Scientists have developed a faster way to read information out of qubits, the basic building blocks of a quantum computer. The potential computing revolution that quantum computers have long promised is based on their weird property called superposition. Namely, qubits can take both logical states 0 and 1 simultaneously, on top of any value in between. By mastering superpositions of the whole quantum memory, quantum computers can quickly solve problems that would require too much computing time from regular computers working with simply 0s and 1s.

However, qubits are sensitive, and currently hold quantum information for less than a millisecond ...

Towards the end of their lives some 95% of stars evolve into red giants which lose their mass via a “stellar wind.” Eventually they end up as planetary nebulae, ionized gas with a central hot star, a white dwarf. Researchers form 14 European scientific institutions, among them the IAC, have detected the existence of a binary interaction which had not been noticed by the scientific community...

Transplanting marrow from young lab mice to old mice preserves memory and learning skills. The findings support an emerging model that attributes cognitive decline, in part, to aging of blood cells, which are produced in bone marrow.

“While prior studies have shown that introducing blood from young mice can reverse cognitive decline in old mice, it is not well understood how this happens,” said Helen Goodridge, Ph...

A volunteer working with the NASA-led Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has found the oldest and coldest known white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a Sun-like star that has died – ringed by dust and debris. Astronomers suspect this could be the first known white dwarf with multiple dust rings.

The star, LSPM J0207+3331 or J0207 for short, is forcing researchers to reconsider models of planetary syst...