Astronomers may have just spotted the first asteroid caught visiting the solar system from another star. The Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii discovered the object, initially dubbed A/2017 U1 and later named ‘Oumuamua, on October 18. More observations from other telescopes around the world suggest the object’s trajectory is at an unusually steep angle to ... Read more
Bit by qubit, scientists are edging closer to the realm where quantum computers will reign supreme. IBM is testing a prototype quantum processor with 50 quantum bits, or qubits, the company announced November 10. That’s about the number needed to meet a sought-after milestone: demonstrating that quantum computers can perform specific tasks that are beyond ... Read more
Bit by qubit, scientists are edging closer to the realm where quantum computers will reign supreme. IBM is now testing a prototype quantum processor with 50 quantum bits, or qubits, the company announced November 10. That’s around the number needed to meet a sought-after milestone: demonstrating that quantum computers can perform specific tasks that are ... Read more
What looks like a spider, but with a segmented rear plus a long spike of a tail, has turned up in amber that’s about 100 million years old. Roughly the size of a peppercorn (not including the tail, which stretches several times the body length), this newly described extinct species lived in forests in what ... Read more
A 26-year-old woman felt something in her left eye. For days, she couldn’t shake the sensation. But this was no errant eyelash or dive-bombing gnat. A week after that first irritation, the Oregon resident pulled a translucent worm, about a centimeter long, from her eye. With that harrowing feat, she became the first ever reported ... Read more
AUSTIN, Texas — Babies’ stroke-damaged brains can pull a mirror trick to recover. A stroke on the left side of the brain often damages important language-processing areas. But people who have this stroke just before or after birth recover their language abilities in the mirror image spot on the right side, a study of teens ... Read more