Earth glows like a half moon while a giant aurora writhes over the North Pole in this ultraviolet image from the new Smile spacecraft. (Image credit: ESA & CAS/Smile/UVI CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)Quick factsWhat it is: An aurora on the sunlit side of EarthWhere it is: Over the North Pole, as seen from about 75,000 miles awayWhen it was shared: Sept. 30The debut images from a new Earth-observing satellite have just given us a view of the impossible: giant auroras rippling over the North Pole in broad daylight. Earth's auroras are one of our planet's signature wonders — a sight worth advertising in interstellar travel guides, alongside our perfect total solar eclipses, bright shooting stars and majestic blobfish. They are the beautiful result of electrical storms in the atmosphere, appearing when charged solar particles skate along Earth's magnetic-field lines and collide with light-emitting molecules near the poles. (Auroras do exist on other planets, but they are usually not in bright visible colors like ours.)To human eyes, auroras come out only at night and rarely stray from the poles. That's what makes these first observations from the joint European-Chinese Smile mission, which officially began science operations this week, so special.Captured in ultraviolet light, the stunning images show a huge, serpent-like ring of charged particles coiling around the North Pole in July 2026. In the foreground, Earth appears ghostly and featureless, glowing like a half moon. The aurora writhes around our planet's sunlit side, covering about a third of it, while Earth's dark nightside bleeds into the background sky. Far behind, bright stars fall like raindrops as Smile shifts subtly in its orbit.Smile tested its soft X-ray imager on the light of the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (center), located 11,000 light-years from Earth. (Image credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO )The view alone is worth smiling about, but the new images also promise exciting science to come. Taken just two weeks after scientists first turned Smile's Ultraviolet Aurora Imager on, the observations show that the satellite's instruments are working as they should and that the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences mission can officially begin.Related storiesAncient hydrogen spotted in the early universe could open a new way to study space's baffling expansionA giant cosmic 'fart' is making a wobbling zombie star repeatedly flash us, 'groundbreaking' observations revealJames Webb telescope shares one of its biggest images ever, with record-breaking stars hiding in the dust — Space photo of the weekLaunched on May 19, Smile will spend the next three years watching Earth from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it about 75,000 miles (121,000 kilometers) over the North Pole — about a third of the way to the moon. From there, Smile can observe the North Pole for a record-breaking 45 hours at a time, offering an unprecedented view of solar activity there. In addition to the Ultraviolet Aurora Imager, Smile carries three more science instruments to detect X-rays, magnetic fields and light ions over Earth. This week, scientists also tested the spacecraft's soft X-ray imager by pointing it at the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, located about 11,000 light-years from Earth (image above). Although the camera is working fine, the detector is still picking up a bit too much light when aimed at Earth, so it will require a bit more calibration from scientists on the ground.

In 2023, an African gray parrot named Jack went viral for mimicking the coughs and wheezes of her owner's father, who often struggled to breathe from severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But it wasn't just the imitation that made Jack famous; it was also that she seemed to relish the suffering of a man she purportedly hated. In the video, Jack's owner even claimed that she had a favorite cough.The parrot appeared to be experiencing a complex emotion that in humans is known as schadenfreude, or pleasure at seeing another's pain. Literally translated from German as "harm joy," it's a feeling that might emerge when a rival coworker gets fired, or when a rude neighbor has their package stolen.When a cat seems a little too happy watching a human stub their toe, or a horse seems to grin at a person stepping in poop, their owners might also interpret their behavior as schadenfreude. But can any animals really experience such a complicated emotion? Or is this a classic case of anthropomorphization?A complex emotionAnimals probably do not experience schadenfreude, according to researchers who study animal behavior and intelligence. However, the question hasn't received much attention in formal research. That's partly due to limitations of animal behavior methodology, but also because the question is bound up with how we define and communicate emotion in the first place."The study of complex emotions is incredibly difficult when you're talking about an animal that cannot communicate their emotions linguistically," Zachary Silver, an assistant professor of psychology who leads the canine intelligence lab at Occidental College in Los Angeles, told Live Science. "We don't have the ability to be as precise as we like to be in the scientific community."Silver explained that researchers can look at behavior, neurological signals or hormonal activity to make an educated guess about what an animal might be feeling. A dog that has its ears back and tail tucked, for instance, is probably experiencing a negative emotion, while one wagging its tail is feeling a positive one. But "aside from positive and negative, without words to describe the emotion, it becomes very difficult to disentangle," Silver said. The dog could be happy, but it could also just be interested in something new. "It's just so hard for us to say with any definitive nature that we really can know exactly what emotion is going on there," Silver said.Animal behavior researchers try to avoid anthropomorphizing animals ‪(attributing human qualities to them) without evidence. When a cat or dog comforts a grieving human, for example, it could just be that the behavior was previously reinforced by rewarding the animal with treats or pets, rather than a genuine outpouring of sympathy. Similarly, Jack the parrot could have been mimicking coughs just for attention.When cats make trouble for their owners, they may not be experiencing schadenfreude but rather just want attention. (Image credit: Zhenny-zhenny via Shutterstock)To truly experience a complicated emotion like schadenfreude, an animal needs to understand the emotional states of both itself and others — a concept called theory of mind."Dogs may have some ability to attribute mental states like emotions, thoughts, beliefs, intentions to other individuals, but this really only occurs in very select contexts and in really kind of a rudimentary way," Silver said. Because of this, "it's exceedingly unlikely that dogs would be able to experience schadenfreude in the way that we as humans do." David Stahlman, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Mary Washington, agreed that such emotional capacity in animals is unlikely. He said that animals do not seem to have the ability to recognize their own emotional states, though he noted that not all animal behavior researchers agree. "There's a difference between the affect, the emotional behavior, and then the recognition of the emotional behavior in oneself," Stahlman said. If nonhuman animals were to have this capability, he suspected it would probably be found in highly social great apes, like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). Schadenfreude, in particular, would require animals to live in close social groups, since it requires knowledge of the individual experiencing the harm and whether it's deserved.In hierarchical groups, it's possible that the suffering of one animal might benefit another and lead to something resembling happiness, Stahlman said, but he doubts this would ever qualify as true schadenfreude. "The kind of Machiavellian stuff is a very human thing," he said.Related mysteriesWhich animals can count and understand simple math?Can animals understand human language?Do any animals keep pets like humans do?Nevertheless, “there is a lot of data pointing in the direction that animals do have really deep capacities for emotional intelligence,” said Kaeli Swift, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Washington and author of the Corvid Research blog. Swift noted that studies of some corvid species have found evidence of emotional recognition, fairness and "some of the strongest evidence across the animal world" for theory of mind. However, when it comes to studying an emotion as complex and subjective as schadenfreude, she said that researchers "haven’t quite crossed that threshold."In the study of animal emotions, she said "we have barely started to scratch the surface."

(Stefania Pelfini la Waziya/Moment RF/Getty Images) A buzz without the buzz.ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

(Anna Blazhuk/Moment RF/Getty Images) A juicy development.ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

(sbk_20d pictures/Moment RF/Getty Images) The feel-good hormone at its worst.ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.