fromwww.scientificamerican.com
1 week agoThese Tiny Disks Could Explore the Ignorosphere' That Planes and Satellites Can't Reach
The new centimeter-wide disks are made from two thin perforated membranes of ceramic alumina connected by tiny vertical supports. They are kept aloft by a force called photophoresis: the light-induced movement of small particles at very low atmospheric pressures. In lab experiments simulating mesospheric air pressure and illumination, the researchers showed that their devices could float passively, without any power source. Their paper reporting the results was published in Nature on August 13.
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