Plus: Stopping asteroids from hitting Earth, solving climate change with fertilizer and building strength by eating grapes.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed.

Microsoft’s new “topological qubit” is not based on a solid, liquid or gas. It is another phase of matter that many experts did not think was possible.