For most of human history, our view of "close to the Sun" was defined by the orbit of Mercury, with its 88-day orbit and barren, baking surface. But from the moment we started discovering exoplanets, it became very clear that our own Solar System was anything but a guide to the rest of the galaxy. Planets with orbits only a few days long are strikingly common, with the proximity to the star creating things that seem bizarre from our perspective: metal vapor in the atmosphere, or atmospheres puffed out to ridiculously low densities.

Now, we can apparently add an additional oddity: overlapping magnetic fields. Researchers have found a star/planet combo that experiences periodic brightening, which they ascribe to the interactions between the magnetic fields of both bodies.

Looking for repetition

This is one of those cases where theory came before discovery. People had already proposed that a planet orbiting close to its host star could interact with it if its magnetic field were sufficiently strong. And, in a number of cases, researchers have found evidence that this is happening, with one case of an extremely young star emitting flares seemingly in response to the orbit of its innermost planet.

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WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

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Quantum computing news usually picks up near the end of the year, as companies try to provide evidence that they are hitting benchmarks on time. However, there have been interesting announcements as the summer starts this year, from incremental progress to attention-grabbing promises. As we did earlier this month, Ars has a rundown of some of the most significant announcements.

These include a promise of useful, error-corrected quantum computing as soon as 2028, details on an updated trapped ion processor, and a case in which claims of quantum supremacy have been cut back a bit thanks to advances in more traditional algorithms.

2028 is remarkably soon

Many people in the field expect that useful quantum computers are still about five to 10 years away. While there may be a few useful algorithms that can be run on existing error-prone hardware, almost all of the interesting problems that quantum computing can be applied to will require some form of error correction enabled by linking a small collection of hardware qubits together into what's called a logical qubit. Logical qubits include the redundant storage of information along with neighboring qubits that can be measured to determine when errors occur and how to fix them.

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