The team behind the new machine plans to integrate it into an existing shared supercomputing facility to create a quantum-GPU hybrid computing center.

Quantum computers: Powerful but impractical

Unlike traditional, or "classical," computers, quantum computers operate according to the strange laws of quantum physics. In quantum systems, qubits — in the form of superconducting circuits, trapped ions or photons (among other modalities) — represent the fundamental building blocks of quantum information. These can exist as a 1, 0, or a "superposition" of both states at once.

However, qubits are notoriously fragile. Even minor environmental interference can destabilize or destroy the information they contain, making accuracy an ongoing challenge in the world of quantum computing. The error rate in qubits is thought to be roughly 1 in 1,000, compared with around 1 per billion or even 1 per trillion operations in classical computing bits.

It's why a huge amount of research is dedicated to quantum error correction. This field seeks to alleviate this inherent unreliability by building redundancies into the way information is encoded in qubits so that small errors don't scrap entire computations.

The broad aim is to create higher-quality qubits and then scale up the number of qubits in a system so quantum computers can finally compete with the world's fastest supercomputers.

This thorny issue, combined with quantum systems' need for elaborate cooling systems to keep them operational, makes them impractical outside of finely tuned lab environments.

A more reliable quantum system?

Shunkai, named after 17th-century Japanese astronomer Harumi Shibukawa, shirks at least some of those constraints. Rather than using supercooled circuitry, Japan's new system incorporates neutral atoms as qubits, captured and suspended using "optical tweezers."

These tightly focused laser beams capture atoms and arrange them inside a vacuum chamber, while microwaves or laser light are used to manipulate the atoms' quantum states and perform calculations. The results are then read by observing the fluorescence from each individual atom with a camera.

Importantly, Shunkai's use of neutral atoms as qubits instead of superconducting circuits means it can operate at room temperature. Because the arrangement of qubits in neutral-atom systems can be fine-tuned during calculations, researchers can also adjust which qubits interact with each other and create entanglement — a bizarre state of information sharing between particles over time and space — between different pairs.

This could help overcome two of the biggest obstacles facing practical quantum systems: scaling machines to large numbers of qubits, and correcting the errors that inevitably creep into quantum calculations.

To that end, Shunkai will be partially opened to external researchers to develop applications and test and improve the system's quantum error correction capabilities, representatives from Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences said in the statement.

The quantum system will initially operate with around 50 qubits before expanding to roughly 500. The longer-term goal is considerably more ambitious: By March 2031, the team aims to scale Shunkai into a "large-scale, high-performance neutral-atom fault-tolerant quantum computer, with 10,000 physical qubits and quantum error detection and correction capabilities." Doing so would place it comfortably above the 6,100-qubit, neutral atom array demonstrated by Caltech researchers in October 2025.

"Neutral atom-based quantum computers have recently been rapidly attracting attention around the world as a new modality that could exceed the limits of the superconducting modality," Ohmori said. "I think it is extremely significant that now we have developed Japan's first full-stack quantum computer in this cutting-edge modality and started its operation."

Can you match these ancient devices to their pictures? Find out with our computing quiz!

'> Japan switches on its first full-stack room-temperature quantum computer — and scientists plan to scale it up to 10,000 qubits

A Pacific cyclone dubbed Polo exploded from a tropical storm into a powerful Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours on Tuesday (Sept. 22), with winds reaching speeds of 180 mph (290 km/h). The storm, drifting off the southwest coast of Mexico, was downgraded to a Category 4 storm on Wednesday (Sept. 23) but intensified back to Category 5 as of Thursday (Sept. 24) morning, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

As Polo moves northwest, it is expected to drive torrential rainfall on parts of Mexico's southwest coast, with up to 8 inches (20 centimetres) in some areas. Although the storm is not predicted to make direct landfall, the NHC has warned that heavy rain may produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, as well as extremely hazardous ocean conditions.

Polo is one of the strongest hurricanes on record in the Eastern Pacific, second only to Hurricane Patricia in 2015, according to Accuweather. But what causes a hurricane like Polo to intensify so rapidly? And what role has the "super" El Niño played in the storm's development?

How El Niño contributed

"Rapid intensification of tropical cyclones is something we see several times per year across the globe," Julian Heming, an environmental scientist and researcher at the U.K.'s Met Office, told Live Science in an email. "The main requirements are high sea temperatures, low wind shear and upper air conditions which allow air to escape quickly from the top of the hurricane."

Hurricane Polo intensified rapidly as it moved over exceptionally warm Pacific waters associated with an extremely strong "super'" El Niño that has taken hold off the Pacific since June.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern that develops in the tropical Pacific Ocean, typically every two to seven years. It begins when waters in the eastern tropical Pacific become unusually warm. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration identifies El Niño conditions when these waters are at least 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) above average, alongside changes in winds, surface pressure and rainfall that are consistent with the phenomenon.

El Niño events are then classified by strength, ranging from weak to very strong. Although "super El Niño" is not a scientific term, it refers to a very strong El Niño, where the warming of sea surface temperatures is higher than 2C above normal.

The unusually warm ocean supplied Hurricane Polo with abundant heat and moisture, while very moist air and weak winds higher in the atmosphere allowed thunderstorms to organize and strengthen without being disrupted, Hemming said.

Polo also developed a compact, well-defined core, which concentrated the storm's energy into a relatively small area and enabled it to intensify extremely quickly. Together, these conditions created an efficient atmospheric "heat engine" that allowed Polo to strengthen at an exceptional rate.

"Polo's rapid and sudden growth is testament to the dominance of this year's so-called super El Niño, which set a record on Monday as the most extreme on record and has amplified a number of extreme weather events globally," Heming said.

The latest data from the World Meteorological Organization suggests that the current El Niño could be the strongest on record and last until at least February 2027. This will lead to more extreme weather, pushing some areas into drought while others experience stronger storms, rainfall and flooding.

If the system moves northward, Southern California could see intense rainfall and coastal regions may experience hazardous rip currents and large swells. As of Thursday morning, the NHC reports the core of the storm is expected to stay offshore and move towards the northwest. However, "There is currently a lot of uncertainty in the long term as to whether Polo will move further out to sea or turn north-eastwards towards Mexico," Heming said.

'> Hurricane Polo exploded in intensity in just 24 hours. Is the 'super' El Niño to blame? Sonja Vernes, a professor and head of the Neurogenetics of Vocal Communication Research Group at the University of St Andrews in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. "Get the tree right, and everything else about bat evolution starts to fall into place."

The study included members of all 21 recognized bat families, as well as some of the most remarkable bat species known on Earth. For example, the dataset contained the bumblebee bat (Craseonycteris thonglongyai, also called the Kitti's hog-nosed bat), which, at about 1 inch, or 2.5 centimeters, long, is thought to be the smallest mammal on Earth; and the Madagascar's sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita), which has suction cups on its wrists and ankles to help it cling to smooth surfaces.

The research team — which comprised 137 scientists affiliated with Bat1K, an international project to map the genomes of all living bat species — used advanced DNA sequencing and computational techniques to identify individual genes and redraw the bat family tree.

"The value we bring is in innovative methods and unparalleled data that together yield an evolutionary tree that includes all these key fossils," study co-author Liliana Dávalos, a professor of phylogenetics and tropical deforestation at Stony Brook University in New York, told Live Science in an email.

Among other discoveries, the researchers found that a 50 million-year-old fossil from southern France of the extinct species Vielasia sigei, which shows signs of advanced echolocation, sits within the oldest branch of the bat family tree, indicating that echolocation predates the diversification of modern bats. This finding, together with the result that true flight appeared early in bats, helps to explain why this lineage has been so successful and evolved into more than 1,500 species worldwide today, according to the study.

After emerging in Europe, bats quickly dispersed into Africa, establishing a Europe-Africa hub from which they expanded into Asia, the Americas and Australia, the results suggest. Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight, meaning they flap their wings and don't simply glide or parachute. Throughout their evolution, they have acquired longer lifespans than other mammals of similar body size, surviving eight to 10 times longer than might be expected and showing few signs of aging and cancer, according to the study.

"Some bat species live remarkably long lives for their size, and can shrug off diseases that would make us seriously ill," Vernes said. "Until now, we didn't have a solid enough foundation to properly understand how bats evolved their most extraordinary traits, from flight and echolocation to their remarkable lifespans and resistance to disease. Now we do."

The genomic resource built for the study lays the foundation for future research into bats' longevity and disease resistance, with potential benefits for humans, Vernes said. "If we can understand how they do this at the genetic level, it could eventually help us design bat-inspired approaches to improve human health," she said.

The findings could also aid bat conservation through genomic methods. Protecting bats is important because they help to maintain healthy ecosystems by pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and consuming huge numbers of insect pests, Vernes said. There is also more work to be done to identify the ancestor of all living bats, whose genome the researchers took a first stab reconstructing.

"For me, this isn't the end of the story," Vernes said; "it's just the first chapter."

'> Earth's first bats didn't come from where we thought, landmark genetic study reveals Julius Caesar tried to conquer in 52 B.C. The ancient walls show evidence of a violent fire, seemingly confirming the claim that the Celtic group who lived there, known as the Gauls, burned down their own town so that it wouldn't fall into Caesar's hands.

"The wall's architecture, with its large blocks and interlocking beam system, immediately led us to believe it was a wall of Gallic tradition," Dorothée Chaoui-Derieux, chief curator of heritage at the Île-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in a translated statement. Traces of fire and first century B.C. artifacts further suggested the archaeologists had finally found material evidence of Lutetia, a Celtic settlement mentioned in Caesar's Gallic Wars.

In the first century B.C., Lutetia was a Celtic pre-Roman settlement, known as an "oppidum", in what is now Paris. Lutetia was the capital city of the Parisii tribe, who lived along the River Seine. As part of the Gallic Wars, which ran from 58 to 50 B.C., Julius Caesar and his troops fought the Battle of Lutetia in 52 B.C. The Romans won a decisive victory, but the Gauls burned Lutetia and cut the bridges so that Caesar could not take the town. As a result, the ancient fort had never been found.

But in February, a team of archaeologists began excavating in the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu, which is Paris's oldest working hospital. On the small Île-de-la-Cité island in the middle of the Seine, close to Notre-Dame, the archaeologists discovered a 65-foot (20-meters) stone and timber wall typical of Celtic fortifications. Charred facing, burnt seeds and a burned wooden building discovered nearby suggested the site had been destroyed by a fire.

"The initial results of carbon-14 dating of the wooden elements suggest a date range between 200 and 10 B.C. Furthermore, a Gallic spearhead was found at the foot of the wall," Chaoui-Derieux said.

These new discoveries provide solid archaeological evidence that Lutetia was indeed centered on the island in the Seine and that its occupants burned it down, as Caesar noted in his Gallic Wars more than two millennia ago.

"This discovery fills an archaeological gap. For centuries, the location of Lutetia has been debated," Stéphane Deschamps, regional curator of archaeology at Île-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in the statement. "Today, with this wall and its context, we may hold the key to the mystery."

But the remains of the wall and other artifacts are extremely fragile because of their exposure to fire, according to the statement. The wall cannot be fully preserved, so archaeologists will create a replica using 3D photogrammetry to ensure the discovery is accessible to everyone.

See how much you know about the Celts with our Celtic quiz!

'> Missing Celtic fort annihilated by Julius Caesar finally found under Paris hospital . But astrophysicists are still very excited about this discovery.

"Astronomers have been looking for radio signals from exoplanets for some time," Suzanne Aigrain, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "There have been tentative, indirect detections before, but this is the first truly convincing direct detection, and it hopefully paves the way for many more."

Artificial radio signals are a key focus in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which involves scanning the cosmos for signs of alien life. Such "technosignatures" could suggest advanced technologies built by intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. However, radio signals can be emitted by natural sources, too.

"There are two natural processes that can produce radio emission in exoplanets," Aigrain said. "One is magnetic reconnection, when the planet orbits really close to the star and its magnetic field interacts directly with that of the star. The other is aurorae (like those we have on Earth and on other solar system planets like Saturn, but much stronger), when energetic charged particles streaming from the star interact with the upper atmosphere of the planet."

"This second effect is what the authors of the paper believe they have detected," Aigrain added.

In the study, a research group led by Kevin Ortiz Ceballos, a graduate student at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, turned MeerKAT, a radio telescope array in South Africa, toward a massive gas giant called Beta Pictoris b, an exoplanet that's 64 light-years from Earth and has a mass roughly 10 times that of Jupiter, according to NASA. They picked up rapid, repeating bursts of radio signals coming from the planet.

At first, it wasn't clear whether the signal was coming from the planet or the star it orbits (named simply Beta Pictoris). However, after comparing the radio images of both the planet and the star with the positions of distant background quasars (bright, active galaxies that act as fixed reference points), the team confirmed that the radio bursts were indeed emanating from the gas giant.

"No radio detection has previously been unambiguously localized to an extrasolar planet rather than its host star," they wrote in the study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet.

Aigrain emphasized that "this is definitely not aliens!" The signals are consistent with what would be expected from auroras, and this finding offers insight into the planet itself. From these measurements, the team calculated the planet's magnetic-field strength, which they estimated to be roughly 1,250 gauss. For comparison, Jupiter's magnetic-field strength is only about 4.3 gauss and Earth's is a measly 0.5 gauss, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

Magnetic-field measurements like these are important because we don't fully understand how planets' magnetospheres are generated and what controls how strong they are, Aigrain said. The ability to measure a planet's magnetic field could also help in our search for potentially habitable exoplanets.

"[A] planet's magnetic field shields its atmosphere from the 'wind' of charged particles from [its] star, which might otherwise carry material away from the atmosphere," Aigrain said. "On Earth, for example, the magnetic field has played a key role in retaining the atmosphere and shielding life on the planet from harmful high-energy radiation.

"The planet in this paper is quite massive and has a thick atmosphere, so even without a strong magnetic field it could probably hold on to its atmosphere, and it is not expected to host life," Aigrain added. "But in the future we might be able to make similar measurements for smaller planets, for which this shielding effect would be more important."

MeerKAT is a pathfinder instrument for a new large telescope called the Square Kilometre Array, which is expected to come online in the next few years. This observatory "will be significantly more powerful," Aigrain said, "so there will be many more systems where we can look for this type of signal."

'> Astronomers detected radio signals coming from an exoplanet for the first time. Spoiler alert: It's not aliens.