Researchers have developed a holographic data storage approach that stores and retrieves information in three dimensions by combining three properties of light—amplitude, phase and polarization. By allowing more data to be stored in the same space, the new approach could help advance efforts to meet the growing global demand for data storage.

Holographic data storage uses laser light to store digital information inside a material...

Mars may look like a frozen desert today, but new evidence suggests its watery past didn’t simply fade away quietly—it may have been blasted into space by powerful dust storms. Scientists have discovered that even relatively small, localized storms can hurl water vapor high into the atmosphere, where it breaks apart and escapes.

Today, Mars is known as a cold, dry desert, but its surface tells a very different story...

Most diabetes patients must carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin multiple times per day, to help keep their blood sugar from getting too high. As a possible alternative to those injections, MIT researchers are developing an implantable device that contains insulin-producing cells. The device encapsulates the cells, protecting them from immune rejection, and it also carries an onboard oxygen generator to keep the cells healthy.

This device, the researchers hope, could offer a way to achieve long-term control of type 1 diabetes...

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some advanced tasks. These systems rely on qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information, that become linked via an effect known as quantum entanglement and share a unified quantum state.

Qubits are known to be highly sensitive to slight changes or disturbances in their surrounding environment, also referred to as noise. Noise can prompt them to lose quantum information via a process called decoherence, which in turn leads to errors.

In recent years, quantum scientists and engineers have introduced various approaches aimed at mitigating or correcting quantum errors, with the goal of re...