Feb 21st, 2026 - By uncovering previously hidden dynamics, the findings reshape how scientists think about testing and calibrating superconducting quantum processors. Qubits are the heart of quantum computers. They can change performance in fractions of a second. However, until now, scientists were unable to see this happening. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts ... [Read More]

Feb 21st, 2026 - (BPT) - By Jason Bittel, author of Grizzled: Love Letters to 50 of North America's Least Understood Animals North America is home to some huge and awe-inspiring creatures, from 800-pound alligators and surf-cracking great white sharks to rumbling herds of bison and mountain lions — the largest cat on Earth that is able to purr. But for those who can't get to a national park or seashore, there is still plenty of wonder waiting to be discovered on a backyard safari. Death-Dealing Hummingbirds The average hummingbird weighs about as much as a stick of chewing gum and lay eggs the size of ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes is a reddish, snowman-shaped asteroid in the Kuiper Belt and the most distant object explored by a spacecraft. You don't need to be an astrophysicist to assume the asteroid formed via a slow, gentle collision—but the detailed physics involved aren't that simple. Astronomers had long struggled to fully explain the exact physical mechanism behind the formation and survival of multi-lobed objects like Arrokoth, formally known as contact binaries. A new paper published yesterday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests contact binaries are born ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Hundreds of Buddhist monks rallied in the capital of Sri Lanka on Friday to protest alleged government disrespect of their religion and disregard for a long-standing tradition that they be consulted in matters of state. The protest passed without any reported violence. The constitution of the island nation of around 22 million people states that Buddhism is the state religion, though freedom of religion is protected by law. The charter also states that the government has an obligation to protect and foster Buddhism. More than 70% of the population is Buddhist ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - Archaeologists excavating a training dig near Cambridge have uncovered a grisly burial pit that may offer rare insight into violence and punishment during the turbulent Viking Age in England. Excavated by a team from the University of Cambridge at Wandlebury Country Park, the pit is a chilling puzzle. It holds four largely intact skeletons alongside a disturbing jumble of disarticulated bones: skulls, legs, and pelvises that appear to have been deliberately grouped or stacked. "Unique is definitely the word," Dr Oscar Aldred , an archaeologist at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, told BBC ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - The revised age may help make sense of 2-million-year-old stone tools elsewhere in China. Two skulls from Yunxian, in northern China, aren't ancestors of Denisovans after all; they're actually the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in eastern Asia. A recent study has re-dated the skulls to about 1.77 million years old, which makes them the oldest hominin remains found so far in East Asia. Their age means that Homo erectus (an extinct common ancestor of our species, Neanderthals, and Denisovans) must have spread across the continent much earlier and much faster than we'd previously given them ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - On March 7, 1949, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were stationed on a boat called the R/V Atlantis that was sailing off the coast of Bermuda. They lowered a primitive underwater recording setup into the ocean, and a boxy machine more regularly found in offices began etching the sounds of the sea—a chorus of eerie howls and rustling waves—into a thin plastic disk. That disk made its way to WHOI's archives in Massachusetts, where it sat, an overlooked relic of the earliest days of underwater acoustic recording. On supporting science journalism If ... [Read More]

Feb 20th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes In 1994, Russian archaeologists unearthed a tiny cemetery with a grave holding a mummified woman wearing a wig. More than 30 years later, researchers revisited the long-dead body—exposing what appears to be a primitive prosthetic in her jaw. In a statement , archaeologists at Novosibirsk State University in Russia announced that a recent analysis of a 2,500-year-old skull found that the woman likely received jaw surgery after a serious head injury. The researchers performed a CT scan of the skull, revealing signs of severe physical trauma and, more ... [Read More]