🔭 SCIENCE · ASTRONOMY

An atmosphere in LHS 1140 b: the super-Earth that reignites the search for life beyond the Solar System is confirmed

A Harvard-led team detected helium escaping from this rocky world in the habitable zone of a red dwarf 49 light-years away, the first firm indication of a persistent atmosphere on such a planet.

An international team of astronomers led by Harvard University confirmed the presence of an atmosphere on LHS 1140 b, a rocky super-Earth orbiting within the habitable zone of a red dwarf located about 49 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Cetus. The finding, published on July 16 in the journal Science, is based on the detection of helium escaping from the upper layers of the planet, a signal that, according to the authors themselves, opens more questions than it closes, but which constitutes the strongest evidence to date that a rocky world in the habitable zone can conserve air after billions of years.

The team, led by astronomer Collin Cherubim, used the WINERED (Warm Infrared Echelle Spectrograph to Realize Extreme Dispersion) spectrograph, installed on the 6.5-meter Magellan Clay telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. In September 2024, a rare alignment took place that allowed the transit of LHS 1140 b and the other rocky planet in the system, LHS 1140 c, to be observed in front of its star on the same night.

During the transit of LHS 1140 b, the spectrum showed clear helium absorption at high altitude, above the planet's solid radius; in the transit of LHS 1140 c, on the other hand, no equivalent signal was observed. The researchers interpret that difference as evidence that helium is actively escaping from LHS 1140b's upper atmosphere, heated by its star's extreme X-ray and ultraviolet radiation.

LHS 1140 b has a mass 5.6 times that of Earth and a radius 1.73 times greater, figures compatible with a rocky composition similar to that of Earth combined with a layer of low density, either a substantial atmosphere or a high proportion of water. Its equilibrium temperature of 226 kelvin (about −47 °C) puts it within the so-called liquid water zone, although that does not automatically imply that there are oceans on its surface.

The host star, LHS 1140, is an unusually quiet red dwarf for its kind, more than 3 billion years old and with low magnetic activity. That stellar calm could explain, according to the researchers, why the planet has managed to retain atmospheric gases for so long, instead of losing them completely as has happened with other rocky worlds observed in habitable zones of more active stars.

The authors themselves insist on qualifying the scope of the finding. The helium signal was clearly detected in the 2024 observations, but did not reappear in a second campaign conducted in 2025, which the researchers interpret as evidence of a time-varying gas leak, rather than a measurement error.

That variability leaves open a central question for the team: whether LHS 1140 b is actually a virtually bare rock that occasionally releases bursts of gas that escape immediately, or whether it maintains a stable atmosphere that, as on Earth, continuously loses and replenishes gases.

At the moment, the exact composition of the lower atmosphere remains unknown. Previous studies with the James Webb Space Telescope had already ruled out a dense envelope of hydrogen around LHS 1140 b, leaving as the most likely hypothesis a thin atmosphere dominated by nitrogen or carbon dioxide, with inconclusive indications of water vapor.

The LHS 1140 system is also home to LHS 1140 c, a smaller planet much closer to the star, with an orbital period of just 3.78 days and a stellar irradiation about five times greater than that received by Earth. No sign of escaping helium was detected on this planet, suggesting that it lacks a comparable atmosphere.

The authors frame this contrast within the concept of the "cosmic shoreline": a theoretical boundary that would separate planets capable of retaining atmosphere for billions of years from those that lose it rapidly due to stellar radiation and stellar wind. LHS 1140 b and LHS 1140 c, despite orbiting the same star, would appear to be located on opposite sides of that boundary.

The next step, according to the team, will depend on additional observations with the James Webb Space Telescope over the next four to five years, aimed at looking for the spectral signature of water in the planet's atmosphere. If those molecules appear consistently, the researchers believe it would be a strong indication that LHS 1140 b supports a stable and long-lasting atmosphere, and not a transient phenomenon.

The idea that LHS 1140 b could host a temperate global ocean, covered by a layer of ice or directly exposed under a thick atmosphere, has been circulating for years among exoplanet specialists, supported by its density and its position within the habitable zone. However, both Cherubim's team and external specialists consulted by the journal Science stress that the current finding confirms the existence of gas in the upper atmosphere, not the presence of liquid water or habitable conditions on the surface.

Independent astronomers, such as René Doyon, from the University of Montreal, described the result as extraordinary if confirmed, although they stressed that it is a first step in a verification process that will still take years. In this sense, cataloging LHS 1140 b as "the most solid candidate" for ocean world reflects the legitimate enthusiasm of the scientific community, but it should be read as a working hypothesis and not as a confirmed fact.

Methodologically, this is the first case in which an atmosphere around a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star has been clearly documented, among the more than 6,000 exoplanets catalogued so far. For years, whenever astronomers located a rocky world in the habitable zone, subsequent observations ended up revealing bare surfaces, with no trace of air. LHS 1140 b breaks, for now, that pattern.

For copyright reasons, the original images are not embedded in this document; The absolute links published by the media and the scientific journal are listed below.

🔗 Artist's concept of LHS 1140 b and LHS 1140 c — https://cdn.sci.news/images/2026/07/image_14925-LHS-1140.jpg  (Credit: Melissa Weiss/Harvard & Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics, via Sci.News)

🔗 Original article with spectroscopic figures — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea9708  (Science / AAAS)

🔗 Coverage with image of the planetary system — https://www.sci.news/astronomy/atmosphere-habitable-zone-exoplanet-lhs-1140b-14925.html  (Sci.News)

🔗 Helium escaping from the atmosphere of a nearby rocky exoplanet orbiting in a habitable zone — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea9708  (Science, artículo original, 16 jul. 2026)

🔗 Astronomers spot first atmosphere around a potentially habitable alien world — https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-spot-first-atmosphere-around-potentially-habitable-alien-world  (Science / AAAS, noticia)

🔗 Potential Atmosphere Detected on Habitable-Zone Exoplanet LHS 1140b — https://www.sci.news/astronomy/atmosphere-habitable-zone-exoplanet-lhs-1140b-14925.html  (Sci.News)

🔗 Astronomers detect first atmosphere on rocky 'super-Earth' — https://www.rt.com/news/643172-astronomers-superearth-atmosphere-helium/  (RT)

🔗 Nearby rocky planet may be replenishing helium from atmosphere, study finds — https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nearby-rocky-planet-replenishing-helium.html  (Phys.org)

🔗 Astronomers Detect A Long-Lasting Atmosphere On A Planet That Could Resemble Earth — https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/07/astronomers-detect-atmosphere-on-a-planet/  (Daily Galaxy)

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Positioning data sheet for the publication of this blog article.

Note: This coverage is based on the article published in Science (DOI 10.1126/science.aea9708) and the news coverage available at the time of writing; The exact nature of the atmosphere and the possible existence of liquid water remain under investigation.

How does the state control itself?

Institutions, Comparative Evidence, and the False Dilemma Between Left and Right

The State does not control itself as if it were a single subject, but through a system of institutions that limit and control each other. This principle, typical of the constitutional and democratic rule of law, is based on the idea that all power requires limits to avoid its concentration and arbitrary exercise.

The division of powers, oversight bodies, judicial independence, accountability, transparency and citizen control are mechanisms designed to ensure that the exercise of power remains subject to the Constitution and the law. Its purpose is not to hinder the action of the State, but to preserve the public interest, protect the rights of individuals and prevent corruption.

From a philosophical and republican perspective, corruption does not depend exclusively on the size of the State, but on the quality of its institutions and the effectiveness of its control mechanisms. A small state can be as corrupt as a large one if it lacks transparency, institutional independence and effective sanctions. Similarly, a state with broad functions can manage public resources with integrity when there are strong controls and a true culture of public accountability.

Therefore, the solution to corruption is not simply to shrink or enlarge the State, but to strengthen institutions, guarantee the independence of control bodies, promote transparency and ensure that all exercise of power is subject to limits, supervision and accountability. In a republic, the problem is not how much power the state has, but how controlled, responsible and transparent its exercise is.

Comparative evidence: institutions, corruption and well-being

These statements cease to be a philosophical intuition when they are contrasted with data. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) published annually by Transparency International measures, on a scale of 0 to 100, how experts and businessmen perceive the level of corruption in the public sector in 182 countries. The 2025 edition shows a global average of just 42 points, the lowest in more than a decade, with 122 out of 182 countries below 50 points.

Figure 1. Score of the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index in selected countries. Source: Authors' elaboration with data from Transparency International, CPI 2025.

The graph above does not order countries by ideology or by the size of their state, but by the quality of their control institutions. Denmark, Finland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Norway—with very different state and economic traditions—share something more relevant than their political orientation: independent judiciaries, a free press, a professionalized civil service, and effective accountability mechanisms.

Why this matters for the well-being of the population

Institutional quality is not an abstract discussion: it has measurable effects on people's daily lives. Economic research on the CPI has found an association between higher index scores and higher long-term economic growth, with estimates placing the effect at around an additional 1.7 percentage points of GDP growth for each point of improvement in the index, in addition to a greater attraction of foreign investment.

Transparency International also documents links between corruption and very specific areas of well-being: countries with lower levels of corruption generally show better access to and affordability of justice for their citizens; there is a relationship between health service coverage – as measured by the World Health Organization's Universal Health Coverage Index – and levels of corruption; and more than ninety percent of journalists killed in recent years for covering corruption cases died in countries with CPI scores below 50.

These data allow us to trace the causal mechanism that underlies the first section of this document: when judicial controls, a free press and accountability are lacking, the resources allocated to hospitals, schools, infrastructure and social protection are diverted or mismanaged, and it is the people with lower incomes who pay the highest cost, because corruption works as a regressive tax that falls more heavily on poor households.

Specific cases in the world

The following table summarizes examples from different regions and models of state. The objective is not to present a ranking of "good" or "bad" countries, but to show that the variable that explains the result is not the size of the State or its ideological orientation, but the strength of its control mechanisms.

Table 1. Comparative cases of institutional control and perception of corruption. Source: Authors' elaboration with data from Transparency International, CPI 2025.

The case of Botswana is particularly illustrative: it is one of the few diamond-rich countries that avoided the so-called "curse of natural resources" thanks to the fact that, since its independence, it subjected mining income to parliamentary controls and public audits, in contrast to Venezuela, where the capture of control institutions coincided with economic and social collapse despite having the largest oil reserves in the world. Rwanda, for its part, built a public administration with a low formal tolerance for minor corruption after a devastating conflict, which allowed it to achieve levels of control comparable to those of much richer countries.

At the other extreme, Somalia and South Sudan show what happens when there are practically no institutions of control: there is no state to supervise itself because the basic functions of justice, security and public administration have collapsed, with severe humanitarian consequences.

Figure 2. Regional average of the Corruption Perceptions Index 2025. Source: Authors' elaboration with data from Transparency International, CPI 2025.

The regional average confirms the pattern: no region in the world is exempt from the problem—even Western Europe, the highest-scoring region, has been declining faster than any other in the past decade—but the differences between regions mostly reflect differences in the strength of their control institutions, not a single economic model.

Beyond the false dilemma between left and right

One of the biggest obstacles to discussing anti-corruption policies effectively is the trap of reducing the debate to whether the state should be bigger or smaller, more left-wing or more right-wing. The comparative data show that such discussion, while legitimate for other purposes, does not predict the level of corruption in a country.

●      Denmark and Finland have large welfare states, with high tax burdens and strong public intervention, and are among the least corrupt countries in the world.

●      Singapore and New Zealand combine comparatively smaller or more market-oriented states with similarly high levels of transparency.

●      Uruguay, with a consolidated social state, leads the Latin American region in controlling corruption, while countries with states of similar size in the same region occupy much lower positions.

●      Venezuela shows that a State with enormous resources and broad powers can collapse in terms of integrity when judicial independence and oversight disappear.

What distinguishes the best-evaluated countries is not their place on the left-right spectrum, but a common set of institutional conditions: independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press, protection of civic space for social organizations and journalists, transparent political financing, and public procurement systems open to scrutiny. In fact, Transparency International warns that, in recent decades, the restriction of civic space – that is, limitations on the press, non-governmental organizations and social protest, promoted indistinctly by governments of different political persuasions – systematically coincides with falls in corruption control scores.

Discussing public policies under the slogan of "more State" or "less State" diverts attention from the real problem and makes it easier for actors of any political orientation to evade accountability. The relevant question for policy-making is not how much state is needed, but what controls, what institutional independence, and what transparency accompany public decisions, no matter who governs.

Conclusion

The state controls itself through a network of mutually limiting institutions, and international evidence confirms that the quality of these institutions—not their size or political color—determines whether power is exercised in the public interest or diverted to private gain. Strengthening judicial independence, transparency, freedom of the press and citizen control is not an ideological preference: it is the condition common to all countries, large or small, left or right, that manage to translate the power of the State into effective well-being for their population.

Sources: Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 (published on 10 February 2026); World Health Organization, Universal Health Services Coverage Index; Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

A woman born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, trained in the classrooms of the National University of La Plata and today a professor in the Netherlands, has just received one of the most prestigious awards in world science: the 2026 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics. Her name is Amina Helmi, and her work forever changed the way humanity understands our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

🔭 Biographical Profile

🏆 A Nobel Prize for astronomy: what is the Kavli Prize?

The Kavli Prize is not the Nobel, but in the world of astronomy, neuroscience and nanotechnology it represents exactly the same thing: the pinnacle of international recognition. Awarded every two years by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, in collaboration with the Kavli Foundation – created by the Norwegian-American businessman Fred Kavli in 2000 – this award exists precisely to cover the disciplines that the Nobel does not systematically cover.

Each category has an endowment of one million dollars. The ceremony is held in Oslo, Norway, and the names of the laureates are announced by the same Academy that awards the Nobel Prizes. On June 10, 2026, that institution chose Amina Helmi for the Astrophysics category, recognizing three decades of work that reconstructed the deepest history of our galaxy.

🌟 From Bahía Blanca to the cosmos: a vocation that was born in a planetarium

Amina Helmi came to the universe in the most unexpected way: during a winter vacation in Buenos Aires, when she was just eleven years old, her parents took her to the Galileo Galilei Planetarium. The dome illuminated with artificial stars did the rest. Something in that projected sky ignited a spark that would never go out.

Her family history is as unique as her career. The daughter of an Egyptian father – a soil chemistry teacher whose passion for science she passed on to her since she was a child – and a Dutch mother, she grew up in Bahía Blanca in a home where knowledge was commonplace. But it was a book, years later, that ended up sealing his fate: Contact, by Carl Sagan. The protagonist was an astronomer who deciphered mathematical messages from the universe. "That's what strikes me the most: using the beauty of mathematics to understand the Universe," Helmi confessed in later interviews.

He studied a degree in Astronomy at the National University of La Plata, one of the oldest and most prestigious astronomy careers in Latin America. In the second half of the 1990s, she left for Europe thanks to an Amelia Earhart scholarship – a recognition that in itself speaks of her precocious talent – to obtain a doctorate at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. In 2000 he obtained his doctorate with honors. He was 30 years old.

🔬 Galactic archaeology: deciphering stellar fossils

To understand Amina Helmi's work, one must first understand a relatively new discipline: galactic archaeology. Just as an archaeologist reconstructs ancient civilizations from pottery shards or bones buried in the ground, Helmi reconstructs the history of the Milky Way from the stars.

Each star is a living archive. Its chemical composition has a record of where and when it was born, what material the gas cloud that originated it was made of, and in which galaxy it spent its first billions of years. "It's like DNA that is marked in the atmosphere of the star," Helmi explained. Combined with the measurement of their movements and ages, this record allows the history of the Milky Way to be traced with a precision that is not possible in other galaxies more distant.

Helmi's work is, at its core, almost all computational: models, simulations, massive database exploration. "Basically you program, you make graphics, you try to interpret what you are seeing," he described pragmatically. But behind this technical routine are hidden discoveries that shook the world's astrophysics.

⭐ 1999: The First Discovery That Changed Everything

Helmi's first major discovery came during his PhD in 1999, using data from the Hipparcos satellite  – the precursor of the more powerful Gaia – which measured the position and motion of stars near the Sun with unprecedented circumstances.

By analyzing that data, Helmi detected something no one had noticed before: a cluster of stars in the Sun's vicinity that were moving in a radically different way from the rest. Their pattern of movement was systematic, coherent, as if they belonged to the same current. And so it was. It was the remains of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way had devoured billions of years ago, and whose stars still traveled together through the galactic halo, like ghosts of a vanished world.

The work was published in the prestigious journal Nature and was immediately recognized as a fundamental finding. "They were the remnants of a smaller galaxy that the Milky Way had absorbed billions of years ago, and that was the first direct evidence that our galaxy formed through mergers," Helmi said. Over time, the scientific community named these structures the Helmi Currents, in honor of the Argentine researcher. To this day they appear with his surname in the reports of the most important scientific journals in the world.

🛰️ Gaia and the Eureka moment: Gaia-Enceladus

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia satellite was launched in 2013 with an ambitious goal: to map with unprecedented precision the position and motion of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. For Helmi, Gaia was the tool he had waited for all his scientific life. "Gaia was built to answer these questions," he said.

On April 25, 2018, during the launch event of the mission's second data catalog, something extraordinary happened. Helmi and his colleagues were looking at the first real-time charts when, suddenly, the data revealed something monumental.

What Helmi and his team had found was evidence of our galaxy's last great merger: a colossal collision with a dwarf galaxy they named Gaia-Enceladus, in homage to one of the giants of Greek mythology—the son of Gaia and Uranus—who according to legend was buried beneath Mount Etna. The name was perfect: the stars of Gaia-Enceladus were buried deep in Gaia's data, and when they collided with the Milky Way they shook the entire galaxy.

The impact had occurred between 8,000 and 11,000 million years ago. It was, in Helmi's words, "an encounter between titans." The collision warped the Milky Way's original disk, heated it, and gave rise to what we know today as the thick galactic disk and much of the stellar halo that surrounds the galaxy. The result of the work was published in Nature in 2018 and was considered one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the year.

🌌 The great mystery solved: why does the Milky Way seem so orderly?

The discovery of Gaia-Enceladus was not only extraordinary in itself: it also resolved a contradiction that had troubled astronomers for decades. The standard cosmological model predicts that galaxies grow through successive mergers and collisions. But the Milky Way has an orderly and structured disk shape  that seemed incompatible with a history of cosmic violence. How could a galaxy that supposedly collided with others be so neat?

The answer Helmi and his team found is elegant in its simplicity: mergers did happen, but they happened very early in the galaxy's history. "From this merger to the present day, no major events have happened," Helmi explained. The galaxy had ten billion years to recover, stabilize, and acquire the serene shape that we observe today. It's like discovering that a person who always seems calm had a turbulent childhood: time healed everything.

📅 Timeline: Three Decades of Discoveries

🔭 Hierarchical accretion: the new image of the galaxy

The technical concept behind the 2026 Kavli Prize is hierarchical accretion: the idea that galaxies like ours were not born already formed but grew progressively, absorbing and digesting smaller structures over billions of years. It is, in a sense, a cosmic cannibalism perfectly ordered by gravity.

Helmi, along with Vasily Belokurov (University of Cambridge) and Rodrigo Ibata (Strasbourg Observatory), were recognized for providing concrete fossil evidence of this process. It's not just a theory: it's real data, real stars, with motions and chemical compositions that tell a story of collisions that occurred when the universe was young.

The Milky Way today contains, scattered in its stellar halo, the stars of dozens of dwarf galaxies that it absorbed throughout its life. Those stars still travel in streams, in coherent flows that mirror the orbits of their home galaxies. They are the fossils of worlds that disappeared billions of years ago, and Helmi learned to read them.

👩 🔬 Being a mother and an astronomer: the double journey of genius

Amina Helmi does not shy away from conversations about the status of women in science. In interviews, she has spoken candidly about the specific challenges of jutting a high-level career with motherhood.

Far from giving up, Helmi turned the restriction into strength. And her message to young women who want to follow similar paths is clear: "Know that if you like it, there is no difference between the talent of men and women." In a field where women are still a minority, Helmi represents not only an example of scientific excellence but also of perseverance in conditions that have historically been adverse.

🇦🇷 Argentina's public university on the world podium

The recognition of Amina Helmi has a dimension that transcends the personal: it is also a tribute to the Argentine public university. The Astronomy degree at the UNLP – which is part of a scientific tradition that has more than a century of history – is at the root of a researcher who today figures in the annals of world science.

In a context where the financing of science and the value of public universities are the subject of permanent political debate, Helmi's trajectory is a concrete answer: the knowledge produced in the classrooms of La Plata can change the way humanity understands the cosmos. And it has.

🚀 What comes next? The Questions Helmi Still Wants to Answer

Despite the recognition, Helmi has his sights set on the future. The Gaia satellite still has pending data releases that promise to revolutionize the field once again. "There are two major data releases planned for the next few years," he said. This material will allow us to deepen the study of the early history of the Milky Way with a level of detail that was impossible until now.

Among the questions Helmi still wants to answer is one of the most profound in modern astrophysics: what was the Milky Way like before the great merger with Gaia-Enceladus? And another that connects with fundamental physics: what can stellar currents reveal to us about the distribution of dark matter, that mysterious substance that makes up 27% of the universe and that we have never been able to observe directly?

Dark matter, invisible but massive, shapes the orbits of stars and galaxies. Studying how stellar streams move in the Milky Way's halo can reveal where that invisible mass is concentrated. It's a cosmic detective story, and Helmi has been in the investigation for three decades.

💡 Context: why does it matter to know the past of the Milky Way?

The question may seem abstract: what is the point of knowing how our galaxy formed ten billion years ago? The answer is multi-layered.

First, understanding the Milky Way's merger history helps us understand the standard cosmological model: the theory that describes how the universe was organized after the Big Bang. Each confirmation that galaxies grow by hierarchical accretion is one more brick in that theoretical edifice.

Second, Helmi's work has direct implications for understanding dark matter, the distribution of which in the galactic halo can only be inferred through the motion of stars. Third, and perhaps most fundamentally: we are children of this galaxy. The Sun, Earth, and ourselves are made of material that went through the fusions Helmi studies. To know the history of the Milky Way is to know our own cosmic history.

🏅 Awards and recognitions: a top-level career

✨ Conclusion: an Argentinian who rewrote the history of the universe

Amina Helmi didn't just discover how the Milky Way formed. She showed that the biggest questions in the universe can be answered—at least in part—from the classrooms of an Argentine public university, with perseverance, mathematics and a good dose of the curiosity that ignited that dome of the Buenos Aires Planetarium when she was a child.

Today, at 55, Helmi works in Groningen surrounded by stellar data, computer simulations and the questions that still have no answers. The 2026 Kavli Prize is the recognition of three decades of work on the edge of what humanity knows about the cosmos. But for her, as for any good scientist, recognition is not the end of the road: it is the fuel to continue the journey.

And while Helmi continues to search for the secrets that the Milky Way still holds, those stars — those of the halo, those of the currents, the ghosts of Gaia-Enceladus — continue to travel through space, carrying with them the memory of collisions that occurred when the universe was half its current age. Now we know them a little better, thanks to an Argentinian from Bahía Blanca.

📚 Sources and references

• Infobae, June 2026: "From Bahía Blanca to the highest astrophysics award"

• El Destape, June 2026: "Kavli Award for Amina Helmi"

• El Día, La Plata, June 2026: "Amina Helmi, the UNLP astronomer awarded"

• ESA (European Space Agency): "Galactic ghosts: Gaia unveils the formation of the Milky Way"

• Wikipedia EN: Amina Helmi

• Astronomy & Astrophysics: "Characterization and history of the Helmi streams with Gaia DR2" (2019)

• IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias): Interview with Amina Helmi

• Helmi, A. et al. (2018): "The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk", Nature.

• Kavli Foundation: Autobiography of Amina Helmi

2,000-Year-Old Grape Seed DNA Reconstructs the Origin of Modern Wine

An unprecedented genetic study in the Etruscan and Roman wells of Cetamura del Chianti reveals that the cradle of Tuscan red wine was, for centuries, a white vineyard, and traces a genetic thread that reaches the oldest vine in the world, still alive in Slovenia.

Eighty grape seeds, recovered from the bottom of two deep wells in Tuscany and preserved for two millennia thanks to a practically oxygen-free mud, have just rewritten an entire chapter in the history of wine. A team led by the University of York, in collaboration with Florida State University, sequenced the DNA of these small plant fossils and discovered that the region now synonymous with the red Sangiovese was, between the third century BC and the third century AD, the almost exclusive domain of a white variety. The finding, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, does not stop there: it also connects this ancestral lineage with a vine that, sixteen centuries later, continues to bear fruit on the façade of a house in Slovenia.

Cetamura del Chianti is a settlement located on a 695-meter hill, in the heart of Italy's most photographed wine region, about 30 kilometers northeast of Siena and 60 kilometers southeast of Florence, within the municipality of Gaiole in Chianti. The site was discovered in 1964 by Alvaro Tracchi, an amateur archaeologist in the area, but its systematic exploration only began in 1973, when Florida State University obtained excavation permission and turned the site into an archaeological field program that continues, uninterrupted, more than five decades later.

Among the most unique finds at Cetamura are two wells originally dug by the Etruscans and later reused by the Romans. For generations, locals dumped domestic and agricultural waste, including thousands of grape seeds, until the pits were finally sealed under layers of moisture-saturated, virtually oxygen-free mud. That combination proved decisive: in the absence of oxygen, the microorganisms that normally degrade organic matter cannot act with the same intensity, and plant material can survive intact for millennia.

Thanks to this exceptional preservation, the researchers were able to date and sequence seeds deposited between 300 BC and 300 AD: an arc of six centuries that covers both the late Etruscan phase and much of the Roman domination over the region.

Working with DNA from ancient seeds is not easy. Genetic material fragments and degrades over time, so the team, led by Dr Oya Inanli, who developed this research as part of her PhD at the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, combined several techniques to extract as much information as possible from each nugget.

First, the genetic material of the 80 selected seeds was sequenced. Inanli described the result as "a remarkable story of continuity": the vast majority of the specimens analyzed corresponded to a single, identical genetic clone that was maintained from generation to generation for hundreds of years. To achieve this propagation without genetic variation, Etruscan-Roman farmers had to resort to cuttings and vegetative propagation techniques, the same principle that today allows a Malbec planted in Mendoza to be, genetically, a clone almost identical to the one grown centuries ago in Cahors, France.

The team wasn't satisfied with identifying the variety: they also used specific genetic markers to determine the color of the grape, a piece of information that normally disappears along with the flesh and skin of the fruit. And he added two complementary tools. On the one hand, near-infrared spectroscopy, a non-destructive technique that made it possible to anticipate, even before sequencing, which seeds best preserved their genetic material. On the other, a morphological analysis of the shape of the seeds, capable of distinguishing between domesticated grapes and wild grapes harvested spontaneously. Radiocarbon dating of the samples, funded by a classical studies fund at Florida State University, finalized the precise chronology of each well. The project also received European funding through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions of the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme.

The most striking result of the study completely contradicts the image that any wine lover has of the region. Chianti has been synonymous with red for more than a century: Sangiovese dominates vineyards and labels, and since Baron Bettino Ricasoli systematized the classic Chiantigiano cut in the nineteenth century, the color red has become part of the very identity of the place.

However, the DNA of Cetamura's seeds tells a different story for the centuries before the turn of the era: the dominant variety, the one that is repeated over and over again in Etruscan and Roman samples, produced white berries. Professor Nancy De Grummond, from Florida State University and director of the excavations in Cetamura, called the find a surprise: the red wine that today gives world fame to the region was preceded, for centuries, by a white variety carefully selected and maintained by Etruscans and Romans.

The fact does not imply that there were no red grapes in ancient Tuscany, in fact some white varieties are still grown today in the area, although in minority proportions, but that the dominant and best documented variety in this specific site was white. It is, in any case, a wake-up call about how recent the varietal identity that we associate, almost as an immutable fact, with an entire wine region may be.

The arrival of Rome in Cetamura was not a simple change of political flag. The genetic record shows that, after the Roman conquest of the settlement, entirely new vine varieties began to appear in the wells, suggesting that authorities or traders introduced selected vines from other regions under Roman rule.

The most striking piece of this hypothesis appears when comparing the dominant Cetamura clone with genetic material from other European sites: the researchers found a close genetic relationship with two ancient seeds previously analyzed in the south of France. For the team, this coincidence is biological evidence of a far-reaching agricultural network, organized by Rome to standardize wine production in different provinces of the Empire. It was not only a matter of marketing the wine already made: cuttings, plants and the agronomic knowledge necessary to reproduce specific varieties hundreds of kilometers from their place of origin were also circulating.

The study also found evidence of wild grape harvesting, detected through morphological analysis of the seeds, indicating that even in the midst of the expansion of organized viticulture, local communities continued to take advantage of spontaneous resources from the environment. Far from the image of isolated peasants, the winegrowers of Cetamura participated in a sophisticated agricultural economy, with commercial and even political implications.

📊  Technical file of the research

Among the 80 seeds analyzed, one particularly caught the team's attention: it belongs to a genetic family that is still cultivated in central and eastern Europe. Its closest modern relative is a rare variety, almost unknown outside Hungary, called Baratcsuha szürke.

But the most fascinating finding is in the following connection: this genetic lineage links directly to a legendary vine that grows today in the city of Maribor, Slovenia, on the façade of the so-called House of the Old Vine, in the Lent neighborhood, on the banks of the Drava River. Planted towards the end of the Middle Ages, estimated between 1550 and 1570, during the Ottoman invasions, this plant of the Žametovka variety is more than 400 years old and continues to produce fruit every season. Since 2004 it has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest productive vine in the world.

For Dr Nathan Wales, also from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, the find shows that this varietal family is both ancient and extraordinarily resilient: the grapes enjoyed by the Romans are one genetic step away from the varieties that are poured into a glass of wine today. Every time someone drinks a wine made from these heirloom varieties, the researcher argues, they are tasting a history that is just a handful of generations away from what was served on Roman tables thousands of years ago.

The case of Cetamura is not an isolated event within the paleogenomics of the vine. In France, another international team managed to reconstruct more than 4,000 years of winemaking history from archaeological seeds found at different sites in the country, in a paper published in Nature Communications that documented the coexistence of wild and domesticated varieties from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. That same field of research had previously identified, in the latrine of a medieval French hospital, a 600-year-old seed genetically almost identical to today's Pinot Noir, as well as evidence of clonal propagation dating back to the Iron Age, between 625 and 500 BC.

The pattern that emerges from these studies is consistent: the vine varieties that we now consider traditional are neither fixed nor eternal. They are the result of thousands of human decisions (selection, propagation by cuttings, commercial exchange, climate adaptation) made over centuries by farmers who rarely left a written record of their criteria. Paleogenomics allows, for the first time, to read these decisions directly into DNA.

This perspective also challenges Argentine viticulture. Malbec, the flagship variety of Mendoza and San Juan, has its own chapter of varietal migration: it was born in the southwest of France, in the Cahors region, and arrived in Argentina only in the nineteenth century, by the hand of the French agronomist Michel Aimé Pouget. The same logic of clonal propagation that kept the white variety of Cetamura alive for two thousand years is, in essence, the one that today allows a producer from Mendoza to cultivate, generation after generation, the same genetic material that came from Europe. Understanding how varieties traveled and were preserved in Antiquity offers, in this sense, a useful mirror to think about the varietal identity of contemporary Argentine wine.

What began as household garbage thrown into a pit two thousand years ago ended up becoming one of the most complete genetic reconstructions ever achieved on the ancient vine. The discovery of Cetamura not only rewrites the varietal history of one of the most famous wine regions in the world: it also reminds us that each glass of wine contains, in addition to tannins and aromas, a silent tale of human selection that crosses empires, borders and millennia.

❖  Where were the 2,000-year-old grape seeds found?

In two Etruscan wells reused by the Romans at Cetamura del Chianti, an archaeological site in Tuscany, Italy, excavated by Florida State University since 1973.

❖  What did DNA reveal about the color of ancient grapes?

Genetic markers showed that the dominant variety in the wells, maintained for centuries by the Etruscans and Romans, produced white berries, a surprising fact for a region today almost exclusively associated with the red Sangiovese.

❖  How is this find connected to the oldest vine in the world?

One of the seeds analyzed belongs to a genetic family related to the 400-year-old vine that grows in Maribor, Slovenia, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest productive plant on the planet.

❖  What does this study prove about the Roman wine trade?

The genetic similarity between the dominant clone of Cetamura and seeds found in southern France suggests that the Roman Empire organized an agricultural network that distributed cuttings and selected varieties among different provinces to standardize wine production.

❖  Who published the research and where?

The study was led by Oya Inanli and Nathan Wales of York University, along with Nancy De Grummond of Florida State University, and was published in 2026 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

1.      University of York — Ancient DNA from Tuscan wells reveal origins of modern wine

2.     EurekAlert! — Ancient DNA from Tuscan wells reveal origins of modern wine

3.     ScienceDirect — Grapevine cultivation at Cetamura del Chianti (Journal of Archaeological Science)

4.     Vinetur — Chianti was born white 2,000 years ago, ancient DNA reveals

5.     Very Interesting — DNA from 80 Seeds Found in Tuscan Wells Reveals the Origins of Modern Wine

6.     The Green Compass — 2,000-Year-Old Grape Seeds in an Etruscan Well Reveal Surprises About Modern Wine

7.     Mundo Agropecuario — DNA from ancient seeds reveals the origin of modern wine

8.     Cetamura del Chianti Excavations and Research — Florida State University

9.     24Horas.cl — Study carried out with ancient DNA from grape seeds allows us to reconstruct 4,000 years of viticulture

⚙  SEO Data Sheet

Title tag (≤60 characters): 2,000-year-old DNA reveals the origin of modern wine

Meta description (≤155 characters): A DNA study on 2,000-year-old grape seeds in Cetamura del Chianti reveals that Tuscan red wine was born white. I discovered the story.

Suggested slug URL: /dna-grape-seeds-2000-years-wine-origin

Main keyword: 2000 year old grape seed DNA

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Search intent: Informational (scientific and historical curiosity, high probability of featured snippet)

✓H1: DNA from 2,000-year-old grape seeds reconstructs the origin of modern wine

✓H2: Etruscan wells: a time capsule under the Tuscan mud

✓H2: How to read the DNA of a seed that is 2,000 years old

✓H2: The varietal surprise: Chianti was born white

✓H2: The wine network of the Roman Empire

✓H2: The link with the oldest vine in the world

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Insert the following blocks of structured data into the or via the CMS SEO plugin:

✓Attribute each finding to its authors and institutions (York University, Florida State University) and link to the peer-reviewed primary source (Journal of Archaeological Science).

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og:title: 2,000-Year-Old Grape Seed DNA Reconstructs the Origin of Modern Wine

og:description: A study in Cetamura del Chianti reveals that Tuscan red wine was born white. The science behind the find.

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Length of the body of the article: Approximately 2,080 words

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes (at 200 words per minute)

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ARGENTINE HISTORY

The May Revolution

Day by Day: May 18-25, 1810

⏱ Reading Time: 12–15 minutes    •    📅 May 25, 2025    •    🌐 National History Blog

🇪🇸 The European chessboard: the spark that crossed the Atlantic

To understand the Week of May you have to cross the Atlantic. In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain and forced King Ferdinand VII to abdicate in Bayonne in favor of his brother Joseph Bonaparte. The Spanish crown, which ruled an empire that included all of Hispanic America, remained in foreign hands. In response, government juntas emerged in the main peninsular cities, coordinated by a Central Supreme Junta based in Seville, which ruled in the name of the captive king.

But the French advance was relentless. In January 1810, Napoleon's troops definitively defeated the Spanish armies and the Central Junta had to flee to Cádiz, where it was dissolved and power transferred to a Regency Council. It was the end of the last institutional bastion of the Spanish monarchy.

The news was devastating for the colonial system: if the Junta that had appointed Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros no longer existed, the authority of the viceroy himself was legally questioned. For the revolutionary criollos who had been meeting secretly for years in the soap factory of Vieytes and in the homes of Buenos Aires patriots, it was the historic opportunity they were waiting for.

🖼️ Historical reference image — Cabildo de Buenos Aires

→  See image: Cabildo de Buenos Aires (Wikipedia Commons)

→  See image: Cabildo Abierto del 22 de mayo — Pedro Subercaseaux (1908)

→  See image: First Governing Board — historical illustration

🗓️ The Week of May: day by day

Historians call the period between May 18 and 25, 1810 "May Week". Each day of that historic week was a decisive link in the chain that culminated in the first national government. Below, the detailed account of each day.

👤 The protagonists of the Week of May

Cornelio Saavedra — The General Strategist

Chief of the Patrician Regiment and the most powerful military figure among the Creoles, Saavedra represented the moderate wing of the revolution. His well-known phrase "it is not yet time; Let the figs ripen," reveals a politician who waited for the exact moment. He was elected president of the First Junta and would later face Mariano Moreno in the first great political conflict of the revolutionary process.

Mariano Moreno — The Radical Ideologue

A lawyer trained in Chuquisaca and editor of the "Representation of the Landowners" (1809), Moreno was the most audacious thinker of the revolution. As secretary of the Junta, he promoted freedom of the press, popular education and a more drastic break with Spain. His radical vision quickly brought him into conflict with Saavedra. He died in 1811 under mysterious circumstances during a diplomatic mission.

Manuel Belgrano — The Integral Patriot

A lawyer, economist and soldier, Belgrano was one of the few leaders of the revolution who combined enlightened thought with military action. A member of the First Junta as a member, he would later command the Expedition to Paraguay and create the national flag in 1812. It represented the synthesis between the Enlightenment ideal and the concrete patriotic commitment.

Juan José Castelli — The Voice of the Cabildo Abierto

A cousin of Moreno and also trained in Chuquisaca, Castelli was the most brilliant orator of May 22. His argument about the reversion of sovereignty to the people in the absence of the legitimate king was the central legal foundation of the revolution. Later he would lead the Army of the North with a decidedly emancipatory orientation.

Domingo French and Antonio Beruti — The Popular Organizers

Mid-ranking military officers, French and Beruti organized the popular mobilization that was the decisive pressure engine throughout the week. They led the "chisperos" on the 20th, 21st and 24th, ensuring that the popular will was not ignored by the lobbyists. They distributed white and light blue ribbons among the demonstrators, in what some historians consider the symbolic origin of the colors of the Argentine flag.

🌎 Historical consequences of the Revolution

The May Revolution was not a formal declaration of independence – that would come only on July 9, 1816 – but the beginning of a process of rupture with the colonial system. Its consequences were profound and far-reaching:

•        End of the viceregal system: the dismissal of Cisneros inaugurated the era of self-government in the Río de la Plata.

•        Dissolution of the Viceroyalty: the process initiated in 1810 resulted in the formation of four independent states: Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia.

•        Free trade: The First Junta eliminated the Spanish trade monopoly, opening the port to British ships.

•        Popular sovereignty: for the first time, the "people" appeared as a source of political legitimacy in the Río de la Plata.

•        Internal conflicts: the revolution immediately opened disputes between Morenoites and Saavedristas that would mark decades of political instability.

🔍 SEO Optimization

📌 Suggested meta description (155 characters):

Learn what happened in the May Revolution, day by day: from May 18 to 25, 1810. Cabildo Abierto, resignation of Viceroy Cisneros and the formation of the First Junta.

🔗 Recommended internal and external linking strategy:

•Link to articles about July 9, 1816 and the Declaration of Independence.

•Link to profiles of Saavedra, Moreno, Belgrano and Castelli.

•Link externally to academic sources: UBA, El Historiador (Felipe Pigna), Casa Rosada.

•Incluir schema markup de tipo "Article" con datePublished, author y keywords.

📚 Sources and bibliography

→  The Historian — The Week of May 1810 (Felipe Pigna)

→  Wikipedia — May Revolution

→  Casa Rosada — May 25, 1810, at 214 years old

→  UBA — May Revolution and Popular Sovereignty

→  Infobae — Homeland Day: what is celebrated on May 25

→  CNN — Causes and Consequences of the May Revolution

→  Billiken — The Week of May, day by day

🇦🇷 "The People Want to Know What It Is All About" — May 25, 1810

Historical Depth Article • Journalistic Style • SEO Optimized

  🔴 SPECIAL ANALYSIS · ARGENTINE ECONOMY 

Fuel shock and falling wages: the perfect storm shaking Argentina's pocket

🗓️ May 18, 2026 |   ⏱️ Reading Time: 8 minutes |   ✍️ Economic Writing

🏷️ Keywords: inflation Argentina, registered wages, fuel shock, BCRA, INDEC, purchasing power

The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) identified the international rise in oil prices as the main inflationary risk factor, while INDEC confirmed that registered private wages fell for the seventh consecutive month in real terms.

📊 The numbers that mark the crisis

⛽ The external shock that no one expected: oil shakes prices

Inflation in March 2026 reached 3.4% monthly, the highest figure since the same month of the previous year, when it had marked 3.7%. The data confirmed what private consultants and analysts were already anticipating: the war conflict in the Middle East was moving directly to Argentine pumps, and from there, to the rest of the domestic economy.

The Central Bank, in its latest Monetary Policy Report, was categorical: the international price of oil is today the main risk factor for the inflationary slowdown. Since the beginning of hostilities between the United States and Iran, the barrel of Brent has climbed to USD 105, and fuels in Argentina have accumulated a 25% rise at the pumps.

The direct effects of this shock were overwhelming: fuel prices rose by 9% in March; domestic air tickets became 24% more expensive; and intercity transport accumulated increases of 22%. A chain of impacts that did not take long to be transferred to freight, logistics and, finally, to food prices.

What did the government do to cushion the blow?

In the face of inflationary pressure from the global energy market, the national executive deployed a set of containment measures. YPF, which controls more than 50% of the fuel market and acts as a price reference for the rest of the companies, announced a stabilization buffer for 45 days. Decree 217/2026 postponed the update of taxes on liquid fuels and carbon dioxide until May 1.

However, the BCRA itself acknowledged that these measures are transitory. The state oil company uses a 'clearing account' that will allow it to recover the deferred income later, which implies that the price adjustment is postponed, not eliminated.

💡 The tariff adjustment: another weight on the CPI

Public services constituted a second vector of inflationary pressure. In February, the rates of electricity, gas and other fuels rose by 12%, as a result of the modification in the energy subsidy scheme. That movement generated an impact of 0.5 percentage points on the CPI for that month.

To cushion the tariff effect on AMBA households, the Government adjusted the schedule of increases of Aguas y Saneamientos Argentinos (AySA): it reduced the monthly increase in bills from 4% to 3%. A measure that, although it reduces the immediate impact, extends the process of tariff convergence.

💼 The wage drama: seven consecutive months of real loss

On the same Monday that the BCRA published its analysis on inflation, INDEC released the March Wage Index. The picture was eloquent: registered private sector workers saw their salaries increase by 2.1% nominally, compared to inflation of 3.4%. The mathematical result was a 1.3% drop in purchasing power in the month.

It was not an isolated episode. According to INDEC and the analysis of multiple private consulting firms, this was the seventh consecutive month of real fall in registered private wages, with a cumulative loss of 4.8% since August 2025.

The gap is sustained over time: in the year-on-year comparison, registered wages grew by 28.1%, well below the 32.6% recorded by inflation in that period. And in the accumulated of the first quarter of the year, the formal sector rose 7%, compared to an inflationary dynamic of 9.4%.

Who wins and who loses in the labor market

The Argentine labor market shows a heterogeneous picture. While the registered private sector accumulates losses in real terms, the public sector managed to partially reverse the trend: national state employment rose by 5.8% in March, which, discounting inflation, represents a real improvement of 1.6% monthly, although it still accumulates a year-on-year fall of 6.2%.

The most striking picture is that of informal workers: their wages grew by a nominal 4.7% in the available data (which have a five-month lag, corresponding to September 2025), exceeding the inflation of that period. However, the paradox is that this salary comes from a much lower base: according to economist Jorge Colina, from IDESA, the informal salary averages only $700,000 per month, compared to the median of $1.5 million in the formal sector.

🔮 What's next? The outlook for April and May

The BCRA projected in its report that inflationary pressures from education services – which averaged a 12.1% increase in March due to the restart of classes – and clothing – which rose by 3.4% due to the change of season – will dissipate in April and May, respectively.

Regarding fuels, the issuing agency acknowledged that the external uncertainty factor persists. Private consultants project that inflation in April will be between 2.4% and 2.8%, which would represent a slowdown from 3.4% in March. However, analysts at EconViews and Analytica warn that the possibility of piercing 2% per month in a sustained manner has receded as a near horizon.

On the wage front, preliminary data from collective bargaining agreements suggest that the average number of agreements in April was around 2.5% per month. If April's inflation is indeed below that threshold, it would be the first time in seven months that registered private wages have recovered ground in real terms.

🔑 The five keys to the economic moment

▸   1. The external shock of fuels was the main driver of the inflationary acceleration in March, with a direct impact on transport, logistics and food.

▸   2. Registered private wages have accumulated seven consecutive months of real decline, with a deterioration of 4.8% since August 2025.

▸   3. The public sector partially reversed the trend: the state parity agreements for the month exceeded inflation, generating a real improvement of 1.6% per month.

▸   4. The fuel price containment measures – the YPF buffer and Decree 217/2026 – are transitory and generate a deferred adjustment debt.

▸   5. The outlook for April points to a slowdown, but the recovery of real wages remains the great pending challenge of the economic program.

📖 Context: the acceleration since July 2025

To understand the magnitude of the challenge, it is necessary to go back. Since July 2025, when monthly inflation hit a low of 1.9%, the CPI has been accelerating for nine consecutive months. The combination of internal factors (tariff adjustment, readjustment of relative prices) and external factors (conflict in the Middle East, pressure on oil) built a scenario where disinflation became elusive.

The BCRA's Market Expectations Survey (REM) projects that monthly inflation could return to 2% only in August 2026, provided that there are no new external shocks. The FocusEconomics consensus places annual inflation in 2026 at around 23.9%, although international variables add a significant degree of uncertainty.

📌 Sources consulted: BCRA — Monetary Policy Report (May 2026) · INDEC — Consumer Price Index (March 2026) · INDEC — Wage Index (March 2026) · Infobae · La Nación · Profile · EcoAnalytics · CEPA · IDESA · IARAF · Analytica · EconViews.

🔗 For more information: www.indec.gob.ar |  www.bcra.gob.ar

⚠️ Note: The data on unregistered private salaries show a statistical lag of five months according to INDEC, corresponding to September 2025.

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© 2026 Economic Writing · All rights reserved

💰 INTENDED WAGES IN ARGENTINA

How much Argentine workers ask for and how it varies by position

🗓️ Updated: May 2026 |  ⏱️ Reading Time: ~9 minutes |  ✍️ Journalistic analysis

In a country where inflation set the pace of every economic variable for decades, the intended salary – that number that the candidate writes when applying for a vacancy – became a privileged thermometer of the labor market. It is the most honest figure: not the one paid by the company, but the one dreamed of by the worker.

The Labor Market Index of Bumeran, the leading employment platform in Argentina and a benchmark for the largest network in Latin America, monitors these aspirations month by month. Its data reveal a complex story: a real recovery in purchasing power in 2025, but a downward trend that persists in 2026. This article looks at the numbers, breaks them down by job title, sector, and gender, and explains what's behind each number.

The year 2025 closed with a positive sign that few would have anticipated at the beginning of the cycle. The intended salary accumulated an increase of 34.66%, exceeding the inflation of the period, which was 31.5%. This difference of 3.16 percentage points represented a real recovery unseen since the exit from hyperinflation in 2024, when claims had climbed 165.31% (inflation: 117.8%).

However, the year was not linear. The largest monthly jump was recorded in January (+7.30%), followed by September (+6.16%) and March (+5.34%). In December came the hardest correction: a fall of 3.71%, the largest monthly drop of the year, which left the average at $1,731,592.

Quarterly evolution of the average target salary — 2025/2026

Source: Bumeran Labor Market Index (2025-2026).

No variable segments the Argentine labor market more than the level of seniority. The difference between a junior and a boss or supervisor exceeds 77% in the April 2026 claims. This gap not only reflects experience, but also a shortage of talent at middle and high levels, where companies compete more fiercely.

⚠️ Attention: The 7.30% drop in the supervisors and bosses segment in April 2026 contrasts with the rise in the lower levels. This suggests greater caution on the part of hierarchical candidates in the face of a market that they perceive to be more restrictive, or an adjustment of expectations in the face of offers that have not yet recovered.

Historical peaks by seniority level (2025)

The highest records of the year 2025 offer a perspective of the aspirational ceiling:

🔹 Supervisors/Chiefs — Systems Area (October 2025): $4,625,000 per month.

🔹 Semi Senior/Senior — Corporate Finance/Investment Banking: $4,000,000 per month.

🔹 Junior — Petroleum and Petrochemical Engineering (Oct. 2025): $2,750,000 per month.

The activity category is the second major salary differentiator. In April 2026, Bumeran's data show a clear hierarchy between sectors, with gaps that can exceed 100% between the best and worst paid area within the same seniority level.

📌 Higher salaries — April 2026

📌 Lower Wages — April 2026