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Science

Discoveries that enlarge what is possible — from reefs and labs to classrooms and night skies.

14 stories

Scanning electron micrograph of a single human T lymphocyte, or T cell, from the immune system of a healthy donor, its surface covered in small projections. Illustrative image of a T cell, not from the invika trial. Image: NIAID/NIH, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Healthy_Human_T_Cell.jpg

An Experimental Precision T-Cell Drug Held Off Treatment-Resistant Cancers in an Early Trial, NIH Reports

In an early phase 1/2 trial led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Mass General Brigham and Memorial Sloan Kettering, an experimental drug called invika kept cancer from progressing in 16 of 27 patients treated at its optimal dose, most of whom had tumors that resisted standard immunotherapy. Four saw their tumors shrink by more than 30 percent. The drug is not approved, and the trial is continuing.

Just News Desk · 26 October 2026 · 4 min read

David Baker, director of the Institute for Protein Design, speaks on the TED2019 stage in front of a slide reading Five Grand Challenges, Universal Vaccines, with a rendering of a designed protein nanoparticle, April 2019. Illustrative image, not from the RFD4-Proteina announcement. Photo: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Audacious_Philanthropy_Congrats_to_David_Baker_and_his_Institute_for_Protein_Design.jpg

Science

Seattle Scientists and NVIDIA Release an Open AI Model That Designs New Proteins Faster

The UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design and NVIDIA have released RFD4-Proteina, an open-source generative model that, across computational benchmarks, achieved fivefold to tenfold higher design success rates while generating protein candidates five to 10 times faster than previous models.

Just News Desk · 23 October 2026

Phobos, the larger moon of Mars, in enhanced color, imaged by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on 23 March 2008. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phobos_colour_2008.jpg

Science

Japan Launches MMX, a Mission to Bring Home the First Samples From a Moon of Mars

JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft lifted off on an H3 rocket from Tanegashima and is healthy on its way to Mars, where it is to land twice on Phobos and return at least 10 grams of the moon's surface to Earth in 2031.

Just News Desk · 21 October 2026

Members of MIT's CERBERUZ team hold oversized checks for $500,000 and $275,000 in front of NASA and Centennial Challenges backdrops after winning the LunaRecycle Challenge, Tuscaloosa, Ala., Aug. 28, 2026. Photo: NASA/Savannah Bullard. Source page: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/prizes-challenges-crowdsourcing-program/centennial-challenges/nasa-awards-first-prize-in-phase-2-of-agencys-lunarecycle-challenge/

Science

MIT Students Win NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge With a Machine That Turns Moon-Base Trash Into Parts

An MIT student team called CERBERUZ took first prize in both the prototype and digital twin tracks of NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, earning $775,000 in final-round awards for a system that grinds mixed packaging waste into composite feedstock for tools and spare parts on a future lunar outpost.

Just News Desk · 21 October 2026

Kekova Island and the waters of Kekova Sound seen from the Simena fortress above Kaleköy village, Antalya province, Turkey, 2019. Illustrative view of the area; this is not the wreck site. Photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kekova_island_and_Kalekoey_village.jpg

Culture

Archaeologists Off Turkey Recover the Cargo of What Is Believed to Be the Oldest Known Shipwreck

Divers working off Kekova Island on Turkey's Mediterranean coast have raised Early Bronze Age storage jars from a trading vessel that sank an estimated 4,400 to 4,700 years ago, a find Akdeniz University says is the world's oldest known shipwreck. Clay analysis points to workshops in the Jordan Valley, and the dating, based on the style of the pottery, is preliminary and not yet published.

Just News Desk · 20 October 2026

A NIST ion-trap apparatus in which two beryllium ions are held about 40 micrometers apart above a square gold chip inside a copper enclosure, 2011. Illustrative; not Quantinuum hardware. Photo: Y. Colombe/National Institute of Standards and Technology, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quantum_Computing;_Ion_Trapping_(5941055642).jpg

Technology

Quantinuum Reports a Record in Quantum Error Correction on Its Helios Computer

Quantinuum says its Helios trapped-ion quantum computer reached a logical fidelity of 99.9995 percent, about five uncorrectable errors per million operations, using color codes of increasing size. The company-reported result is described in a preprint that has not been peer reviewed.

Just News Desk · 20 October 2026

Artist's impression of a white dwarf star accreting rocky debris left behind by its surviving planetary system, released with Hubble observations in 2013. This is an illustration of a different white dwarf, not WD J1330+6435. Illustration: NASA, ESA, STScI and G. Bacon (STScI), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artist%E2%80%99s_impression_of_debris_around_a_white_dwarf_star.jpg

Science

Astronomers Find the First Known Green Star, a Stellar Remnant Tinted by the Debris of Its Own Planets

University of Warwick astronomers report that the white dwarf WD J1330+6435, its dense atmosphere enriched with sodium, lithium and calcium from accreted rocky material, would appear chartreuse green to the human eye, which they describe as the first genuinely green star known. The study, in RAS Techniques and Instruments, finds that about one in thirty white dwarfs would shine in an unusual colour, though the typical white dwarf really is white.

Just News Desk · 20 October 2026

Cauliflower coral (Pocillopora damicornis) on a reef at Anilao, Philippines, 25 August 2023. Photo: Diego Delso, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_coliflor_(Pocillopora_damicornis),_Anilao,_Filipinas,_2023-08-25,_DD_123.jpg

Science

Bleached Corals Recover in Weeks After Touching a Healthy Clone, Stanford Scientists Report

In a laboratory study published in Science Advances, Stanford researchers found that bleached coral fragments fully recovered within weeks after brief contact with genetically identical healthy fragments, which fused tissue with them and passed along symbiotic algae. The team cautions the approach is not yet feasible at reef scale.

Just News Desk · 19 October 2026

Henri B. Kagan seated at a microphone at an organic chemistry meeting at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, 2013. Photo: École polytechnique, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henri_Kagan.jpg

Science

Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai Share the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Showing How Homochirality Can Emerge

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud and Kenso Soai of Tokyo University of Science for discovering non-linear effects and autocatalysis that let chemical reactions produce only one of two mirror-image molecules, a feat decisive for pharmaceutical design.

Just News Desk · 16 October 2026

Karl Deisseroth, seated, in a black-and-white portrait, 20 September 2022. Photo: Christopher Michel, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karl_Deisseroth_by_Christopher_Michel_01.jpg

Science

Three Scientists Share the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine for Teaching Brain Cells to Answer to Light

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for the discovery of light-gated ion channels in a single-celled alga and their transformation into optogenetics, a method for switching nerve cells on and off with light.

Just News Desk · 14 October 2026

The IceCube Laboratory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station beneath the Milky Way and auroras at twilight, 25 August 2020. Photo: John Hardin, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_ICL_at_Dawn.jpg

Science

Francis Halzen Wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for Turning Antarctic Ice Into a Neutrino Telescope

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics to Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his decisive role in building the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from beyond the solar system.

Just News Desk · 14 October 2026

Face of a captive Leopardus tilcayo, the newly named tilcayo tiger cat, at La Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary in Bolivia's Yungas. Photo: Alessandro Verniani, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tilcayo_tiger_cat.jpg

Environment

Scientists Name Bolivian Tilcayo Tiger Cat, First New Wild Cat Species in a Century

An international team reporting in Current Biology has formally named Leopardus tilcayo, a cloud-forest tiger cat from Bolivia's Yungas, as the first new living wild cat species described in more than 100 years, after genome work showed South America's tiger cats comprise five distinct species.

Just News Desk · 20 September 2026

A clump of several healthy oysters from a restored reef in Harris Creek, Maryland. Credit: NOAA. Source page: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/more-oysters-good-chesapeake-bay-good-people

Environment

Chesapeake Harris Creek Oyster Reefs Still Self-Sustaining a Decade On, Study Finds

An Ecosphere study led by UMBC with Smithsonian and NOAA researchers finds Harris Creek’s restored oyster reefs keep high cover and support larger resident fish six to ten years after construction.

Just News Desk · 17 September 2026

Divers tend rows of coral fragments on underwater nursery frames in clear tropical water, with sunlight falling through the reef.

Science

Gardeners of the sea are growing heat-tolerant coral — and a Palawan trial is working

Selectively bred coral fragments on a Philippine reef survived a marine heatwave at rates that stunned even the scientists who planted them. The work is slow, wet, and newly convincing.

Elena Voss · 9 September 2026

Science

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