Mega constellations of satellites are burning in our atmosphere. That can have consequences

If you were to stare into the black sky on a clear night, you would expect to see nothing but the beautiful Milky Way stretching above you, with billions of stars twinkling in place.

Instead, you'll also most likely see an ersatz star break through an otherwise static sky every few minutes, moving silently across the stars.

These are satellites, and there are thousands of them in orbit. When they have outlived their usefulness, most of them will tumble through the Earth's atmosphere again and burn up.

Scientists are now investigating how this process dumps potentially harmful particles into our ...