Days before July 4, 1776, Benjamin Franklin invited twenty-one chiefs of the Iroquois nations to Philadelphia. These leaders represented the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a league of six Indigenous nations whose territories spanned part of what is now New York, Quebec, and Ontario. The Indigenous delegates were lodged on the second floor of the Pennsylvania State House—now known as Independence Hall—directly above the room where the U.S. Declaration of Independence was about to be signed.

A universal public subsidy of 150 euros per month that can only be spent on agroecological and local food. This is the Food Social Security system proposed by a report from the cooperative el Pa Sencer, which was presented this Tuesday in Barcelona at an event chaired by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Sofía Monsalve Suárez.

Almost all children in the world face at least one climate threat. But nearly half – about 1.1 billion children – are exposed to three different climate threats that put their health and survival at risk, according to the report Children’s climate risk report 2026, published this Tuesday by Unicef.

In 1874, Jules Duruof and his wife got lost while trying to cross the Atlantic by balloon. At that time, balloons – and airships too – had no maneuverability and were often at the mercy of the wind. They fell into the water, but a fishing boat was able to pick them up. Other aeronautical daredevils were not so lucky. All this led Baldomer Oller, an aeronautics enthusiast born in Calaf and exiled in Paris, to want to devise a device that would allow the balloon to be directed where its crew wanted, and from this came the patent for the airship Catalunya. But the story of this Catalan exiled in Paris is much more interesting and goes beyond technological entrepreneurship. It is a story of trade unionism, anarchism, imprisonment and torture, exile and return, with the culmination of a surprising invention that was never built.

In May of last year, workers at NASA's Goddard Laboratory received the order to go home and work remotely. The Trump administration was rescinding the lease on the building where, since the 1960s, this institute has led the climate and Earth research of the North American space agency. It was an attempt to dismantle the center, which preceded the threat of total closure proposed by the White House in its budget for NASA last year. Fortunately, Congress halted that massive funding cut. But that did not prevent the purge of the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk from targeting NASA's Earth science program and other U.S. scientific agencies that are crucial for global climate research.

Amitav Ghosh (Calcutta, 1956), one of India's most important fiction writers, has for many years placed his pen at the service of climate activism. Ten years ago he published in English The great derangement: climate change and the unthinkable (now available in Spanish published by Capitán Swing with the title El gran delirio. Cambio climático y lo impensable). As he explained these days in the CCCB debates, Ghosh understands this "great derangement" as a collective disorder that makes us all incapable of assuming the gravity and reacting adequately to the climate emergency. An incapacity that he particularly denounces within literature.

Very few people know that oil was produced in Collserola. In the middle of the last century, owners of farmhouses in this mountain range surrounding Barcelona owned olive trees, made self-consumption oil from them, and sold the surplus. But with the abandonment of the countryside throughout Catalonia, all this productive activity was also lost and the olive trees of Collserola, some centuries old, were swallowed by the forest. If in 1956 21.5% of Collserola were cultivated land, now it is only 6.4%. This not only represents a loss of the typical biodiversity of the area, but also has a dangerous collateral effect: it increases the risk of fire.

A space crew must have diverse professional profiles. "In future long-duration missions, not only engineers and technicians will be needed, but also culture, humanities, and communication," remarks Jennifer García Carrizo, a science communicator at Rey Juan Carlos University. She herself is proof: in February 2025, she participated as a journalist in the Hypatia II mission, which – with an all-female crew – simulated the conditions of Mars in the Utah desert. It was "twelve suns," in practice fifteen days, of an intense mission that she now recounts in the book Mission Mars.

It’s not a race, but if it were, the climate emergency wouldn’t just be winning—it would be doing so with one feat after another. “It’s as if every year a new runner appeared and broke a record, and did so by a wide margin, and the following year it was broken again—that wouldn’t be normal,” says Francisco Doblas, head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), in a vivid analogy. The paradox is that, in this case, record highs are not achievements to applaud, let alone celebrate.

A 2017 scientific study claimed having one fewer child was the most effective way to fight climate change – more impactful than going vegan or ditching your car. A small but growing number of people have consciously chosen not to have children to help the planet. Yet sacrifice may prove unnecessary. After half a century of population explosion and global overpopulation alarms, the problem now appears reversed: population decline. "We're not preparing for what's coming. Just as rapid population growth disrupted the world, the coming population drop will be equally – or more – swift and disruptive", warns Darrell Bricker, Ipsos researcher and co-author (with John Ibbitson) of Empty Planet.

Humanity returns to the Moon 50 years later. NASA's Artemis program, which made history this April by breaking the record for the furthest manned space voyage, responds to an openly declared objective by Donald Trump himself: “Get to the Moon before China”.

We've seen it in countless movies: "Hello, my name is so-and-so and I'm an alcoholic." We know the acronym Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and what it represents. But what we might not know is that behind these initials –and this recurring phrase– lies a twelve-step therapeutic method created by two men from Ohio in 1935, which has since helped millions of people worldwide. This method is now applied in 68 countries, including Spain, where there are up to 586 active Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) groups. A study by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital concluded in 2020 that this AA twelve-step therapy "is more effective than other established treatments for increasing abstinence" and improves outcomes, especially "in the long term," helping people stay sober for longer. The survival and constant global expansion of this system for nearly a century also attest to its effectiveness.

In all space missions, there is an evident risk to the lives of astronauts. And the most delicate moments are always takeoff and landing. But in Artemis II, NASA's mission that concludes this Friday after ten days of travel, the return to Earth is undoubtedly the most risky moment. To begin with, because during takeoff the astronauts had an ejection system in case of emergency (which would have expelled them to save them in case of an explosion), but above all because the re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere this time presents some extra challenges compared to previous missions.

Mission accomplished. The four Artemis II astronauts are back on Earth, after going to the Moon and returning. This historic mission, which lasted 10 days, is the first in over 50 years to take humans to the Moon, and it has made them the people who have traveled farthest from Earth in the history of humanity. At 1:53 AM, Catalan time, the Orion capsule carrying the astronauts re-entered Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 km per hour, faster than any other spacecraft before. A particularly risky maneuver, but one that has been successfully overcome.

NASA's Artemis II mission rocket is already halfway to the Moon, after leaving Earth's orbit, and is advancing at 5,632 kilometers per hour to become the first mission to carry humans to the satellite in more than 50 years. The objective in this case is not to land on the Moon but to orbit it and return to Earth, to test the technology that should finally allow a lunar landing in 2028. The four astronauts of the mission - who are bringing their own mobile phones on board - have already sent the first spectacular images of Earth from their perspective, and they are expected to reach the Moon on Monday night. By Saturday, the spacecraft was already more than 219,000 kilometers away, closer to the Moon than to our planet.

After announcing a few weeks ago that the Artemis III mission would not take humans to the lunar surface as planned, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the agency's new plans on Tuesday to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise to reach our satellite before its Chinese rivals. The new plans involve delaying the lunar landing by a year from the initial forecast: the Artemis IV mission will now launch in 2028. Later, he announced, a permanent U.S. base will be built on the lunar surface. "Our goal this time is not flags or footprints, but to stay on the Moon," Isaacman stated during the public presentation of NASA's plan, which took place on Tuesday under the evocative title of Ignition (ignition). "We will not let go of the Moon again," he asserted.

A butterfly that travels from Canada to Mexico to hibernate and reproduce, a whale that holds its species' record with 22,500 kilometers of travel across the oceans, or the arctic tern, a bird that -attention, spoiler- holds the longest migration in the animal kingdom. Now that spring is beginning and with it many species are on the move, we explain the main migratory routes of planetary fauna. The highways of wildlife.

It made a lot of sense for the guest of honor at the Barcelona Restoration Guild's party to be actor Alberto San Juan, who has just been nominated for a Goya for his performance in La cena. And it was precisely this film – which humorously recreates a fictional dinner of Franco two weeks after winning the Civil War – that led the Madrid-born actor to use the podium of the mythical La Paloma venue in the Catalan capital to launch a forceful "no to war." San Juan received a standing ovation from the five hundred attendees at the meeting, including actors, politicians, and restaurateurs, with his call "against this new world order where those with the greatest capacity to impose violence now lead." He reviewed the bombings in Iran and the "genocide of Gaza," among other things, and delivered a harsh criticism of the European Union and its "renunciation of defending the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Claudio Barría has spent many years of his life debunking Steven Spielberg's film SharkThis Chilean biologist, based in Catalonia, has focused his research on these animals—currently at the University of Oviedo but previously at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM)—and is now one of the leading experts on Mediterranean sharks, probably the leading expert. It was precisely at a film forum for the 50th anniversary of this film, in which he participated, that the idea for the book arose. Sharks, together with Ana Colmenero (ICM), within the collection What do we know about? published by Catarata and the CSIC. Both the book and the conversation exude a wealth of knowledge and, above all, an enormous love for these animals, which are invaluable to marine ecosystems.

What's the point of kissing? What biological function can a make-out session have? Or is it an evolutionary function? These are questions that are unlikely to cross your mind while watching Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in that iconic scene from From there to eternity. But this is the question that some Oxford scientists asked themselves, leading them to investigate the kissing history of some animal species, especially primates. Because humans aren't the only ones who kiss: ants, birds, and polar bears do it too, to name a few. We're talking about kissing on the mouth, an action to which we attribute a romantic component that science seems to have trouble understanding, since—according to the new study—this action "doesn't appear to aid survival or reproduction in any obvious way, while the potential costs of transferring a disease are high." The very definition these Oxford scientists use strips away all the romanticism: kissing is "non-aggressive interactions involving directed, intraspecific oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no transfer of food."