The high-up mesosphere is too thin for airplanes or balloons to support themselves.
Light heats the underside of the mylar film and lifts the flier using recoil energy.
Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have made “microfliers” that could fly into near space on just the power of light.
These tiny fliers may be the key to unlocking the mesosphere, the area 30 to 50 miles above Earth where the air is too thin to physically support hot air balloons or airplanes. The solar-powered fliers could fill a critical gap not just in Earth’s understudied mesosphere, but elsewhere in space, too.
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The secret is in tiny localized time variations, possibly caused by neutrinos.
The theory is far out, but the findings will help other scientists.
test a quantum theory that flips our understanding of time on its head.
Physicist Joan Vaccaro first articulated the divisive quantum theory of time that dynamics may be a phenomenological consequence of a fundamental violation of time reversal symmetry, in her words a few years ago. But now, researchers can use neutrinos and antineutrinos to measure the passage of time within a powerful nuclear reactor.
Vaccaro has been open about the theory as a far-out educated guess rather than a sure thing, and the findings should be interesting to other scientists either way.