Reuters Science News Summary

SpaceX's upcoming earnings call may focus on AI and Starlink profits, but investors are also inquiring about the company's future plans, including potential color schemes for its rockets.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Will SpaceX paint its rocket ​pink? Investor questions go beyond Moon and Mars ahead ​of first results

SpaceX's first earnings call as ‌a ​public company may be expected to focus on AI spending and profits from its Starlink satellite communications network, but many retail investors have other things on their minds. Taking a page ‌from Elon Musk's other big company, Tesla, newly public rocket maker SpaceX has opened an online venue for investors to ask questions ahead of a call about results that is expected to feature Musk. Users can submit questions and vote on which ones will be ‌answered, creating a list ranked by popularity.

Study shows prehistoric people targeted female mammoths

Woolly mammoths were a favorite hunting target ‌for Ice Age people in Eurasia and North America for many reasons. A single animal would provide a large amount of meat and fat. Its hide could be used for clothing. Its bones and tusks could be shaped into tools, weapons and art. And the largest bones could be used as building ⁠material for ​shelters or other structures. New research shows ⁠that these prehistoric people were highly selective in the mammoths they hunted. Using genetic data from bones accumulated by people at 11 sites in Poland, ⁠Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Russia, scientists have discovered that they mainly killed female mammoths.

Smallpox DNA is recovered from Spanish conquest-era Chilean mummies

When Spanish ​conquistadors arrived in the New World some five centuries ago, they brought muskets, cannons, armor, horses and attack dogs ⁠as they set about colonizing the Americas. But the biggest blow they delivered came from something else entirely — smallpox and other infectious diseases that ravaged indigenous populations. Researchers now ⁠have ​obtained the first direct molecular evidence of the smallpox unwittingly carried from the Old World to the New World that wiped out untold millions of people in Mesoamerica and South America. They recovered ancient viral DNA from the mummies of two ⁠people who died during the early Spanish colonial period in an Inca community in northern Chile.

Climate change made 'fire-prone' weather conditions more likely ⁠in Spain and France, scientists ⁠say

Human-caused climate change made the extreme weather fuelling wildfires in southwestern France twice as likely, and made the conditions driving blazes in central Spain 20 times more likely, scientists said on Friday. Ongoing ‌wildfires in Spain and ‌France have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and ​scorched huge swathes of land.