A supercomputer is an extraordinarily powerful computer designed to perform calculations and process information thousands or even millions of times faster than a regular computer. While your laptop might take hours to analyze complex weather patterns or days to simulate how a new medicine might work in the human body, a supercomputer can do these tasks in minutes.

These machines are massive, often filling entire rooms and requiring special cooling systems because they generate so much heat from working so hard. Scientists use supercomputers to predict hurricanes, study climate change, design new airplanes, understand how proteins fold in our cells, and even simulate nuclear reactions. Engineers use them to test car crashes virtually instead of destroying real vehicles. Astronomers use them to model how galaxies formed billions of years ago.

A supercomputer achieves its incredible speed by using thousands of processors working together simultaneously, like having a thousand students each solving one part of an enormous math problem at the same time instead of one student solving it alone. The fastest supercomputers can perform quintillions of calculations per second (that's 1 followed by 18 zeros).

Countries compete to build the world's fastest supercomputer because these machines help solve problems that affect millions of people, from developing new technologies to understanding diseases. What might take a regular computer a thousand years to calculate, a supercomputer can finish before lunch.