Levitating Platform Could Ride Sunlight Into the ‘Ignorosphere’

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…

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

Featherweight flyers could ‘levitate’ above Earth indefinitely

Making use of an obscure physics effect to fly, devices could probe the upper atmosphere and explore Mars

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.

Historic First: Sunlight Lifts Aircraft Into the Mesosphere

For more than a century, one section of Earth’s atmosphere has remained an unbroken barrier to sustained flight. The mesosphere, stretching from around fifty to eighty-five kilometres above the surface, has been unreachable for anything that needs to remain aloft for more than minutes. It sits above the limits of balloons and aircraft, yet far […] The post Historic First: Sunlight Lifts Aircraft Into the Mesosphere appeared first on Above The No…