SMC Spain

Since the 1970s, so-called leap seconds have been periodically added to clocks—a measure designed to keep traditional astronomical time aligned with high-precision atomic time. However, adding an extra second can disrupt global technological infrastructure, leading to website outages and network failures. In 2022, a decision was made to abandon this practice starting in 2035. This week, during the 28th General Conference on Weights and Measures—which begins today in Versailles, France—a vote will be held on a proposal by timekeeping experts to stop adding leap seconds as early as 2027.

Although human-caused mercury emissions have been declining since 1990 in Europe and North America and since 2010 in East Asia, large reserves have accumulated in the soil and water. A Perspective article published in Science and written by two researchers from the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry at the CSIC warns that climate change—through global warming, wildfires, permafrost thaw, changes in precipitation, and altered ocean conditions—may be increasing the mobilization of accumulated mercury. According to the authors, this phenomenon may exacerbate risks to the environment and the health of humans and other organisms, primarily due to its concentration in shellfish and fish. 

A Google DeepMind team has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system based on large language models capable of autonomously tackling select mathematical problems. The tool, called AlphaProof Nexus, searches for proofs and employs verification processes to ensure the resulting solutions are logically sound. According to the study published in Science, AlphaProof Nexus has successfully solved several previously unsolved problems, including nine of the 353 Erdős problems.

A study published in Scientific Reports estimates that the total area occupied by buildings within potentially flood-prone zones near the Himalayas increased by approximately 45 per cent between 2016 and 2023. In total, the study estimates that around 300,000 people could be at risk of flooding in the Nepalese, Indian and Chinese regions of the mountain range. Floods in the Himalayas are usually caused by monsoons, torrential rain or, on rare occasions, by devastating debris flows and glacial lake outbursts — such as the one that occurred last August. Climate change is expected to increase the severity of these events, whilst the narrow, steep valleys of mountainous areas can exacerbate the height of the floods and their consequences.

Two independent studies published simultaneously in Nature claim to have developed the first functional nuclear clocks, both based on thorium-229 isotopes. Although their current stability is lower than that of the best atomic clocks, the authors maintain that future research could increase it by around four orders of magnitude, which would facilitate research in the field of fundamental physics.

Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other. However, living organisms contain only one of these mirror images. For a long time, the origin of this chemical asymmetry was a mystery to chemists. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai “for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis,” which provided the solution to this enigma. 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Francis Halzen, the driving force behind the idea of using ice at the South Pole to detect particularly elusive particles known as neutrinos. According to the Academy, his “decisive contributions” have been fundamental to the development of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory: a cubic kilometer of ice equipped with light sensors that allows the scientific community to detect neutrinos originating from extremely high-energy processes in the distant universe, laying the groundwork for an entirely new field of astronomy. 

Pain does not increase linearly with age; rather, the most pronounced increases occur before the age of 55. This is the main conclusion of a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, which included Spanish participation and analyzed data from more than six million people aged five to over 100 in 118 countries. Across all areas of the body, the prevalence of pain increased most sharply before age 55. Headaches and abdominal pain peaked at an earlier age, while back, hip, and knee pain continued to increase with age.

The Karolinska Institute has awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their discoveries regarding light-activated ion channels and optogenetics. This method, which makes it possible to activate or deactivate individual neurons in a living brain, “is currently used in laboratories around the world to unravel the mysteries of the brain,” the institute announced. 

The latest data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show that this summer in Europe has been characterised by unprecedented heat stress and very low river flows. In fact, in Western Europe, this has been the warmest summer on record and the third warmest across the continent as a whole. The European summer has been characterised by extreme heatwaves and drought conditions, with a record 52 per cent of the continent exposed to very intense heat stress by the end of the season. Furthermore, the exceptional heat persisted well beyond the peak summer months, with daily temperature records also being set in May and September.