NASA's Voyager 1 will reach a distance of one light-day from Earth on 18 November at 5:16 a.m. Eastern time, about 16 billion miles or 26 billion kilometres out. No other human-made object has gone that far. A radio signal will need a full 24 hours to arrive, and a reply another 24. The probe, launched in 1977, crossed into interstellar space in 2012 and still returns data at 160 bits per second. Its team expects to switch off more instruments before the mission's 50th anniversary in 2027.
Physicists at CERN's LHCb experiment have reported the first evidence of a decay that theory says occurs about once in every 10 billion beauty particles, after a search spanning more than four decades. The process, in which a neutral particle containing a beauty quark decays into two muons, reached a statistical significance of 3.2 sigma, short of the five sigma needed to claim a discovery. The measured rate agrees with the Standard Model. Researchers say rarer decays are more sensitive to unknown heavy particles, opening a route to probing distances of a zeptometre.
Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile have identified a large, bright object beyond Pluto that may be a new dwarf planet. Designated 2026 ED138, the body is estimated at 600 to 1,500 kilometres across, large enough that its own gravity may have made it round. It was found in data collected between March and July 2026 by Matthew Holman of the Center for Astrophysics, and the discovery was announced by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. If confirmed, it would be among the largest trans-Neptunian objects known. Only Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake are currently recognised as dwarf planets.
New observations with the Very Large Array and the ALMA telescope show that Betelgeuse's outer atmosphere has largely returned to normal after the Great Dimming of late 2019 and early 2020, when the red supergiant faded to its faintest level in more than a century. The radio maps also show the star's disc changing shape in step with the orbit of Siwarha, a small companion that passes through the star's extended atmosphere about twice the stellar radius from its centre. The work, led by Lynn Matthews and published in the Astronomical Journal, offers the first spatially resolved look at how a close companion disturbs a supergiant's gas.
An international study led by Mass General Brigham found that a blood test for phosphorylated tau 217 predicted Alzheimer's-related cognitive decline years before symptoms appeared. Among 2,684 older adults with normal cognition at enrolment, those with very high p-tau217 levels had a 38% chance of impairment within five years and a 78% estimated chance within ten, though longer-term data were thinner. The marker added information beyond amyloid PET scans and the APOE4 gene. Results were presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference and published in JAMA.
Physicists at Northwestern University have held a single positron, the antimatter twin of the electron, in a cryogenic Penning trap for months and controlled its quantum state one jump at a time. The team calls the device a one-positron quantum cyclotron. Loading takes eight to eleven hours, and the particle then sits at about 0.3 kelvin in a near-perfect vacuum so that it never touches ordinary matter and annihilates. Results appeared in Physical Review Letters on 21 October. The goal is a precise measurement of the positron's magnetic moment for comparison with the electron, a test of a symmetry called CPT.
Archaeologists say they have found the world's oldest known shipwreck off the coast of Turkey, dating to the Early Bronze Age and up to 4,700 years old. Divers working with suction equipment uncovered a large ceramic storage jar still sitting at the site, along with the remains of the vessel. If the dating holds, the wreck pushes evidence of organised sea trade back by centuries. Researchers say the find will help map how copper, tin and other goods moved around the eastern Mediterranean long before written records.
A single fossil tooth found in northern Israel has let researchers reconstruct a lush landscape from nearly 700,000 years ago, when straight-tusked elephants and early humans shared the Jordan Rift Valley. The molar and tusk fragments came from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, south of the Hula Valley, together with basalt handaxes and cleavers of the Acheulian stone-tool tradition. The animal was Palaeoloxodon antiquus, one of the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene. The study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews and led by Hannah Farrell of Haifa University, describes forests, rivers and wetlands, and suggests that reliable water and vegetation shaped how early humans moved between continents.
A Southwest Research Institute team used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on three dates around its closest approach to the sun. The spectra show a strong water-ice band near 3 microns and gas emission from water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, but the weaker 1.5 and 2.0 micron ice bands are faint or missing. The team says the ice sits in micron-scale aggregates heavily mixed with dust. That signature matches frozen bodies beyond Neptune, suggesting planet-building ice forms in a similar way around other stars.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope found that water ice in the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is bound up with dark rocky material in grains smaller than a few micrometres. The spectrum lacks the weaker ice features usually seen in comets born around the Sun, and instead resembles icy worlds beyond Neptune. The team observed the comet three times with the NIRSpec instrument between August 2025 and April 2026, spanning its closest approach to the Sun. They suggest the building blocks of planets around different stars may share a range of ice grain properties, with 3I/ATLAS sitting at the dust-rich end of that range.