’s going to happen? Seeking to justify its expansion until 2060, NovaAndino has promised to stop using fresh water and reinject at least 30% of the brine into the subsoil through new extraction technologies. However, this promise is being viewed with great skepticism. As microbiologist Cristina Dorador warnsthese reinjection technologies are not proven on a large scale and could alter the chemical composition of the desert. Continuing pumping until 2060, he says, could be the “coup de grace” for this vital ecosystem. The State as a facilitator, not as a protector. Politically, the course seems unchanged. The recently inaugurated far-right president, José Antonio Kast, has already promised to respect the contracts signed by the previous administration. The machinery will continue to operate. In statements to MongabayHernán Cáceres, director of the National Institute of Lithium and Salt Flats (INLiSa), justified the low state budget in environmental areas by arguing that this money is actually an “enabling expense.” That is, the State finances ecological studies and dialogue tables not necessarily to stop the impact, but to “pave the way” for mining companies, reducing the risks of social conflict and guaranteeing that companies can operate without resistance from indigenous peoples. Blindfold. While technological investments advance at record speed, legal protection, such as the recent creation of the Network of Protected Salt Flats, moves at a slow pace, trapped in bureaucracy and lack of funds. The history of lithium in Chile encapsulates the great contradiction of our time. In the quest to clean the air in the metropolises of the northern hemisphere, one of the oldest and most biodiverse corners of the global south is being squeezed and fractured. As the research concludes, the country today faces a monumental challenge: … Read more

be the first world power

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China has a very peculiar way of establishing its roadmap towards its great objective, which is none other than become the first world powerand here technological mastery is crucial. They do it through a very communist tradition: the five-year plans that they started. China already has its new plan for the period 2026-2030 and it is the most ambitious to date. The 15th five-year plan. China started this five-year plan in 1953, so this is the fifteenth. It was approved at the beginning of the month and it details the roadmap for the next five years. The main objective of the plan is to reinforce China’s comprehensive security in the face of extreme scenarios, ensuring economic, energy and military resilience while maintaining the ability to compete in advanced technology. The technologies of the future. With the ‘Made in China 2025’ planChina set out to lead in thirteen strategic technologies with quite good results. In its new plan, China establishes the priority strategic technologies for the next five years: Yes, but. China’s ambition is undeniable, but whether they are going to achieve all these objectives is another matter. They count in The Economist that, in the past, China has managed to lead in technologies that were already mature, such as renewable energy or electric vehicle batteries, but has had more difficulties in complex areas such as advanced chips. This new commitment includes many technologies far from the sectors where they already dominate and for which there are still many unknowns, both technical and commercial. Economic growth. It is another of the axes on which the plan is based, although for this they are given time until 2035. The government wants to increase the GDP per capita, which is currently at 14,000 dollars, to at least 20 or 30,000 dollars. To achieve this, they would need to grow between 4 and 8% annually over the next decade. The Chinese economy has started 2026 somewhat better, but it takes time in decelerationso it’s going to be complicated. China prepares for war. Perhaps it is the most overlooked part of the new plan, but the one that makes the most sense in such a turbulent geopolitical scenario. China wants to ensure that it is strong on all fronts, a kind of “whatever may happen.” To achieve this, they want to create strategic industrial zones in inland areas and ensure food and energy self-sufficiency. Furthermore, in the field of defense, they want to prepare for war scenarios with unmanned and intelligent weapons and reinforce border security. Image | Pycril In Xataka | You go to a music festival, a man marries you in two minutes: the idea in China to reverse the demographic crisis

the largest startup incubator in the world

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In recent years, NVIDIA has gone from being a company gaming hardware who was doing interesting things in the field of artificial intelligence to being, directly, the glue of the entire AI industry. And it has achieved this through graphic muscle, but also thanks to deep pockets and a very clear vision: to become the largest AI incubator in the world. Although, for some, there has been become an awkward partner. You can’t talk about AI without talking about NVIDIA, but along the way it has achieved something else: turning its main allies into rivals. NVentures. A few years ago, Jensen Huanghead of NVIDIA, realized something: the AI ​​had to be from NVIDIA or it wouldn’t belong to anyone. The CEO identified the need to become an investor, but also the technical support point for startups that were beginning to buy many of his chips for AI training. Years before, NVIDIA had Inception, a branch focused on non-financial support, but in 2022 it launched NVentures. It is the corporate venture capital arm of the company and was born at the dawn of the generative AI that we know today. In fact, it was launched a few months before ChatGPT public releasewhich was precisely the one that popularized the massive use of NVIDIA GPUs to train large-scale models. If with Inception more than 19,000 AI startups went through the advisory program (with training, cloud credits and discounts on massive GPU purchases, but without direct investment), with NVentures things also escalated quickly. From a direct investment in 2022 they passed to 30 in 2023, 54 in 2024 and 67 in 2025. Some are larger than others, but all are investments of tens of millions of dollars that have served to boost the current ecosystem in a kind of circular economy. Do you think I’m a bank? In this article of TechCruch investments are laid out perfectly and separated into “clubs.” There is the 100 million with companies like Ayar Labs, Hippocratic AI, Kore.ai or Runway that have received more than 100 million dollars. That of hundreds of millions with Cohere, Commonwealth Fusion, Perplexity, Lambda or Black Forest Labs as exponents. And then the billion dollar club. In that bag are the big names such as Cursor, xAI, the French Mistral, Reflection AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Figure AI or Scale AI. Also two uncomfortable partners: OpenAI and Anthropic. The relationship between OpenAI and NVIDIA has been long and symbiotic. Both have helped each other put themselves on the map of generative AI, but NVIDIA is going to cut off the tap. Recently, Huang himself commented that they will put 30 billion in OpenAI, or… and that the two mega-operations will probably be the last. The two companies are expected to go public later this year, so they will have to start fending for themselves. Business turnaround. That does not mean that NVIDIA is going to stop injecting money, it simply implies that they are going to allocate that money to be in more places at the same time. Instead of such large amounts, more financing for more “modest” companies in models, software, infrastructure, robotics, cloud and even autonomous driving and biotechnology to continue expanding the network of companies that scale on their platform. In fact, this investment in small companies that are beginning to grow is very lucrative. An example is the Reflection funding round. Of the 2 billion that the company raised, 800 million came from NVIDIA’s pockets, and much of that money, along with interest, will flow back into his pockets. NVIDIA is so important that the company points out that “when you talk to it, you are talking to NVIDIA.” That dependence on NVIDIA is what makes the company an uncomfortable partner because it has enormous power. Inference. But the other turn is not so much from NVIDIA as from the industry itself. These last few years we have focused on training. More and more powerful chips to power increasingly fat data centers in which increasingly capable models are trained. However, once trained, the model must be useful for something, and that is where inference comes into play. Because it is estimated that the big growth of the future of AI will not be so much training the next ChatGPT, but the ability to manage billions of AI requests cheaply and efficiently. This implies that there must be more specialized chips with different architectures than a classic training GPU. The analysts are already pointing that the speed at which the need for inference increases is faster than expected. From lovers to enemies. and there other companies come into play. On the one hand, classic rivals such as Huawei with equipment both for training and for inference. Also a AMD that is gaining contacts like Samsung to create training GPUs and inference CPUs. Intel, Amazon and Google also have their own chips. But NVIDIA’s biggest customers don’t want NVIDIA to dictate their future. OpenAI is working with Broadcom to develop its own chips that may be focused on that inference and both Tesla and xAI (now part of SpaceX) also They have taken the same path. The two companies have needed NVIDIA until now, but they do not want to depend on it for an inference where there may be more profit margin. Because the idea is to create chips that are very specialized in request management to lower the cost of AI as much as possible. China is an example of this. The country’s big technology companies and startups have focused on one thing: training specialized models and making inference so cheap that the user doesn’t mind paying. There is already someone point that 80% of the cost of AI in the short term will be inference, and solutions are needed. The ace in the hole. But if almost all allies have been preparing their deck for some time to stop depending on NVIDIA’s cards, NVIDIA has also been doing the math and keeping the ace up its sleeve. … Read more

The world trembles over Hormuz oil while ignoring what feeds 50% of the planet

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Geopolitics has a curious tendency to make us focus our attention on a specific point and not look at everything around us. With the scale of the tension in the Strait of Hormuzall eyes were on crude oil and the price of gasoline; However, experts warn that fertilizers are also in the spotlight. And the reality is that its collapse can cause a lack of food in our crops, since the vast majority depend on it. An invisible engine. Although the world seems to have forgotten about the fertilizers that arrive through the Strait of Hormuz, the reality is that we can affirm that humanity cannot exist without organic chemistry. And it is no wonder, because more than half of the food produced worldwide is available thanks to mineral fertilizers, as the IFDC points out. If we go further, the studies point out that nitrogen fertilizers Synthetics sustain the diet of almost half of the world’s population. And the worst of all is that, without this mineral contribution, global harvests will be directly reduced by half, so we are not talking about a product that improves performance marginally, but rather we are talking about the pillar of a food system that supports 8 billion people. A bottleneck. In this context of absolute dependence, the media focus is paradoxical. International attention and logistical surveillance focus almost exclusively on fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that fertilizers are a highly concentrated industry and closely linked to natural gas. But organizations like UNCTAD and media like EFE they have put figures to disaster by estimating that a third of global maritime fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. This means that logistical interruptions in the Persian Gulf directly affect millions of tons of agricultural inputs, which for the UN It is undoubtedly a major impact on global food security. There are no reservations. In recent weeks we have seen how different governments have announced with great fanfare the release of thousands of barrels of oil in national reserves. A strategy that has been built in recent years to be able to cushion this type of geopolitical shocks, but with fertilizers there is no such thing. It has consequences. The analyzes of the experts point out in this case that the interruption of the fertilizer chain has a full impact on the field, since any interruption has a full impact on the bank. Here both the FAO and the World Bank They have been warning for months that the suspension of shipments from the Gulf can skyrocket food prices almost instantly, severely affecting countries that depend on food imports. But the problem is that right now there is a significant lack of infrastructure, since we are seeing that the sector is dominated by a few players such as Russia, China, India and the United States. This, added to the shortage of long-term storage networks, makes us think that the price of food may suffer a large increase in the coming weeks, as well as have a bad harvest of 2026. Measures to alleviate it. The Government of Spain recently approved a new text that, in addition to lower energy-related taxesalso opted to inject money into the primary sector. In this case, direct aid was offered to partially compensate for this increase in fertilizers with the aim of ensuring that the increase was not transferred entirely to the shopping basket. Images | James Baltz Jonathan Cooper In Xataka | You’ve probably never heard of urea. The missiles in Iran are destroying their production, and that will affect your food

150 years ago, Spain made a unique decision in the world. Ouigo and Iryo believe that Renfe uses it to get them out of the market

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They have no rolling stock. And the worst of all (for them) is that they are not going to have it. Ouigo, Iryo and a third rolling stock company have raised their voices before the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) to make it clear that the current system with two gauges of track reduces their competitiveness in our country compared to Renfe. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change in the short term. What has happened? The CNMC has published a document with the name “Report on technical barriers to the provision of railway services”. It sets out the challenges and interventions that Spain should carry out in the coming years. It specifies that the Spanish railway system has the obligation to improve interoperability with its neighboring countries, both to facilitate the flow of passengers and goods. But there is a drawback: the track widths. And this inconvenience has a very relevant economic impact. They complain. In the document the different postures are collected of those involved. And it states that “Ouigo, Iryo and a rolling stock manufacturer (which is not specified) warn that the uncertainty regarding the schedule and details of the Gauge Migration Plan, as well as the unification of the electrification system and the implementation of the ERTMS signaling system, makes decision-making on strategic investments difficult, and they ask that the Gauge Migration Plan be prepared and published as soon as possible.” In short: the two operators and the rolling stock manufacturer complain that Adif does not have a clear plan as to whether the Iberian high-speed track gauges are going to adapt to European standards, which move in standard gauge. The same happens with the unification of the electrification system and the definitive implementation of the ERTMS system. And they defend themselves. The position of Adif and Renfe is set out in the same document. Both companies “point out that incorporating gauge change technology in the rolling stock and infrastructure is less expensive and entails fewer interruptions in traffic than the migration of the infrastructure. On the other hand, both the AESF and the DG of the Railway Sector indicate that, in addition to Talgo, there is a second manufacturer of variable gauge rolling stock for high speed, CAF, although they admit that it is currently only approved to operate at 250 km/h.” In short: neither Renfe nor Adif They believe that adapting to the standard width is economically profitable given the high economic impact. The bottleneck. What Ouigo and Iryo defend is that the current situation and the commitment to trains with wide gauge technology leaves them behind. They have two reasons to maintain this. CAF can supply trains with this technology but they are only approved to travel at a maximum of 250 km/h. Talgo is the only company with this technology with approval to circulate up to 350 km/h. They are known as Talgo AVRIL but their production is committed to Renfe. And the results are not satisfactory either.. Beyond these two manufacturers, no one seems to want to get involved in the production of trains capable of changing tracks between standard and Iberian gauge. And the fact is that their production means meeting a demand that is still a niche or a rarity in the world railway system. Very juicy. The reluctance of Adif and Renfe is not strange either. For Adif it would mean a huge investment that has to be able to make profitable with the rest of the operators when the vast majority of current corridors in Spain already operate with standard gauge. For its part, Renfe does not want to let go of this trick either. Right now, the high speed to Galicia needs trains that are capable of moving between the Iberian gauge and the standard gauge if you do not want to transfer and the Spanish company is the only one that has the trains for this. The Galician corridor has also emerged as one of the most profitable. Travel has grown so much that it has made airlines retreat and now that they have to liberalize the line, maintaining the current situation guarantees that they will continue to be the only ones that will be able to offer this trip without transfers, which is a clear competitive advantage. Photo | Falk2 In Xataka | “Whoever wants to come, should invest”: Ouigo wanted to enter the Madrid-Galicia AVE but now sees it as impossible before 2030

China has invented the coldest helium-free alloy in the world. The American DARPA is not going to like it

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In addition to having an extremely high voice, filling balloons or scuba diving, the most widespread use of helium is in refrigeration, a crucial task in countless tasks ranging from magnets for magnetic resonance imaging to particle accelerators (with conventional helium or Helium-4) to cryogenic cooling for quantum computing or neutron detectors (Helium -3). Critical industries. Because yes, everything is helium, but the circumstances change depending on the isotope. Thus, while Helium-4 is abundant in the atmosphere but difficult to retain (it escapes into the atmosphere due to its lightness), Helium-3 is scarce on Earth and is also difficult to obtain: it is a byproduct of the aging of tritium nuclear warheads. Simply put: the helium needed to cool quantum computers and cutting-edge physics acts as a bottleneck to research. A Chinese research team has published in Nature a solution: a metal alloy that cools almost to absolute zero without needing helium. The invention. It is a metallic alloy, EuCo₂Al₉ (ECA), a rare earth intermetallic compound capable of reaching 106 millikelvin (–273.05 °C), thus establishing a record: it is the lowest temperature achieved by a metallic magnetocaloric material without using helium-3. Another peculiarity is that it combines two seemingly antagonistic properties: it acts like a sponge that absorbs heat from the environment and its thermal conduction is between 50 and 100 times greater than other similar materials. A combination that postulates it to be the definitive supercoolant. The network structure, its interactions and the resulting supersolid spin state. Chinese Academy of Sciences Why is it important. We have already seen that helium-3 is a rare commodity and its usefulness in advanced physics and quantum computing. Finding an alternative opens the door to alleviating that bottleneck, although it is still in an early stage. Historically the largest global suppliers of helium-3 They have been the United States and Russiaas a byproduct of its nuclear programs. With this invention, China is one step closer to achieving independence of this strategic resource because it currently imports almost all of the helium-3 it consumes (95%, according to this paper 2024). But the United States is also interested: at the end of January, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched a call to develop a modular helium-3-free cooling system for quantum and defense technologies. In less than two weeks I had the solution, yes, from China. Context. The superconducting quantum computers They require working below 1 Kelvin and in that scenario the standard for decades has been dilution refrigeration technology. In a few words and in a simplified way: expensive refrigeration contraptions that occupy cubic meters and need helium-3 continuously. This limits its scalability, practically limiting it to specialized laboratories. Adiabatic demagnetization cooling on which the ECA is based is not new, in fact the concept is a century oldbut its features have never been up to par. As explains the CASthe endemic problem was its poor thermal conductivity. According to the South China Morning PostPeking University already built two refrigerators using this principle in 2024, which have been operational for several months. How have they done it. The cooling technique is called adiabatic demagnetization (ADR): a magnetic field is applied to the cold material, so that the internal “magnets” of the material align and release heat to the outside. When the magnetic field is removed, they return to their natural disordered state, absorbing heat from the surroundings, thereby lowering the temperature. To solve the historical problem of low conductivity, ECA enters an unusual “metallic spin supersolid” physical state, which combines high heat absorption capacity with thermal conductivity similar to a conventional metal. Yes, but. Being able to drop the temperature to 106 mK is remarkable, but the reality is that classic dilution systems in their most advanced version are capable of reaching 10 mK or less. And this is where much of quantum computing operates. In short: there is still a thermal gap to overcome. On the other hand, it is a first step: going from laboratory material and even a prototype to the industrial or military environment is a long road. Scalability and costs will be decisive. Finally, it should be noted that the composition of the ECA includes Europium (in addition to cobalt and aluminum), a rare earth that makes the operation difficult and expensive. Nevertheless, China starts from a privileged positionas long as it is the absolute leader in this industry. In Xataka | Spiderman’s web is no longer science fiction: China has just created something very similar after years of vetoes In Xataka | Japan has a rare earth megadeposit: 700 years of consumption to challenge China Cover | VALGO, ASML

China has just discovered the largest deposit of rare earths in the world. And he did it just when he needed it most.

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China has a privileged position in terms of possession of rare earthbut it has just surprised the world with a new discovery: the Ministry of Natural Resources has confirmed that the Maoniuping deposit, in Sichuan province, is now the largest deposit of light rare earths on the planet. The news comes at a key moment, since it is these minerals that are the protagonists one of the hottest fronts between Beijing and Washington in their tariff war. What exactly has been found. New exploration in the Maoniuping mining area in Mianning county has confirmed the existence of 9.67 million tons of rare earth oxideswhich represents an increase of more than 300% compared to the reserves that were known until now, as announced by the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources. With this data, the deposit surpasses that of Bayan Obo, in Inner Mongolia, which until now held the title of the largest light rare earth mine in the world with 44 million tons of proven industrial reserves. In addition to rare earth oxides, surveys have identified 27.1 million tons of fluorspar and 37.2 million tons of barite, both classified as deposits of exceptional scale. Why does it matter? Rare earth elements are the 17 elements that make electric car engines, fiber optic amplifiers, advanced weapons systems and smartphones possible, among many other technological elements that we use in our daily lives. Without them, much of the technology and defense industry simply does not work. China already produces more than 80% of the world supply annual of these materials, according to the state agency Xinhua. And this discovery further reinforces China’s position until now. The discovery within the discovery. According to Wang Denghong, director of the Institute of Mineral Resources of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, what is truly striking about the discovery is not only the rare earths but fluorite and barite. Fluorite is an essential ingredient in the manufacturing of semiconductors and lithium-ion batteries. Barite, for its part, is essential in oil and gas extraction: it is used to stabilize wells and prevent blowouts. Without this element, hydrocarbon exploration, including fracking, would be paralyzed. Restrictions. Since April last year, China introduced export restrictions on seven rare earths and permanent magnets, precisely in response to the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump about Chinese products. China controls the gateway to rare earths, and basically any company that wants to take these materials out of the country needs express government authorization. Exports to Europe have picked up since the new licensing regime was implemented. Those going to the United States remain stagnant, according to collect Interesting Engineering. What’s coming now. With this discovery, Beijing consolidates its ability to use critical minerals as diplomatic and commercial leverage. The West has been trying for years diversify your supply chains of rare earths with projects in Australia, Canada or northern Europe, but none yet approach the scale of the Asian country. Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and ZME Science In Xataka | In 2010, Japan learned to acquire its rare earths without depending on China. Germany wants to copy its strategy now

NASA chose 34 points around the world to track its lunar mission and only one in Spain. It is in Seville, on a rooftop

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If the weather behaves well and no problemsnext April 1 (early morning on April 2 in Spain) NASA will launch Artemis II. It will be the first manned mission of the Artemis programand in it four astronauts will travel aboard the Orion capsule to orbit around the Moon. during the mission 34 locations spread around the world will track the spacecraft’s radio signals and send their data to NASA. One of these headquarters will be in a special location: the roof of the Higher Technical School of Engineering of the University of Seville. A NASA antenna in Seville. In August 2025, NASA published an open call for third-party organizations to demonstrate their tracking capabilities during an actual manned mission. All types of organizations, agencies and institutions showed up, and even private radio amateurs also did so. Of the 34 selected around the world, the ETSi is the only Spanish center that will participate in this monitoring. The Orbisat system in operation. Source: Integrasys. space roof. It will do so in collaboration with Integrasys, a Spanish company specialized in this field and which has installed its platform on the roof of the ETSi building. Orbisat. This 2.5 meter high system has been developed at its Luxembourg subsidiary and is designed to track space vehicles both during launch and during subsequent operations. Plan B. The ETSi and the Orbisat system will receive the radio signals that the Orion spacecraft emits during its trip, process them and send them in real time to NASA for analysis. The key data they will measure is the Doppler effect of the signal: the variation in frequency of the waves depending on the relative speed between the ship and the antenna. It is a key parameter to determine both the position of the ship and to calculate its trajectory. It should be noted here that this system will not be responsible for the main monitoring, which will be done from the network Deep Space Network from NASA. This monitoring will be complementary and will help the agency evaluate what monitoring capabilities it can use outside of its own infrastructure. It’s a plan B. Why 34 antennas?. This support program responds to a very clear strategy of the space agency: build a public-private space tracking ecosystem that does not depend on its own network. Kevin Coggins, deputy director of the NASA SCaN programhe explained in the official announcement that “it is not about tracking a mission, but rather about building a resilient ecosystem that supports future exploration.” The initiative is an evolution of what was already done in 2022 with Artemis I, when ten volunteers tracked the unmanned mission. On that occasion, data format and quality problems were detected, and for Artemis II, participants have been forced to meet certain standards. An opportunity for Seville and for Integrasys. The Orbisat platform will be installed in Seville permanently, which turns the ETSi into a real monitoring infrastructure and not a one-off collaboration. For the company Integrasys, based in Las Rozas (Madrid), this first direct collaboration with NASA adds to those it already had with the Space Force and the US Space Command. Now it remains to be seen if this serves as a gateway to its participation also in future space missions such as Artemis III, which will land on the lunar surface. The Aerospace Technology Group of the University of Vigo will also participate in monitoring the mission. The students are in luck. The Master in Space Systems Operation at the University of Seville is taught for the first time in this 2025-26 academic year. Students will have direct access to the data generated by Orbisat during the Artemis II missionand with them they will be able to apply orbital determination and trajectory analysis techniques in that real scenario. For them this occasion is special, since they will be able to go beyond the books and have access to the telemetry of a manned spacecraft orbiting the Moon. A much more powerful way to learn, without a doubt. Spain on space map. The network of the 34 selected includes organizations such as the Canadian Space Agency, the German DLR, companies such as Telespazio and universities from Switzerland, Japan and the United States. Seville is on that list along with individual radio amateurs from California or South Dakota, amateur radio organizations such as AMSAT in Argentina or Germany, research centers in Cameroon or New Zealand and professional stations in Norway and the United Kingdom. The conclusion is clear: NASA has here the beginning of what can be a heterogeneous and decentralized network with monitoring capabilities. The Spanish participation on the Artemis II mission, by the way, goes a little furtherbut could go much further even. Image | NASA | ETSi In Xataka | In 2018, Elon Musk put his own car into orbit. Eight years later it is still circling the Earth

Terence Tao is the best mathematician in the world. He has recognized that he is using AI to solve one of the Millennium Problems

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Stating outright which person is the best in the world at something is risky. If we stick to cutting-edge research in the field of mathematics the German Peter Scholze, the British James Maynard or the Chinese-American Yitang Zhang, among other researchers, are usually considered the most capable living mathematicians. However, in the scientific community there is an almost unanimous consensus that Terence Tao, who has dual Australian and American nationality, is the authentic “Mozart of mathematics.” His prestige has been earned hard. He won the Fields Medal, which is often considered the Nobel Prize in mathematicsin 2006, when he was 31 years old. And he was awarded it for his contributions in three fundamental areas: number theory, partial differential equations and harmonic analysis. However, the Fields Medal committee especially highlighted his ability to connect areas that most mathematicians considered isolated. In any case, this is not all. Tao is often admired for his versatility. Many elite mathematicians specialize in a specific field, but this scientist has produced cutting-edge work in combinatorics and compressed detection, in addition to the three areas for which he received the Fields Medal. And, furthermore, he has earned a reputation as a generous researcher who works very well in a team and is always willing to adopt new technologies to address the greatest mathematical challenges. AI is an essential tool in mathematics for Terence Tao Dwarkesh Patel, an Indian-American content creator specializing in technology and artificial intelligence (IA) who has established himself as one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley thanks to his interviews with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Ilya Sutskever and Demis Hassabis, published just a few days ago a very interesting conversation with Terence Tao. And AI has been the absolute protagonist of a dialogue in which this mathematician has enthusiastically defended the role that this technology already has as a “trusted co-author” in research in the area of ​​mathematics. Terence Tao is currently one of the biggest promoters of Lean within the scientific community In October 2024 Meta AIMeta’s AI, managed to generalize the Lyapunov function. Russian mathematician Aleksander Lyapunov proposed the concept of the function that bears his name in 1892. His work is a very important tool in the study of dynamical systems, but mathematicians have struggled since then to find a general method that would allow them to identify Lyapunov functions. And they were not successful. However, Meta AI has had it. This is just one example that clearly illustrates the capacity that AI already has when it comes to facing some mathematical challenges. Terence Tao does not believe that AI will end up replacing researchers; argues that it is actually a very valuable tool that allows mathematicians to leave behind individual research and collaborate on much larger and more ambitious projects. And he leads by example. In fact, you have introduced Lean into your daily workflow. This tool is a proof assistant and programming language designed to verify mathematical reasoning and verify that it is completely correct. Tao is currently one of the biggest proponents of Lean within the scientific community. “I hope that the AI ​​of 2026, when used correctly, will be a trusted co-author in research in mathematics. And in many other fields as well,” defends Terence Tao. He is currently using this technology to confront some of the biggest math challenges there aresuch as the Collatz conjecture or the Navier-Stokes equations. The latter give shape to one of the Millennium Problems and they seek, broadly speaking, to understand how fluids behave. Interestingly, these equations are constantly used to predict the weather or design airplanes, among many other applications, but we still don’t understand precisely how they work. Terence Tao and AI are one of our best assets when it comes to definitively solving this enigma. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Dwarkesh Patel In Xataka | These two problems have baffled mathematicians for decades. A genius has solved them with a stroke of the pen

the toxic hell of Tehran after the bombing of the worst fuel in the world

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The water in emergency reserves is no longer transparent; It has turned a thick black. The city’s once passable streets are covered in a slippery, dark layer. “Night became morning and morning, with all the smoke, became night again,” said one astonished resident. These are not scenes from a dystopian movie, but the reality that describe The New York Times after the bombings on the oil infrastructure in Iran. The attacks have left Tehran residents facing a rain laden with oil and toxins that stains cars, roofs and hanging clothes. Faced with this unprecedented situation, the Iranian authorities and the Red Crescent have been forced to ask the more than 9 million inhabitants of the capital to lock themselves in their homes, with severe warnings for children, the elderly and pregnant women. What falls from the sky is no longer just water; It’s poison. A fog that reaches space. The constant military bombings against multiple fuel facilities in and around Tehran, such as the Shahran and Aqdasieh depots, have left a black scar. As detailed GuardianDays after the impacts, satellite images showed that the facilities were still burning, sending columns of dense smoke into the atmosphere. But the problem is aggravated by the type of fuel that burns. An exhaustive analysis of The New York Times reveals that the clouds They are extraordinarily toxic because Iran burns and stores large quantities of “mazut.” This is a very low quality residual fuel, the “bottom of the barrel” that remains after refining the oil, and which contains very high levels of sulfur. Although much of the world prohibits its use, Iran depends on it due to its aging refineries and international sanctions. And it started to rain black. When the facilities were blown up, smoke laden with soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen compounds rose to the skies. Why did it rain black? Akshay Deoras, scientist at the University of Reading consulted by Guardianand the magazine Nature They explain it with a clear metaphor: the raindrops acted like “sponges or magnets”, absorbing all the pollutants and oil suspended in the air before collapsing on the city. Furthermore, Tehran is a victim of its own geography. As the magazine explains NaturelThe city is surrounded by the Alborz mountains. This generates a phenomenon known as “thermal inversion,” where a layer of warm air traps cold, contaminated air near the ground, functioning as a lid that prevents toxicity from dispersing. The invisible enemy. The citizens they expressed thatAlmost instantly, they began to suffer headaches, eye and skin irritation, and severe breathing difficulties. The Iranian Red Crescent issued urgent alerts warning that the mixture of humidity and sulfur dioxide was generating acid rain, capable of causing chemical burns on the skin. However, the medical community’s real fear is long-term. This is the “invisible enemy” that Professor Armin Sorooshian talks about in The Conversation. Not only do explosions release petroleum smoke, but the ammunition itself contains heavy metals such as lead and mercury. Exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) that penetrate deep into the lungs brings with it a devastating legacy. As John Balmes, professor emeritus at the University of California, warns, in The New York Times: “Can you imagine a fire in an oil depot in Manhattan? That’s what we’re talking about.” Experts predict a future increase in cardiovascular disease, cognitive damage, DNA alterations and various types of cancer due to the carcinogens present, such as benzene. The threat also filters into what the population drinks and eats. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have warned that spilled oil and toxic rain are contaminating groundwater, public canals and farmland, poisoning the food chain in a country already suffering from a severe drought. Beyond: ecocide. The magnitude of the disaster brings legal loopholes and massive collateral damage to the table. Iran has called the attacks “ecocide,” a term that makes sense when analyzing international law. The legal limbo that allows this horror. It may seem paradoxical, but bombing a fuel tank is not technically a chemical attack. Expert Alexandra R. Harrington explained it in detail in The Conversation: Although the Geneva Conventions prohibit destroying civil infrastructure, they do not specifically shield gasoline tanks or industrial products. Added to this is that international treaties on chemical weapons only punish the use of weapons manufactured expressly for this purpose. The result? A huge legal loophole that allows a refinery to explode and an entire city to be poisoned without having fired a single factory-made toxic missile. A black sea in the Gulf. The disaster is not only in the sky of Tehran. If we look towards the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the war has turned the water into another ground zero after direct hits against oil tankers and desalination plants. Oil spills are already spreading across the sea, putting local fishing communities on the ropes and drowning coral reefs. Species that were already on the verge of extinction, like dugongsthey are now swimming in a death trap. The smoke that crossed half the world. The gigantic column of black smoke that was born in the Iranian deposits has not remained stagnant there. The currents have been dragged eastwarddrawing a dark line over Afghanistan and China until it sneaks into Russian airspace. The big fear now is that if all that accumulated soot falls on the high mountain ranges, it will act as a magnet for the sun and drastically accelerate the melting of the glaciers. The hidden climate bill. There is collateral damage that is hardly talked about and that Deutsche Welle has put on the table: The military machinery is an insatiable devourer of fossil fuels. Bombings and troop movements are injecting millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in record time. The most frustrating thing about this situation is that the current climate agreements have a “fine print” that exempts countries from accounting for emissions derived from war in their official balance sheets. An indelible toxic legacy. Historically, … Read more

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