Durante siglos, la historia de las matemáticas griegas ha estado dominada por figuras como Euclides, Arquímedes o Apolonio de Perga. Sin embargo, junto a esa tradición teórica y deductiva, existió otra mucho más terrenal y pragmática que rara vez aparece en los manuales: la matemática práctica. Un nuevo estudio de Thomas Kelly, investigador de la […]

When we think of Greek mathematics, we think of Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga: elegant proofs and general rules. Alongside that tradition ran a humbler one, which rarely makes it into textbooks. It was maths for getting a job done, and a new study argues that the people who practised it leaned heavily on […]

The Hittite generals posted in western Anatolia (the Asian part of modern Turkey) did not mince words. They told their king that the territory was surrounded by enemies. They asked for soldiers, horses and war chariots, and warned that without help the army could be destroyed. They also made it clear that they would not […]

Los generales hititas destinados en el oeste de Anatolia no se andan con rodeos. Cuentan al rey que el territorio está rodeado de enemigos, piden soldados, caballos y carros de guerra y advierten de que, si la ayuda no llega, el ejército puede ser destruido. Añaden además que no asumirán la responsabilidad de lo que […]

The Great Sphinx has been without a nose for centuries. Now a fossil crocodile skull taken from the same rock turns out to be missing the tip of its snout too. The coincidence has put a name on a species science did not know it had, Herugavialis cairensis, which spent almost a hundred years in […]

La Gran Esfinge lleva siglos sin nariz, y el cráneo fósil de un cocodrilo extraído de su misma roca tampoco conserva la punta del hocico. La coincidencia ha dado nombre a una especie desconocida hasta ahora, Herugavialis cairensis, que durante casi cien años estuvo clasificada con la etiqueta equivocada. El estudio se publica en la […]

Anxiety hangs over the three Afghans who have been under house arrest for a week after traveling to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to compete in the Chess Olympiad. The players were arrested upon their return to Afghanistan, where chess is banned. Khaiber Farazi, Habibullah Amini and Habibullah Guldoost are awaiting punishment from the Taliban authorities, though there are grounds for hope: EL PAÍS has learned that the International Chess Federation (FIDE), the European Parliament and the Spanish government are all working to support them.

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Una espada de bronce que llevaba más de tres mil años en el fondo de un lago ha salido a la superficie con el filo todavía cortante. La han recuperado los arqueólogos subacuáticos de la Soprintendenza de Viterbo en el lago di Mezzano, un pequeño lago de origen volcánico del Lacio, la región italiana donde […]

A bronze sword that spent more than three thousand years underwater has come out of an Italian lake with its edge still sharp. Underwater archaeologists from the Soprintendenza of Viterbo (the state body that protects archaeological heritage in each Italian province) recovered it from Lake Mezzano, a small volcanic lake in Lazio, the region around […]

For decades, one of the oddest spots on the world’s political map was a patch of farmland roughly the size of a soccer pitch. It was called Dahala Khagrabari (enclave number 51) and it belonged to India. It sat inside a piece of Bangladesh, which lay inside a pocket of Indian territory, which was itself […]

Durante décadas, uno de los lugares más raros del mapa político del mundo fue una parcela de cultivo de menos de una hectárea. Se llamaba Dahala Khagrabari (enclave número 51), pertenecía a India y estaba rodeada por un trozo de Bangladés, que a su vez estaba dentro de una bolsa de territorio indio, que a […]

The White House press secretary is one of the most exposed jobs in the world, but with a $195,200 salary it is not among the highest paid. In Washington it is assumed to be a thankless task that often, like many roles that require rolling up your sleeves in the administration, serves as a prelude to more lucrative work: million-dollar book deals, senior private-sector posts, or a jump to the media. This Monday Karoline Leavitt, who resigned her post last August, chose the latter option: she will join Fox News, the conservative network confirmed.

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© ALBERT PENA (EFE)

Un buey, un carnero y un cerdo, rodeados de guirnaldas, festones y cráneos de buey esculpidos, comparten una misma piedra que acabó sirviendo de pavimento en uno de los cruces principales de la antigua Aquinum. Es una de las dos piezas que los arqueólogos de la Universidad del Salento han sacado a la luz en […]

Tradition holds that the first Monday in October marks the start of the nine-month term of the United States Supreme Court. But it is well known that Donald Trump is not a man given to honoring every tradition.

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© Jose Luis Magana (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

An ox, a ram and a pig, surrounded by garlands, festoons and carved ox skulls, share a single block of stone. At some point in antiquity it ended up as paving at one of the main crossroads of Aquinum, a Roman city in central Italy. It is one of two finds that archaeologists from the […]

Hace mucho, el rincón del universo que acabaría siendo nuestro vecindario galáctico no se parecía a una galaxia. Era una colección de miles de galaxias más pequeñas: unas fabricaban estrellas a un ritmo frenético, otras estaban llenas solo de gas y otras salpicadas de estrellas muertas y agujeros negros. Esa es la imagen que dibuja […]

Long ago, the patch of sky that would become our galactic neighbourhood looked nothing like a galaxy. It was a collection of thousands of smaller galaxies. Some were turning out stars at a frantic pace, others held nothing but gas, and others were littered with dead stars and black holes. That is the picture drawn […]

Garry Kasparov, 63, is the only one still alive of three very prominent opponents of Vladimir Putin who were threatened in 2012; the other two were Boris Nemtsov, murdered near the Kremlin in 2015, and Alexei Navalny, who survived a poisoning attack in 2020 and who died suddenly in a Siberian prison in 2024. The U.S. Department of Justice has now revealed a plan by agents linked to Russian intelligence to kill the chess player and activist—who is highly critical of Putin on a daily basis—last summer in New York, where he lives. The former world champion, who holds a Croatian passport, ties his fate to that of Ukraine.

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© NurPhoto (NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A metal detector has pulled a small lead statuette of Venus Pudica out of a forest in the Buda Hills, northwest of Budapest. It is the first religious object recorded at the Roman village of Pilisszentiván–Hárs erdő, a rural settlement in the province of Pannonia. Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) has been excavating it for four […]

Un detector de metales ha sacado a la luz una pequeña estatuilla de plomo de Venus Púdica en un bosque de los montes de Buda, al noroeste de Budapest. Es la primera pieza de carácter religioso que se documenta en la aldea romana de Pilisszentiván–Hárs erdő, un asentamiento rural de la provincia de Panonia que […]