In case you missed it this week, mathematicians have a strategy to win Wordle 99 percent of the time, scientists may have hit on yet another use for GLP-1s, and an ambitious Bornean and Sumatran rhino IVF plan is the last hope for a species on the brink of extinction.
Read on for more of the most intriguing stories of the past week…
LEAD STORY
It’s Official: Voyager 1 Will Cross The 1 Light-Day Threshold On November 18, 2026
IFLScience has confirmed with NASA when Voyager 1 will be a cosmic record-breaking 1 light-day from Earth.
Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object we have ever sent into space, and in just a few months, it will cross a pretty incredible threshold: it will be 1 light-day away from Earth, the first human-made spacecraft to reach this distance. Now, the Voyager mission team has just confirmed to IFLScience the exact date it will meet this milestone. Voyager 1 will be a record-breaking 1 light-day away on November 18, 2026.
Perseverance Just Completed A Marathon On Mars Twice As Quick As Its Predecessor – And It's Not Done Smashing Records
And it will soon break another record.
New Hair Loss Drug Is Being Touted As Biggest Breakthrough In Decades – And It Might Be The Real Deal
Results to dye for! (Too much? Hir-suit yourself.)
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Gorham's Disease: We Regret To Inform You That Sometimes Your Bones Can Just "Vanish"
The first case report describes a man who fractured his arm three times, then found out his entire humerus had disappeared.
Simulation Of 100,000 World Cup Matches Predicts A Clear 2026 Winner, And Suggests The Bookies May Be Wrong
After 100,000 simulations there was a clear winner, and perhaps a few surprises for the bookmakers.
HPV Vaccine Reduces Risk Of Women Dying From Cervical Cancer Before 30 To Effectively Zero
Between 2020 and 2024, not a single vaccinated young woman in their early 20s died of cervical cancer in England.
230-Million-Year-Old Fossil Footprints Reveal What May Be The Earliest Dinosaur-Dominated Ecosystem
The rise of the dinos may have coincided with a time when the world got remarkably wet.
WE’VE GOT ANSWERS
WATCH & LISTEN
This week in IFLScience video, a new spider species that doesn't yet have an official scientific name, but is thought to belong to the genus Propostira, has been observed building carefully constructed tension lines. When these lines are cut by the green tree ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, the force of their release sends the prey flying into the air. Watch here.
Plus: in the latest episode of the We Have Questions podcast, we spoke to Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre at Lancaster University, who told us that your ticker goes on quite a journey to wind up where it is. We asked: "Where Is The Human Heart Located?"
Inside Ocean Expedition That Used Lasers To Discover 31 New Species
The Designing the Future 3 expedition used 3D laser scanning to study gelatinous deep-sea animals in their natural habitat, building a new blueprint for how we document ocean life. IFLScience spoke with MBARI's Kakani Katija to learn more about how her team's devices empower scientists to learn more about these species than ever before.
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This week’s article on Voyager 1 was written by Alfredo - Space & Physics Editor
"For years, we have been anticipating Voyager 1 crossing the 1 light-day threshold, being 24 light-hours from home. Last November, we did our own calculations, but we knew they could only be approximate, so we got in touch with NASA. We are so proud that we could break this news and bring this exclusive with the date and time of this momentous occasion: November 18 at 10:16 UTC!"