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.
Physicists at Northwestern University have trapped a single positron, the antimatter twin of the electron, and held it for months while reading its quantum states one jump at a time. The work, published in Physical Review Letters on 21 October, is the first one-positron quantum cyclotron. Gerald Gabrielse led the team. Loading one particle into the trap takes eight to eleven hours; a dilution refrigerator cools it to about 300 millikelvin inside a sealed vacuum. The next step is a precise measurement of the positron's magnetic moment, which can be compared with the electron's as a test of CPT symmetry. No difference between matter and antimatter has been found so far.
A study of 485,934 adults in China, followed for a median of about nine years, found that people who drank tea regularly had an 11% lower risk of heart and blood vessel disease than those who did not. During follow-up, 14,863 participants developed cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, pulmonary heart or peripheral artery disease. The benefit appeared strongest among weekly drinkers who had about six to eight cups a day. Black tea showed more consistent links than green tea. The authors and outside experts stress the study is observational and cannot prove that tea protects the heart. Tea of moderate strength was linked to the lowest risk in the analysis.
Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School have drawn the most complete picture yet of the average human genome, using whole-genome sequences from nearly 900,000 adults in UK Biobank and the US All of Us programme. A typical person differs from the reference sequence at 4.3 to 5.3 million sites, but only about 1.5 percent of those variants are rare. The average genome carries roughly 229 variants predicted to disrupt gene function and one to three classified as pathogenic or likely pathogenic, mostly as healthy carriers of recessive conditions. The team also estimated about 61 new mutations at birth, most inherited from the father.