Analysis: Science & Technology — 28 October 2026
Rubin Observatory finds dwarf planet candidate 2026 ED138 beyond Pluto
Astronomers announced on 27 October 2026 that the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has produced its first dwarf-planet candidate, provisionally designated 2026 ED138. Matthew Holman of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found the trans-Neptunian object in Simonyi Survey Telescope data with software that links moving detections across billions of sources. Mario Jurić of the University of Washington called it the largest trans-Neptunian object found in about 20 years, roughly 1,000 km across, recovered while the telescope was still in commissioning. If confirmed as round under self-gravity, it would join Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake on the IAU list.
ED138 now lies about 46 astronomical units from the Sun, beyond Pluto’s mean 40 au. From brightness, distance and assumed reflectivity, the team estimates a diameter of 600–1,500 km, a range in which icy bodies are expected to be spherical. Holman flagged it on 13 October; Jurić then recovered 20 more Rubin detections back to March 2026 and archival images to 2016. The object sat near the crowded plane of the Milky Way, which had hidden it from earlier surveys.
Size and hydrostatic equilibrium remain unproven; the diameter span is driven by unknown albedo. Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time began in June 2026 after early data already yielded more than 11,000 new asteroids, including about 380 TNOs. The find tests whether repeated southern-sky imaging plus precovery in old frames can recover large bodies missed in star-dense fields. Composition, exact shape and how many similar objects remain uncatalogued are still open.
JWST finds lava world TOI-561 b reflecting about 75 percent of starlight
James Webb Space Telescope observations reported on 27 October 2026 indicate that rocky lava planet TOI-561 b, about 280 light-years away, still holds a thick, highly reflective atmosphere. A team including Anjali Piette of the University of Birmingham monitored the planet for 37 hours, covering nearly four orbits of just over 10 hours, and published the result in The Astronomical Journal. Dayside brightness temperature is about 2,050 K, well below the roughly 3,200 K expected for a dark bare rock. Phase-curve data imply the planet reflects about three-quarters of incoming starlight, comparable to Venus, and redistributes heat off the dayside.
The world orbits so close to its star that the surface is expected to be a global magma ocean. Standard models predicted that irradiation would have stripped any atmosphere billions of years ago. Climate simulations now favor dayside clouds of silicate minerals, including silicon dioxide and magnesium silicate, that bounce starlight before it reaches the melt. Gases released from the magma ocean may also replenish the atmosphere.
The nightside is not hot enough to close the energy budget by heat transport alone, which is why high albedo is required. Whether those clouds are stable, whether the planet began with an unusually large volatile inventory, and whether a magma ocean can sustain a long-lived atmosphere remain unresolved. The result is a single-planet case and does not yet show how common such atmospheres are among ultra-short-period rocky worlds.
Light-driven motor brakes molecular rotation by a factor of 300,000
Chemists at IOCB Prague reported on 27 October 2026 that a light-controlled molecular motor can slow random thermal rotation of an attached rotor by about 300,000 times. The study, with first author Lukáš Severa, appears in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Illumination changes the motor’s shape and raises the steric barrier the rotor must cross. Earlier analogous systems changed rotation rates by at most a factor of about 100.
In the unbraked geometry the rotor turns freely under Brownian motion; in the braked state the motor physically obstructs it. The contrast grows at low temperature: if the free rotor completed one turn per second, the braked rotor would take on the order of 350 billion years. The group presents the brake as a control element that molecular machines need in addition to motors.
The demonstration is a single-molecule design, not a device that performs useful work against a load. Behavior in condensed phases, fatigue under repeated cycling, and coupling of several such elements without crosstalk are not yet shown. The temperature dependence that produces the most extreme slowdown also limits room-temperature use.
Sources: Phys.org (University of Washington; IOCB Prague); ScienceDaily/University of Birmingham; The Astronomical Journal; Angewandte Chemie International Edition.