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John Preskill has been guiding the growing quantum computing industry for decades, and now he has set a new challenge – to build a device capable of a million quantum operations per second, or a megaquop

Hundreds of quantum computing firms around the world are racing to commercialise these once-exotic devices, but the jury is still out on who is going to pull ahead and produce a machine that actually does something useful

With an investment of AU$1 billion, PsiQuantum is planning to build a photonic quantum computer with a million qubits, far larger than any in existence today - and the firm says it will be ready in just two years

Not everyone responds to statins, the standard treatment for people at risk of cardiovascular disease, so an alternative based on genetically engineered immune cells could help prevent arteries from becoming blocked with plaque

Stripping carbon dioxide out of the ocean could be much more efficient than capturing it from the air. Researchers are hoping to show its potential at a pilot plant in Weymouth

When the experimental XB-1 aircraft achieved supersonic speeds on a test flight, it did not create a disruptive sonic boom – thanks to a physics phenomenon called the Mach cutoff

If asteroid 2024 YR4 does smash down on the lunar surface, the explosion might be visible from Earth and would leave a new crater on the near side of the moon

Although the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement are based on the long-term average temperature, one year of high temperatures might be a sign that the 1.5°C threshold has already been reached

Seismic waves suggest the planet's solid inner core is being pulled out of shape – and it has undergone these changes over just a few decades

Unexpected epochs of stillness that punctuate the cosmic timeline could offer a natural explanation for dark matter and many other unsolved astronomical mysteries

A rocky planet less than half the mass of Earth seems to have an atmosphere made almost entirely of sulphur dioxide – this could be due to a huge amount of volcanic activity

There are many theories about how dynamics in the early solar system led to the cosmic neighbourhood we now inhabit, but beyond computer simulations, direct evidence to support them is hard to come by – that's where meteorites come in

Clothes and fishing nets that are made of nylon often end up in landfill or dumped in oceans, but a new way to break down the plastic could improve recycling

Albert Einstein himself thought that the eponymous Einstein ring would be impossible to observe, but the Euclid telescope has picked one up just 600 million light years from Earth

The Quipu superstructure is enormous, spanning 1.4 billion light years – and it could violate one of our fundamental assumptions about the universe

Pig gelatin can be used to make a robotic arm that safely biodegrades, rather than adding to landfill

An experiment in which people were asked to choose random numbers or boxes on a grid, then do the same a year later, has revealed that we each have our own unique approach to randomness - and we're generally very bad at it

Turning old fighter jets into a fine powder and using that to 3D print new components is a more sustainable way to build the RAF's next-generation aircraft – and it avoids sourcing materials from Russia

Elon Musk's DOGE task force is reportedly being given unchecked access to the computers that run the US government, and experts warn that it risks bringing down systems and leaking sensitive data