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Levitating Platform Could Ride Sunlight Into the ‘Ignorosphere’
The sunlight-powered device uses photophoresis to levitate and collect atmospheric data, potentially improving climate models and weather forecasts, researchers say.
8 Articles
8 Articles
Researchers use light to levitate device into Earth’s upper atmosphere
Researchers have tested a new approach to monitoring a difficult-to-reach area of Earth’s atmosphere using lightweight flying structures. In a process known as photophoresis, the novel structure would use nothing but sunlight to fly as it navigates its way through the mesosphere, a layer of the Earth’s atmosphere between 50 and 85km above the surface. Credit: Angela Cini / iStock / Getty Images Plus. The team says the device could collect key da…
Low-noise and emission-free: A research group has developed small flying objects that move by solar radiation alone. In the swarm, they could transmit data and carry out measurements in the future.
Tiny discs can levitate in the upper atmosphere using sunlight alone
A physics phenomenon discovered 150 years ago allows tiny objects to levitate using just sunlight – and now it could enable swarms of sensors to explore part of Earth’s long-neglected upper atmosphere
Levitating platform could ride sunlight into the ‘ignorosphere’
A nano-engineered structure that levitates when a laser of a similar intensity to sunlight is shone on it could help scientists to study a hard-to-reach region of the atmosphere. A nano-engineered structure that levitates when a laser of a similar intensity to sunlight is shone on it could help scientists to study a hard-to-reach region of the atmosphere.
Between 50 and 100 kilometres (30 to 60 miles) above the Earth's surface is a largely unsolicited stretch of the atmosphere, called mesosphere. It is too high for aircraft and weather balloons, too low for satellites, and almost impossible to monitor with existing technology. But understand this [...]
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