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We have been thinking for 40 years that Spain escaped Chernobyl because it was far away. AEMET has discovered that it was pure luck

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“When the lava enters the tanks, it will cause approximately 7,000 cubic meters of water to overheat and evaporate, causing a significant thermal explosion. Our estimates are between two and four megatons. It will destroy absolutely everything within a 30-kilometer radius, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl. Then, all the radioactive material in the nuclei will be ejected with virulence and propagated by a large seismic wave. It can reach approximately 200 kilometers and could be lethal to the entire population of kyiv and much of Minsk. The radiation release will be immense and will impact Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and East Germany.” Since, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, AEMET published meteorological reconstruction that explained why Spain was left out of the radioactive cloud that affected a good part of Europe, I can’t forget those words from the miniseries which HBO released a few years ago. Mostly because it was pure luck. Pure luck? But Ukraine is very far away. That’s what we used to think, that Spain was spared the hardest part of the Chernobyl hit because we were so far away. However, data from meteorologist Benito Jose Fuentes They say something else: three successive atmospheric reconfigurations that, at the critical moment, sent the radioactive cloud in another direction. But let’s go step by step. Indeed, on April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant became an unstable “pressure cooker” whose explosion spread radiation throughout much of the continent. In fact, that radiation reached Spain shortly after: there is evidence of air filters in Valencia that detected the radioactivity on May 2, 3 and 4. However, we avoided the worst of the blow. According to Fuentes Lópezthe peninsula was at least twice (on April 29 and the days before May 2) “one turn of the wind” away from receiving a direct blow. Reconstructing the disaster. Sources Lopez has published a simplified simulation that reconstructs on a cartographic scale the evolution of the wind at medium and high levels of the atmosphere. This simulation is what gives us the fundamental keys. To begin with, at midday on April 26, a high pressure ridge extended between the Chernobyl zone and Scandinavia. This caused the winds (at 1,700 meters above sea level) to channel the pollutants to the north and Belarus, the Baltic republics, Sweden and Finland took the first hit. The world found out what was happening, precisely, through the sensors of a Swedish nuclear power plant two days later. Spain plays it. On April 29, the pattern changed and a storm in the Mediterranean (and a ridge in Portugal) turned the wind towards Central Europe. According to Fuentes López’s simulations, with this new direction it was a matter of hours before the radioactivity reached Spain. However, between May 1 and 2, a trough pushed the radioactive cloud towards Great Britain (and the Portuguese ridge acted as a wall that diverted the rest of the smaller clouds towards Italy and the Balkans). A reminder. The curious thing about all this is that, according to AEMET datathe dispersion was due to higher atmospheric waves at high levels and not to surface patterns such as storms and anticyclones. That is to say, the work (in addition to a mind-blowing work of atmospheric history) is a reminder that we normally relate to a small part of the weather. That, of course, is a mistake. The atmosphere is a very complex creature full of levels, teleconnections and strange relationships. We are at stake understanding it better. And I am no longer talking about climate change, or phenomena of that type. I’m saying that in most cases, as we already explained many expertsthe profound psychological, social and cultural consequences “turned out to be a much bigger problem than the radiation.” At the climatic level they will also be. And we really don’t know how to handle them well. Image | AEMET In Xataka | We believed that the “elephant’s foot” was the most radioactive point in Chernobyl reactor 4. we were wrong

A young man has solved a mathematical problem that lasted 60 years in 80 minutes with ChatGPT. That’s the least interesting thing about the story.

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He is 23 years old, his name is Liam Price and he has no advanced mathematical training. Even so, a few days ago he opened the Erdös problem websitepicked one at random and pasted it into ChatGPT. I didn’t know the history of the problem or who had tried it before. What he received back seemed like a good solution, and after consulting with a friend who was studying mathematics, the two realized they might be on to something special. A few hours later Terence Tao, one of the most renowned mathematicians in the world, confirmed that problem #1196 of Erdös, a conjecture about primitive sets of integers that had not been solved since 1966, had a solution. I had found her GPT-5.4 Pro in just 80 minutes. Not like that. This problem analyzed a question about the behavior of a particular mathematical sum on primitive sets, that is, sets of integers where none divides the other, when those numbers become very large. Jared Lichtman, a Stanford mathematician, had spent years on the problem and had made partial progress, but he and those who had tried before were starting from the same starting point that seemed like the right path. A novel idea. GPT-5.4 used another starting point. He stayed in the airmetic terrain and used a special function called von Mangoldt functiona classic tool of number theory known for its connections to prime numbers and Riemann zeta function. No one had thought about that approach to the problem, and as Lichtman explained when talking about the OpenAI model solution, “The LLM took a completely different route.” The achievement is real, but with nuances. Litchman praised the proposed solution by GPT-5.4, but there is one detail that has been omitted in many comments on this event: the raw output of ChatGPT was, in the words of this mathematician, “pretty poor.” This solution made it necessary for several experts to interpret it, detail it and extract from it the underlying idea that allowed the conjecture to be solved. Price didn’t know he had the solution until his friend read it, and he wasn’t sure until Tao confirmed it. The official repository of AI contributions to Erdös problemsmaintained by Tao himself on GitHub, classify the result as a solution generated in human-AI collaboration, not as a solution developed solely by AI. The distinction is important. A previous scandal. A few weeks ago Sebastien Bubeck, a researcher at OpenAI, posted on X that GPT-5 had “solved” several Erdös problems. That publication exceeded 100,000 views, but the mathematical community and also that surrounding the AI ​​industry criticized that statement. Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, called that statement “shameful.” What had actually happened is that the model I had found solutions to already solved problems on the web. Bubeck finished deleting the original tweet and tried to back down, but all this raised doubts about the validity of the application of AI to solve mathematical problems. AI and the mathematical success rate. Terence Tao and Nat Sothanaphan maintain the aforementioned record of all AI contributions to Erdös problems on GitHub. Each of the entries in that list or table is classified with a traffic light: green for complete solution, yellow for partial progress, and red for failure. In the category of completely AI-generated solutions with no known prior literature there are three green, fourteen yellow, and eight red traffic lights. However, the repository itself adds a unique comment: those who try to use AI to solve these problems and fail do not usually report it, so it is likely that AI has been applied “silently” to a large number of these problems without success, and those attempts do not appear in any table. There is a clear bias here because only successes generate headlines. Trying to measure what matters. In February 2026, eleven mathematicians created the initiative “First Proof“. In it they included ten mathematical problems that arose naturally in their research projects. For each one they included encrypted answers uploaded to a verification site, and they gave the AI ​​systems a week to try to solve those problems that had never appeared in any training data set. Preliminary results indicate that today AI models cannot overcome that barrier autonomously, and what happens is that there are still limits to what AI can really contribute in mathematics. But then, is there a revolution or not? Terence Tao offered a clear explanation as to why GPT-5.4 had succeeded where others had failed for 60 years. What had happened was what he described as a collective blockage of the mathematical community, because everyone started from the same origin because it was “the natural one”, the one marked by tradition. The AI ​​didn’t know that was the “correct” way to start, and that ignorance turned out to be an advantage. It’s not that the AI ​​was smarter, it’s that it had no biases about how to approach the problem. Now it remains to be seen if this novel way of trying to solve problems in unorthodox ways works. This will confirm whether what happened with Erdös’s problem number 1196 was an isolated case or whether a 23-year-old boy has managed to change our vision of how to tackle mathematical problems. Image | Universal Pictures In Xataka | There is a mathematically perfect way to cut a ham and cheese sandwich and it has been discussed since 1938.

We have been using the excuse of hunger for years to justify our bad mood. Science has just proven us right

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There are people who when they are hungry seem to completely lose control and jump at the slightest, making it difficult to approach them. And it is not a lack of patience for waiting for lunch or dinner, nor is it a personality trait, but rather It’s pure biology. Here society has even given it a name to explain this phenomenon that relates quick anger to the desire to eat: ‘Hangry‘, a fusion between hungry (hungry in English) and angry (angry in English). The definitive experiment. Although this attitude has been internalized in society as a personality trait, like someone who wakes up and can’t have a conversation, science has a lot to say. Specifically, a study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2022 continued to 64 adults for 21 days to see what happened. Using an app, participants recorded their levels of hunger, anger, irritability, pleasure and arousal five times a day, accumulating more than 9,100 observations. And here the results, the truth is, were devastating: being hungry was directly associated with negative emotions, such as anger or being irascible. A great anger. If we go into detail, the feeling of hunger It was able to explain 34% of the cases of anger, 37% of the cases of irritability and also a 38% drop in the feeling of pleasure. But the most important thing is that this correlation remained firm even after scientists controlled for variables such as age, sex, weight, or even personality traits when not hungry. Because? The answer to these mood changes seems to lie specifically in what we need to ingest: glucose. And it makes a lot of sense, because this carbohydrate acts as the main fuel for our brain and its scarcity generates a true energy crisis that forces the body to draw energy from other places, such as ketone bodies. The brain here is a really demanding organ, since, although it only represents 2% of the body weight, it consumes around 20% of the energy, and in these situations it is noticeable. And it is proven. Without going any further, a study published in 2014 analyzed 107 couples for 21 days, measuring their blood glucose and measuring aggression. The best thing is that they quantified it with a voodoo doll that represented their partner and a pin cushion. From here it was seen that the lower the glucose levels were at the end of the day, the more pins were stuck in the doll. The conclusion seemed very clear: glucose acts as the “fuel of self-control.” Without it, the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of regulating impulses, loses its ability to stop the amygdala, which is the center of primitive and less rational emotions. What happens. When the brain detects this lack of “fuel”, it does not interpret it as “the restaurant reservation has been delayed”, but as a vital threat that there is a lack of food in the environment. That is why to compensate, the adrenal glands release both cortisol and adrenaline, which are involved in the stress situation. Logically, an increase in these hormones generates irritability that is typical of hypoglycemia. Although if we go further, there are studies that suggest that the brain, in emergency situations such as hunger, prioritizes survival over patience or social courtesy, making us ‘jump’ at any interaction. The good news. Here, being aware of what is happening to us and that it is related to hunger is the most valuable thing to avoid getting angry with our partner or friend. Logically, this makes the brain understand that it is not in the middle of the jungle and that it needs to look for food as soon as possible, but it will only delay a little returning to the glucose levels to which it is accustomed. Images | freepik In Xataka | We thought that quenching hunger with Ozempic was the definitive remedy against obesity. Until we look at the muscle

Almost 2,000 years ago the Romans were already returning home from their trips with souvenirs. The best proof was hidden in Soria

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You’ve probably done it more than once. You go on vacation to Cancun, Florence, Barcelona or that beach that you like so much and once there you decide to buy a souvenir to take home. Maybe a magnet for the fridge or a figurine for the living room. It seems like a very modern gesture, but almost 2,000 years ago the Romans who moved around the world were already doing something very similar, although not exactly as tourists. We know it thanks to an old cup bronze found in Berlanga del Dueroa small town in Soria. At first glance it looks like just another ‘glass’, but in reality it is connected to one of the most fascinating Roman mega-constructions of all time. In a place in Soria… Archeology advances thanks to hours of study and field work. Also (sometimes) by pure strokes of luck. It happened some time ago in Berlanga del Duero, a town of 800 inhabitants located in Soria. Over there, “by chance”historians have found a Roman cup, a small hemispherical bronze bowl with enamels. Studies have dated it to the 2nd century AD. Said like this, it may not seem like a big deal (fortunately we have many Roman bowls and there are larger, more lavish and older ones), but Berlanga’s piece has something special: it is a roman souvenir which in its day traveled more than a thousand kilometers. A souvenir for travelers? More or less. Archaeologists believe that the Berlanga cup is “a souvenir brought to the peninsula by a Celtiberian soldier”, as they explain from the CSIC. Its purpose was not (just) to serve as another bowl. It also had a symbolic value, similar to what we can give in 2026 to the figures that we bring with us after a trip to Japan, Italy or those memories that help us evoke the months we spent on Erasmus in Berlin. If we take into account that the piece was manufactured around the 2nd century AD The above would be enough to highlight it above the rest of the cups that we preserve from ancient Rome, but the piece recovered in Soria has another extra value: its origin. The key: Hadrian’s Wall. The piece is linked to Hadrian’s Wallthe Roman fortification begun in the time of Emperor Hadrian to protect the province of Britain from the raids of the Picts. We have been able to establish the link thanks to two pieces of information. First, its origin. The cup was made with metals that surely came from the mines of Wales or Durham. Second, the details that decorate the glass, which include nods to the Roman military fortification. “Memory of…” It doesn’t matter if they are from Barcelona, ​​Milan, New York or any other city in the world, tourist souvenirs always tend to share one characteristic: they include the name of the destination and some of its most visited icons. The famous “Memory of XXX” accompanied by a silhouette of the Sagrada Familia, the Duomo or the empire state. Something similar happens in the Berlanga cup. In addition to the enamels, its decoration represents Hadrian’s Wall “through a frieze punctuated with turrets”, CSIC clarifies. Not only that. The piece also includes inscriptions directly related to the military camps in the eastern zone: Cilurnum, Onno, Vindobala and Condercum. The researchers have also noticed a curious detail: the names seem arranged to be read from west to east, as if the cup represented the appearance of the wall for people who saw it from inside. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Is it a unique piece? No. And although it may seem contradictory, that is another of the characteristics that makes the Berlanga glass so special: it is and is not unique, just like many of the souvenirs that we bring back from our trips or that are sometimes given to us by companies for which we have worked. The piece rescued in Soria is one of the five “Hadrian’s Wall Cups” that are known, enameled vessels linked to the fortification of ancient Britain. The first was found in 1725 in an English villa. Since then, two other similar pieces have been found in England and one more in France. Also a couple of fragments, one of them discovered in the 19th century between Zamora and León. That piece in question is known as the ‘Hildeburgh Fragment’ (name of its buyer) and is kept in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The Berlanga cup is closer to us: it is kept in the Numantine Museumin Soria. Its state of conservation is also much better. Although the Berlanga crown has fragmented and deformed over time, we conserve about 90% of its structure, which has allowed it to be virtually reconstructed. Looking for its owner. The cup is fascinating, but it leaves one question even more so: Who was its owner? Who the hell decided almost 2,000 years ago to take a commemorative cup from a fortification located more than a thousand kilometers away to Soria? The researchers have a theory: The piece belonged to a Celtiberian soldier who served on the most remote frontier of the empire. “The quality of craftsmanship and the materials used in these glasses tell us that they were prestigious objects, most likely made to order to give or decorate the military elite who had served at the Wall, the farthest border of the empire,” comment Jesús García Sánchez, expert from the Institute of Archeology of Mérida. “Most researchers, and we too, agree that they are interpreted as a souvenir or memento of the Wall.” From Britain to the peninsula. If the theory of García and his companions is correct, the Berlanga cup would have made a fascinating journey: it would have been part of the luggage with which a soldier from Celtiberia (a region that included part of what is now the province of Soria, as well as areas of Rioja, Zaragoza, Guadalajara, Teruel and Cuenca) who had … Read more

We have found the real kraken. It measured 19 meters and reigned in the seas 100 million years ago

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The kraken has been in the ideology of myths for decades and was imagined as a gigantic sea monster capable of dragging ships to the depths with one of its tentacles. But the truth is that it was something completely mythological until now science suggests that in reality they did exist at some point in the history of our planet. When? If we wanted to see them, we would have to take a time machine and travel to about 100 million years ago, where colossal octopuses dominated the depths of the oceans, competing head-to-head with the large marine reptiles of the time of the dinosaurs. And just like points out the published study in Science This finding not only confirms the existence of these giantsbut forces paleontologists to rewrite what we knew about the food chain of the Cretaceous seas. How do we know? One of the biggest problems paleontologists face when studying cephalopods is that their bodies are soft. And, lacking an internal skeleton, it is extremely rare to find complete fossils of octopuses or squids and so the question here is obligatory: how do we know that this giant existed? The answer is in their jaws. Here the team of researchers did not find fossilized bodies, but rather 27 mandibles known colloquially as beaks and similar to those that parrots have. These were found in sites in Japan and Canada and through advanced digital prospecting techniques and analysis of the wear of these pieces, scientists were able to digitally reconstruct the owners of these lethal hunting tools. The species. The taphonomic analysis of these remains has allowed the identification of two main species: Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and Nanaimoteuthis haggarti. But it is the latter that takes all the attention of science. The point here is that by extrapolating the size of the fossilized jaws and comparing them with the proportions of current cephalopods, experts estimate that N. haggarti It was able to reach a length of between 7 and 19 meters, which would far exceed the giant octopuses that are currently in the Pacific, which rarely exceed five meters. The food chain. Until now, the classic view of Cretaceous marine ecosystems placed large reptiles (such as mosasaurs or plesiosaurs) at the undisputed top of the food pyramid, relegating cephalopods to the role of simply being abundant prey. However, this published study changes the rules of the game. It is now known that these octopuses were not just food, but were great predators. Here the level of wear on their jaws has been key to seeing that they had an aggressive diet and that, therefore, they occupied a place at the top of the oceanic food web. The evolution. If we look back, in the Cambrian period we find the humble Nectocaris pteryxwhich was nothing more than a primitive cephalopod which barely measured a couple of centimeters and which serves as a baseline to understand where these animals come from. From here on, millions of years later, evolution had given these animals a large size and tools to become the “krakens” of the Cretaceous. Images | freepik In Xataka | We have stuffed the Gibraltar monkeys with Doritos. His solution has been to eat dirt as if it were omeprazole

Almost 20 years ago Iceland stumbled across a pocket of magma by chance. They found a vein of unlimited energy

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The search for alternative energy sources to classic fossil fuels has led countries to use the resources they have available at their fingertips: (it is not the only thing but) Spain has sun and wind, Japan has waves and Iceland has volcanoes, many volcanoes. But unleashing the full potential of geothermal energy It is difficult: to begin with, to understand how magma chambers work, science has studied lavas that have already erupted, however they lose essential information when they violently come to the surface. This data gap is a huge obstacle to taking advantage of it, but an accident that occurred in 2009 could change everything: a drilling Iceland Deep Drilling Project touched live magma when no one expected it at just 2,104 meters deep, in the Krafla volcanic field, in northeast Iceland. What began as a mishap has become a fascinating geological experiment in recent history and a real gateway to safely exploiting geothermal energy. The discovery. Upon contact with the magma, the drilling fluids cooled the molten material in a few seconds, generating fragments of volcanic glass. This glass is a treasure for analyzing magma: normally it is not possible to carry out an analysis with the material that comes out of volcanic eruptions because it is shot like shrapnel, changing temperature and pressure. But a new study led by Janine Birnbaum and her team at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich have analyzed these crystals, solving yet another little problem: that rapid cooling distorts the chemistry of the material. The analysis yielded good news: the magma was stored in conditions of saturation of volatiles at lithostatic pressure, that is, completely loaded with energy and gases, despite being so close to the surface. Why is it important. It has two most advantageous direct readings: that it has more usable energy than previously thought and that it can be drilled in a controlled manner without exploding. From an energy point of view, it is revolutionary because it validates the viability of Magma-enhanced Geothermal Systems, an evolution of conventional geothermal that seeks to extract heat directly from the vicinity of a magmatic body or superhot rocks (when they exceed 374 °C). A well under these conditions has an energy transport capacity between 5 and 10 times greater than traditional geothermal energy, as CATF explainsa nonprofit organization specializing in energy policy. But for the first time there is a robust mathematical tool to predict the behavior of magma during drilling. This is essential for security, critical when considering this resource as exploitable or not. In fact, it can applied already in a veteran projecthe Krafla Magma Testbedwhich has been running since 2014 with this goal in mind. Exploitation diagram of a superhot rock. CATF Context. Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the border between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, making it one of the most geologically active territories on the planet. Nearly 30% of its electricity already comes from geothermal sources and almost 66% comes from renewable sources, according to IRENAbut this constitutes a giant step to continue delving into geothermal energy. Until now, conventional geothermal energy is limited to extracting heat from groundwater at temperatures between 150 and 300 °C. He IDDP (Iceland Deep Drilling Project) is the research program in which both scientific organizations and Icelandic energy companies have participated since the 2000s. Following the 2009 incident, the KMT project emerged in 2014 with an even greater ambition: not to stop at drilling near the magma, but inside it, but in an intentional and controlled way. How they do it. The methodology is based on the quenchingthe rapid tempering of the samples obtained by drilling the magma, which become vitrified. The scientific team analyzed its water content, carbon dioxide and the structure of vapor bubbles that formed during cooling. From these measurements, they built numerical simulations of how bubbles grow and are reabsorbed under different pressure and temperature trajectories, using H₂O and CO₂ diffusion models. already validated. These models use the speed at which bubbles try to escape the magma during drilling to reverse engineer what the exact pressure and volatile content were before the drill bit acted. The solution they obtained was magma at a lithostatic pressure of between 50 and 57 MPa and a temperature of approximately 900 °C. The KMT’s plan now is to use this model to design the two wells it plans to drill. Yes, but. The model is solid and the paper has passed peer review in the demanding Nature, but the engineering challenge remains stratospheric. Just because magma is safe to drill into in theory doesn’t mean it the engineering to do it on an industrial scale is resolved (spoiler: it is not): it is necessary to use materials and sensors capable of withstanding these extreme temperatures in a sustained manner and the chemistry of these environments is corrosive. On the other hand, there is geographical limitation: this technique is mainly applicable in rift zones or hot spots where the magma is at reachable depths (less than five kilometers). Expanding this technology worldwide will require drilling up to 10 kilometers, where the pressure and heat exceed the current capabilities of most oilfield and geothermal services companies. In Xataka | It is very cold outside the European Union: this is something that Norway and Switzerland are discovering with the gas crisis In Xataka | With oil skyrocketing, Japan has resurrected an old idea to extract infinite energy from the ocean Cover | Diego Delso and Einar Jónsson

In 1972, a Swedish model posed nude for ‘Playboy’. Years later, we have the JPEG format thanks to this

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The one of Lena Sjööblom It is one of the most delirious races in the history of technology. To begin with, because when she made her mark in the sector she was not an engineer, nor a mathematician, nor a physicist, nor anything that resembled her in the slightest. Nor did it have any known “Eureka” moment nor did it contribute any discovery or invention. No. Sjööblom was a model. From a model she became what was then known as a “Playboy girl.” And from the pages of the nude magazine he jumped to the front-line research that today, half a century later, allows us to enjoy the JPEG image format. Let’s go in parts. In the early 70s, Sjööblom, a 21-year-old Swedish immigrant Recently landed in the US, she made a living as a model. To make her way and probably without the slightest idea of ​​the journey her image would end up taking, at the end of 1972 she agreed to pose nude for Playboya magazine that at that time sold millions of copies around the world. In one of the central photos that he took of him Dwight Hookerone of the most famous portrait painters of the city, appears from behind, in front of a mirror, with no clothes other than a hat, a red boa, stockings and heels. I liked his work. A lot. At least that’s what we can deduce if we take into account that the November 1972 issue, in which Sjööblom was the playmate main feature and Pamela Rawlings was on the cover, sold 7.16 million copiesmaking it the most successful in the magazine’s entire history. The pose became so famous that in 1973 Woody Allen He even snuck it into one of his movies. As often happens with fame, that sudden public interest came, swept away and, with it, evaporated. Sjööblom continued her modeling career and, once retired, returned to Sweden. Chances of life, one of those 7.16 million copies of the 1972 magazine ended up in the hands of a person linked to the Signal Image Processing Institute (SIPI) of the University of South Carolinaa laboratory in which, at that time, they worked on image processing and were laying the foundations of what would end up being the JPEG and MPEG standards. The coincidence would not be of greater interest if it were not for the fact that that reader took his Playboy to SIPI at the right time: just when They were looking for an image for their tests. The right place, at the right time Today it may seem crazy for someone to show up at the office with a nude magazine under their arm. Not in the 70s. As Lorena Fernández remembersof the University of Deustoin The Conversationnot only was it common for the staff to show themselves with their Playboy in teams that, like Carolina’s, were made up solely of men. It was even well seen, just like doing it today with The Times or the guide with the programming of La 2 documentaries. In that context, the arrival of Sjööblom’s photos was as well received as it was proverbial. Around June or July 1973, electrical engineering professor Alexander Swachuk, one of his graduate students, and the manager of SIPI were madly looking for a photo that they could scan and include in one of their presentations on image compression. They had their own stock, of course, but it was made up of files inherited from the boring and trite television standards of the early ’60s. The Swachuk Team I wanted a human face and an image that was also bright to guarantee a good output dynamic range. And what better option —they thought— that Sjööblom’s face? Skipping all the rules on property rights and decorum, the researchers used the image of Playboy. They kept only the top third of the magazine’s central poster and placed it under their muirhead scannerequipped with analog-digital converters and a minicomputer Hewlett Packard 2100. Jamie Hutchinson details To stay with a section of 512×512 pixels, they scanned 5.12 inches of the top of the photo, which in practice showed only Lena Sjööblom’s face, her shoulders and part of her bare back. The result showed a software error that forced the team to retouch it, but Swachuk’s team was working against the clock and decided to keep the distorted and altered image. The fact is that he liked it. Just as I had liked Sjööblom’s photo shoot in Playboy at the end of ’72. “They asked us for copies and we gave them to them so they could compare their image algorithms with ours on the same test image,” the professor himself recalled some time later. The final process At the SIPI they turned Sjööblom’s portrait into a test image for digital compression and transmission work. Arpanetthe precursor of the Internet. And that, with the passage of time, had an unpredictable result: the image of that model that everyone began to refer to as “Lena” or “Lenna” and whose origin began to blur became the standard used by other researchers who wanted to compress similar files with their algorithms. The face of that twenty-year-old Swedish woman, with a hat and a bare back, was replicated in books, conferences, articles, traveled through the “Atapuerca” of the Internet and helped lay the foundations for the JPEG image format. “Many researchers know the Lena image so well that they can easily evaluate any algorithm that runs on it. That’s why most people in the industry seem to believe that Lena has served well as a standard,” comments Hutchinson. In addition to being a “familiar image”, the photo combines shadows, highlights and blurred and sharp areas and details, a mixture that makes it “a tough test for an algorithm processing”. Perhaps the most curious thing about the entire story is that so much Playboy Like Lena Sjööblom herself, they spent decades without knowing the exorbitant fame—and the important role—of the 70s portrait. The first to … Read more

12 light years away, in a giant that humiliates Jupiter

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Although we have all complained at some point about the clouds when they have ruined us a sunny daywithout them the Earth would be much more inhospitable. Therefore, the discovery that the James Webb Space Telescope has just made on an exoplanet located 12 light years from us is really interesting. It’s not ammonia, it’s water. Epsilon Indi Ab is a gas giant even larger than Jupiter, located in a star system made up of two brown dwarfs and a K-type star. This planet is known to have clouds in its atmosphere, just like Jupiter. Given their similarity, one could expect that the clouds of both would have the same composition. Jupiter’s clouds are basically made up of ammonia. However, when some scientists have analyzed the composition of the clouds of Epsilon Indi Ab with the help of James Webb, they have discovered that there is hardly any ammonia in them. In reality they are composed mostly of frozen water, like what we have here on Earth. Hotter than expected. The exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab is located at a distance from its star similar to that which separates Uranus from our Sun. Uranus is a very very cold planet for obvious reasons. However, Epsilon Indi Ab is much larger and younger, so it still retains much of the heat that came with its formation. Although there is no clear figure, it is believed that it may have an average temperature of 0ºC. That may seem cold to us if it catches us on Earth without shelter, but for a planet so far from its planet it is quite hot. That heat is emitted in the form of infrared radiation and this is where the good stuff begins. James Webb comes into play. The James Webb Space Telescope It has a great ability to detect and measure infrared light. Therefore, it has been with it that these clouds have been analyzed. To do this, the first step was to block the star’s light. If this were not done, it would interfere with the infrared radiation emitted by the planet and could not be analyzed properly. Once this was done, filters that capture 10.6 and 11.3 μm of light were used. Thus, the observation would focus on the planet’s radiation, right in the ranges of interest. Ammonia crystals are known to block 10.6 μm light when it passes through them. If the clouds of our exoplanet were like those of Jupiter, a large blockage would have been observed in this range. But it wasn’t like that. There must have been another substance in them. By studying the 11.3 μm filters and also observing a slight emission of light at 3 and 5 μm, it was concluded that this other substance must be water. The cloud crystals of Epsilon Indi Ab are frozen water, like on Earth. A companion in the rear. Since water clouds are very important for the habitability of a planet, this finding demonstrates James Webb’s ability to analyze one more factor when searching for terrestrial analogues beyond our solar system. The best thing is that, as NASA announced this weekthe Roman Space Telescope, which will be launched in September if all goes well, can join forces with those of the James Webb, providing even more precise results. Perhaps we are facing the perfect team to find that planet we have been searching for for so long. Image | EC Matthews, MPIA / T. Müller, HdA In Xataka | James Webb has been detecting red dots in the universe for years: the only problem is that we don’t know what they are

We have been believing for years that yogurt was the best probiotic. Science is now crowning kefir

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In recent months there is a dairy product that has begun to become very popular, causing traditional yogurt to begin to falter from its ‘reign’ on supermarket shelves. We are talking about kefir, a product that is increasingly you are listening much more and which is registering a boom that is driven above all by social networks that have promoted some of the benefits it can have for the digestive system. A battle. For decades, yogurt has been the undisputed leader in taking care of our intestinal flora due to the ‘good’ bacteria it has in its composition. However, at a microscopic level, the battle is completely unequal, since, while conventional yogurt usually contains between 2 and 5 bacterial strains whose effects on the intestine are transitory, kefir is a massive symbiotic consortium and offers a better long-term result. We are talking about an ecosystem that houses between 30 and 50 strains of bacteria and yeast, and here the published reviews highlight that this overwhelming microbiological diversity allows kefir to survive stomach acids and ‘settle’ in the intestine in a persistent way. In this way, the bacteria are not passing through as can happen with yogurt, but rather kefir settles and transforms the bacterial flora. And more benefits. Its level of residual lactose here is significantly lower, so the bacteria and yeast in kefir “eat” much of the sugar in the milk during its fermentation, which explains why there are clinical trials showing that lactose intolerant They digest it without having as much reflux and also with less bloating. What does science say? Here there are different sources that can be consulted that suggest that the consumption of kefir reduces some of the bacteria that colonize our mouth producing cavities and is also a proven ally in the eradication of the dreaded bacteria. Helicobacter pylori (although strict antibiotic treatment is required to eliminate it). A recent meta-analysis published in 2025 indicates that kefir also reduces markers of general inflammation and oxidative stress, which are two of the great enemies we face when we talk about harmful agents for the body if they are maintained over time. Furthermore, its ability to reduce the fasting glucose and insulin resistancemaking it a food of interest for the control of type 2 diabetes. The small print. Like everything in nutritional science, the “how much” and the “what” are critical. Here studies indicate that to obtain these metabolic and anti-inflammatory benefits, doses of between 400 and 600 milliliters daily are required, maintained constantly for periods of 4 to 12 weeks. If taken in a ‘jumping’ manner and without consistency, no results should be expected. Which one to choose. Although it may seem like it, not all kefirs are the samesince a pilot trial in healthy men showed that traditional kefir (made from real nodules) reduces LDL cholesterol and inflammatory cytokines much more than hyper-processed commercial versions. The reason is quite simple: industrialization tends to simplify microbial diversity to sterilize the product, losing along the way part of this microbiological ‘magic’ that we appreciate so much. Images | freepik In Xataka | We have been assuming for decades that “skimmed” or “0% fat” yogurt is healthier. It’s time to rethink it

Today torreznos are a delicacy of Spanish gastronomy. For years they were despised for being a shepherd’s dish

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The pattern is so consistent it’s almost laughable: the lobster “it was a punishment” for servants and prisoners In colonial New England, oysters were Dockers’ food in Victorian Londonthe oxtail was second meat, what you took home when there was no sirloin. All current haute cuisine is built, to a large extent, on the recipe book of survival. But the case of the torreznos is even more interesting. A day for history: November 19, 2024. On that day, the European Union enrolled the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) “Torrezno de Soria”. A PGI is, in essence, a seal that recognizes the reputation of a product. In this case, it recognizes the way in which the people of Soriano salt, marinate and cure white pork belly. A preparation that, moreover, moves almost five million kilos of bacon every year (growing almost 30% a year) and more than 20 million a year. Why is it more interesting? Today, Soria torrezno is consolidating commercially at a national and international level and it is curious because this process coincides with the end of domestic slaughter. And it is not an impression: the data from the Health area of ​​the Government of Castilla y León point to a 64% reduction in the number of home killings in the last decade in areas like Tierra de Campos. The interesting thing is that this decrease in slaughter is, in a way, the necessary condition that allows the industry to develop. This is how culinary nostalgia works: the same people who eat it today in trendy bars are usually the grandchildren of those who ate it not because they liked it, but because there was nothing else. Am I implying that the torrezno are not good? It wouldn’t occur to me. Only, as always, the story is more complex than it seems. The first written reference we have (or that, at least, I have been able to find) is a reference to the usefulness of torreznos to identify insincere converts. Then much more appears: bacon in Spain was not something frowned upon, it was something central to the diet… for ideological reasons. It was when the obsession with old Christians disappeared that the torreznos began to become a stronghold for the poor and shepherds. From there, the story (as I said) is a classic: offal, barnacles and sea urchin have gone from being ‘offal’ to being gourmet delicatessen. The torrezno too. Eating is something full of ideas. That is perhaps the most revealing thing about the Torreznos case, the confirmation that we eat with our mouths, yes; but above all we eat with ideas. The torrezno has only been able to be renamed as something gourmet once it has ceased to be anyone’s food out of obligation (out of that economic or political-social obligation). Maybe it’s the right time to think about how we think about food. Image | DAP In Xataka | Hearts, bowls of torreznos and raw milk: what the ancestral diet fad consists of

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