News

A ship is lost at sea. Passengers huddle in lifeboats, awaiting rescue. Thankfully, help is on the way. Emergency beacons housed aboard the lifeboats have transmitted location data to orbiting satellites, which relayed the information to ground stations. Equipped with this data, search and rescue professionals at Mission Control Centers alerted first responders to the location of the stranded passengers.

Quantum computers are heralded as promising tools for performing computations that are beyond the reach of supercomputers and every other technology currently at our disposal. But we are in the early days of quantum computing, and there are still basic questions left to answer: How do you know that a clever programmer won’t develop a revolutionary method that allows traditional computers to run circles around the upstart quantum newcomers? And if a quantum computer has solved a problem that no other available technology can, how can you be sure that it’s even right?

A new study by University of Maryland astronomers shows that comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), the largest comet ever discovered, was active long before previously thought, meaning the ice within it is vaporizing and forming an envelope of dust and vapor known as a coma. Only one active comet has been observed farther from the sun, and it was much smaller than comet BB.