It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news.
This week in science news IBM unveiled a massive 1,000 qubit quantum chip, we discovered a lost world of lagoons in the Atacama desert, and met a dolphin with an unusual flipper.
Quantum computing is poised to revolutionize our world as it matures. Its potential is immense — a quantum computer might complete, in just four minutes, what a traditional supercomputer would take 10,000 years to achieve. The key lies in developing the necessary chips. This week, IBM announced a significant advance, a 1,000-qubit quantum chip, the second largest ever created. Surprisingly though, IBM's focus isn't on this achievement. Instead, they're targeting a chip 10 times smaller — but why?
To space, where an "almost unbelievable" and ultra-rare gap in the sun’s ever-blowing solar wind briefly blew up Mars' atmosphere. It happened last year, but scientists now think it could happen to Earth too. However, we don't have to go that far back in time for the sun to be causing havoc on Earth — just this week a monster X-class flare, the most powerful solar eruption since 2017, exploded from the sun, triggering radio blackouts on Earth and unleashing a CME that could also hit our planet in the next few days.
Breathtaking new stills and footage capture the beauty and acrobatic skills of tens of thousands of starlings as they swarm and sweep across skies in Europe. The mesmerizing shots were taken by Danish photographer Søren Solkær, who has followed the majestic birds for six years across Europe.
Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) flock to form what are known as murmurations, named after the noise their thousands of flapping wings make during these events. Starling murmurations can contain more than a million birds, all swooping in unison to create evocative shapes in the sky.
In his ninth photographic monograph, titled "Starling" (Edition Circle, 2023), Solkær showcases this "incredible ballet" in a series of images taken during and after sunsets in Europe.
In the book excerpt from "Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms", ecologist Alison Pouliot reveals why death by parasite keeps life in the forest thriving.
Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in the U.K., has spent her life treating psychosomatic illnesses, or disorders in which people suffer from debilitating physical symptoms that cannot be explained by a physical examination or medical investigation.
Medicine has a long and ignominious history with conditions for which they cannot find a physical cause, often dismissing them with sexist terms such as "hysteria." But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these very real illnesses manifest.
"I think it's not an awareness problem; it's a problem with a lot of old fashioned hang-ups."
Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan
While many people with these conditions are told "it's all in your head," or dismissed as hypochondriacs, that's problematic, says O'Sullivan. As part of her work, she aims to reduce the stigma and clear up misunderstandings about psychosomatic illness.
Live Science talked to O'Sullivan about why these conditions are so poorly understood, how they're diagnosed, and why treatments for them so often fail.
Alexander McNamara is the Editor-in-Chief at Live Science, and has more than 15 years’ experience in publishing at digital titles. In 2024 he was shortlisted for Editor of the Year at the Association of British Science Writers awards for his work at Live Science. He has previously worked at New Scientist and BBC Science Focus.
