The view of Earth from space is famously familiar—bright blue ocean, swirling gyres of white clouds, touches of terrestrial green. The luminosity of this image is the result of the sun’s rays shining ...

Two weeks ago, I talked about an introduction to radar and how it works on a basic level. This time, we are looking into radar reflectivity specifically, the most popular product of weather radar.

Since May 24, 2019, SpaceX has been launching satellites into orbit 60 at a time to bolster the ranks of its Starlink megaconstellation – a fleet of networked sats flying in formation that, once ...

Light sails propelled by radiation from high-power lasers offer a possible route to fuel-free space propulsion. However, ...

Engineers have found a way to make liquid metals switch between reflective surfaces or those that scatter light. The transition only requires a small zap of electricity and could be used to make ...

For decades, researchers have explored light sails as an alternative. These devices use radiation pressure—the force exerted when light reflects from a surface—to generate thrust. When driven by a ...

Earth’s climate is being changed substantially by a buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases, but a group of leading climate scientists contends the overall impact is not understood as well as it ...

A high reflectivity mirror, also known as a supermirror, is a dielectric mirror that has been carefully designed to provide optimal reflectivity while minimizing any scatter and absorption effects.

IT would appear that there may have been some ambiguity in the use of the terms ‘standard reference surfaces’ and ‘standard values’ in our recent article on the above subject 1. The standard reference ...

NORFOLK, Va. — After Monday’s winter weather, areas around the Peninsulas and the western Southside accumulated three or more inches of snow. And that snow slightly affected high temperatures this ...

To fabricate micro/nano structures on metal surfaces, various technologies have been proposed, including chemical etching, mechanical grooving, reactive ion etching, and long-pulse laser processing.