Many of these problems can be tackled with a mix of software updates and policy changes, and the report proposes several measures along those lines.

Inertia from generators with large rotating masses—think hydro or natural gas turbines—is usually credited with enhancing grid stability, but this analysis indicates that even tripling inertia would have reduced the system’s oscillations by only about 3 percent. So it’s unclear that running more conventional plants would have helped much.

That said, the report does point to one clear concern tied to a single type of renewable: rooftop solar. The issue is less that equipment ignored rules and more that effective rules are lacking. Red Eléctrica, Spain’s grid operator, estimates roughly 6.5 GW of small-scale (< 1 MW) solar on the system, with 75 percent (4.9 GW) on low-voltage, consumer-level networks. The committee obtained data from two inverter manufacturers that together monitor about 15 percent of that capacity.

Those data show that a sizeable share (over 12 percent) of one manufacturer’s devices dropped off the grid during the initial oscillations and reconnected a few minutes later. Shortly after, more than 20 percent disconnected again during a voltage peak about two minutes before the blackout. By contrast, the fraction of the second manufacturer’s devices that went offline never exceeded 10 percent.

Taken together, this suggests small-scale generation may have seen hundreds of megawatts of output drop off and return in the minutes before the blackout, with exact amounts strongly dependent on inverter vendors—and that the grid operator has limited visibility into their behavior. This is a situation where tighter regulation is likely needed.

Applying lessons learned

The report is encouraging because it identifies several fixes that should be relatively easy to implement, including greater automation of shunt reactors, wider safety margins between alarms and disconnection, and better alignment between grid policies and hardware behavior. It also does not appear to uncover any critical issues that would force a rethink of Spain’s plan to decarbonize its grid.

Economics will probably help as well. Spain currently has little battery capacity, which can serve multiple roles in stabilizing the grid. Continued growth in renewables will increasingly create surplus generation that makes batteries economically attractive.

The key question is how quickly Spain can put some of the report’s recommendations into effect.

A Walmart ads vehicle

This week’s news indicates Walmart is moving to fold Vizio more tightly into its operations and to exploit Vizio OS’s advertising and tracking tools more aggressively to grow its $6.4 billion ads business. In Vizio’s final quarter as an independent company, its ad division reported a gross profit of $115.8 million while its hardware arm lost $6.7 million. Walmart doesn’t separately disclose Vizio’s results, but on a February investor call John David Rainey, CFO and EVP of Walmart, noted that Vizio “saw triple-digit growth in advertising” during Walmart’s fiscal Q4 2026.

Although Vizio OS has required a Vizio account since mid-2024 (before Walmart’s purchase), having an account linked to a retail conglomerate brings clearer and broader implications for TVs being used to nudge viewers toward purchases—especially those sold by Walmart. People who tolerated creating an account with an ad-focused TV maker may balk at signing up through Walmart.

Walmart’s announcement said the new, streamlined login makes setup easier while creating a secure identity framework across devices, tying streaming engagement directly to retail interaction.

As part of turning Vizio sets further into a Walmart advertising channel, the company said this week that Vizio OS will run ads for beauty giant L’Oréal that lead to Walmart’s and other retailers’ product pages.

For years, Vizio has shifted from a competitively priced TV maker into a business centered on advertising. More than a year after acquiring Vizio, Walmart appears ready to push the brand fully over that line, if it hasn’t already.

Ads and tracking are now nearly ubiquitous on budget TVs and are increasingly showing up in higher-end models, making the hard-to-find dumb TV and other non-tracked alternatives more appealing.

During 12 flybys, Juno recorded 613 microwave pulses from lightning, with energies ranging from roughly comparable to an Earth lightning bolt up to at least a hundred times stronger. Because of uncertainties in cross-planet comparisons, Jupiter’s flashes could potentially have been up to a million times more powerful than those on Earth.

Lightning on Jupiter likely originates from a process similar to Earth’s: ice particles within clouds gain electrical charges, and resulting voltage differences trigger lightning between clouds or between clouds and lower atmospheric layers.

There are important differences between the two planets. Jupiter has no solid surface, and its cloud ice contains both water and ammonia, whereas Earth’s ice is only water. Convection also behaves differently: on Jupiter moist air tends to sink because it is denser than the surrounding hydrogen-rich atmosphere, while on Earth—whose atmosphere is dominated by nitrogen, which is heavier than water—moist air tends to rise.

So Jupiter’s enormous storms aren’t explained solely by its size. Moving moist air upward requires much more energy, producing stronger winds and more powerful cloud-to-cloud lightning. Exactly what makes lightning so extreme on Jupiter remains unclear.

“Could the key difference be hydrogen versus nitrogen atmospheres, or could it be that the storms are taller on Jupiter and so there’s greater distances involved?” said Michael Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Wong is the lead author on the Jupiter lightning study.

“Or might more energy be available because moist convection on Jupiter demands a larger buildup of heat before a storm — and lightning — can form?” Wong said in a press release. “It’s an active area of research.”

President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, faces trouble after at least four Republican senators raised doubts about her medical credentials, vaccine positions, and questionable guidance she’s offered as a wellness influencer, according to reporting from The Washington Post.

Senators Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) all voiced concerns about her suitability during a confirmation hearing last month and appear to remain unconvinced. The opposition of a single one of those senators could be sufficient to prevent her nomination from moving past the Senate Health Committee.

Means, nominated more than 10 months ago, is a well-known wellness influencer tied to the Make America Health Again movement and a close ally of anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., its founder. During the hearing, senators questioned Means about her stance on vaccines — including influenza and measles shots and the hepatitis B vaccine given to newborns. She largely sidestepped the queries, declined to clearly endorse those life-saving vaccinations, and stopped short of directly contradicting Kennedy’s anti-vaccine assertions and misinformation.

After the hearing, Senators Collins and Murkowski said they still had outstanding questions. Murkowski additionally expressed “strong reservations” about Means’s nomination and, as of last week, said that view had not shifted, the Post reported.

Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health Committee and is a vocal proponent of immunization, repeatedly pressed Means on vaccine issues during the hearing. He also cast a pivotal vote to confirm Kennedy as health secretary after Kennedy vowed not to enact certain anti-vaccine policies—promises that Kennedy has largely failed to keep. While Cassidy has not revealed how he will vote on Means’s nomination, those in MAHA attribute the delay to him. When the Post inquired about the nomination’s status, Cassidy replied simply, “no change.”