Scientists have captured an exceptionally rare, high-resolution view of an active region that produced two powerful X-class solar flares—an achievement rarely possible from Earth. Using the GREGOR solar telescope in Tenerife, researchers recorded the explosive activity of the sun’s most energetic sunspot group of 2025, revealing twisted magnetic structures and the early stages of flare ignition with unprecedented detail. The flares triggered fast coronal mass ejections that lit up Earth’s skies with vivid auroras in the nights that followed.

Challenges of observing solar flares
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Quantum computers are computing systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects. These computers rely on qubits (i.e., the quantum equivalent of bits), which can store information in a mixture of states, as opposed to binary states (0 or 1).

While quantum computers could tackle some computational and optimization problems faster and more effectively than classical computers, they are also inherently more prone to errors. This is because qubits can be easily disturbed by disturbances from their surrounding environment, also referred to as noise.

Over the past decades, quantum engineers and physicists have been trying to develop approaches to correct noise-related errors, also known as quantum error correction (QEC) techniques...

A University of Southampton study has revealed an intriguing new clue in the mystery of what triggers periods of very intense, brightly colored activity during displays of both the southern and northern lights.

Known as a “magnetospheric substorm,” this awe-inspiring phenomenon, which blankets the night sky in green and purple, is almost always preceded by what space scientists call “auroral beads”—a necklace-like wave of multiple luminous points of light which eventually evolve into the storm.

Southampton scientists have now shown there is a link between these auroral beads and the intensity of low frequency radio waves above the aurora in Earth’s magnetosphere—a vast area around our planet that is dominated...

A study conducted at Harvard University identified a group of metabolites that travel from the intestine to the liver and then to the heart, where they are pumped throughout the body. These metabolites play an important role in controlling metabolic pathways in the liver and insulin sensitivity. This discovery may contribute to future treatments for obesity and type 2 diabetes. The results were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

“The hepatic portal vein drains much of the blood from the intestine to the liver...