Science Daily

• Scientists turn Starlink into a giant scanner for Earth’s upper atmosphere

  Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they reconstructed changes in atmospheric density about 500 kilometers above Earth. The approach could sharpen satellite tracking and help reduce the growing risk of collisions in increasingly crowded orbits.

• “Cannot be explained” – New super steel stuns scientists

  Scientists have created an unusually corrosion-resistant stainless steel that could replace costly titanium components used to produce green hydrogen. The breakthrough could reduce structural material costs by roughly 40 times and make seawater-based hydrogen production far more economical.

• 3,500-year-old skeletons challenge what scientists thought they knew about syphilis

  Ancient remains from Vietnam suggest diseases like yaws may have been passed from mother to child thousands of years ago, a form of transmission often assumed to indicate syphilis. The discovery could overturn how scientists interpret ancient infections and complicate the long-running mystery of syphilis’s origins.

• Scientists find evidence for two origins of life on Earth

  Scientists probing life’s deepest origins have uncovered evidence that the first free-living cells may have emerged not once, but twice. The findings suggest a striking possibility: life may share one ancient genetic code, yet have undergone two separate transitions into free-living existence.

• Dogs can tell fear from sadness — and scientists saw it in their brains

  Dogs may understand our emotions more deeply than scientists realized. Brain scans show that happy human faces activate regions in dogs linked to higher-level processing and reward, suggesting that smiles carry special emotional significance for them.