Beatriz Díaz

If there’s something Adam Zagajewski understands, or rather, doesn’t understand, it’s the notion of borders, because the city limits of the place where he grew up are now very different. The Polish poet and essayist, several short-listed as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, discussed this idea of blurred homelands with Juan Manuel Bonet, Director of the Instituto Cervantes, during a conversation on European culture held at the BBVA Foundation to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sibila magazine.

Myths, legends and stories of biblical and fictional characters: magical elixirs and fountains with curative properties. Eternal youth has been, from the origin of humanity, a desire that has obsessed man and one of the principal challenges of the medical community. Fantasies aside, gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is researching how to lengthen the life of people so that within a couple of decades, we may be able to decide whether or not we want to grow old.

Hand in hand with his wife Winnie, Nelson Mandela left Víctor Verster Prison as a free man for the first time in 27 years. At the gate, a police cordon held back the emotional crowd that was waiting for the South African leader and that blocked the path of the car that took Mandela to Cape Town’s Grand Parade, the square that was jammed with the hundreds of thousands of other supporters awaited him on the day of his liberation.

The Sombrero Galaxy presents a mystery to astronomers, who haven’t been able to explain all the details of this intriguing formation. Rings of dust hold bright young stars and right in the middle of the impressive sombrero is a giant black hole. The 50 year-old light from this galaxy, which is lost in the Virgo constellation, reaches Earth thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, which turns 27 years old today.

When Juan Vespucci drew the first complete image of the world, 500 years ago, he could have never imagined that his Mapa Mundi would be flying around the world from a still not very well traced location in North America. 200 artistic treasures from the most prominent collection of Spanish art outside the Iberian Peninsula have travelled from the home of the Hispanic Society of New York, to dress up the walls of the Prado Museum, from April 4th through September 10th.

Microscopic like a bacterium or soft like a jellyfish, the robots of the future will no longer be stiff emotionless metal monsters. This new generation of machines, biodegradable and capable of interacting with the human body, will help us conquer planets, repair the environment, or cure illnesses.

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas”. This is one of the most famous quotes from renowned scientist Marie Curie. IT was, precisely, her interest in the world that led her to become the first woman to ever win a Nobel prize, at a time when women were rarely allowed to pursue University studies, at least in Poland.