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Héctor Socas, astrophysicist: ‘If a more advanced civilization contacted us, they should be more afraid of us than we are of them’

9 September 2026 at 19:32

Classes are over at Madrid’s Complutense University, and the corridors of the Faculty of Physical Sciences are nearly empty. But Héctor Socas, 53, a researcher at Spain’s Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, is spending part of an early summer morning in a meeting of the international AtLAST consortium, which is promoting the construction of a major radio telescope in Chile. Socas also directs the European Solar Telescope Foundation, one of Spain’s most ambitious astronomy projects.

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© Ismael Nasrollah (EL PAÍS)

Héctor Socas in Madrid.

Wildfires May Have Taught Humans to Make Pottery

9 September 2026 at 10:30
Long before anyone built a kiln on purpose, the ground itself may have shown people how. A new study argues that a wave of prehistoric wildfires in the southern Levant, more than 9,000 years ago, scorched the region so thoroughly that it left behind naturally baked clay — and that Neolithic communities, watching the aftermath, […]

Incendios prehistóricos en el Levante sur pudieron inspirar la invención de la cerámica

Una investigación publicada en la revista Geomorphology propone que los grandes incendios y la posterior erosión de los suelos ocurridos hace más de nueve mil años en la región del Levante sur crearon las condiciones ambientales y visuales que permitieron a las comunidades neolíticas descubrir las propiedades transformadoras del fuego sobre la arcilla. El trabajo, […]

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