NASA selects a sample return mission to Venus

In Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy, the famous words "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" adorn the gates of hell. Interestingly enough, Dante's vision of hell is an apt description of what conditions are like ...

Temperatures measured at Gale Crater higher than expected

(Phys.org)—Preliminary weather reports from the Curiosity's Remote Environment Monitoring Station (REMS) are showing some surprisingly mild temperatures during the day. Average daytime air temperatures have reached a peak ...

Perovskites under pressure: Hot electrons cool faster

In solar cells, about two third of the energy of sunlight is lost. Half of this loss is due to a process called 'hot carrier cooling' where high energy photons lose their excess energy in the form of heat before being converted ...

Finding the right 'dose' for solar geoengineering

One of the key misconceptions about solar geoengineering—putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming—is that it could be used as a fix-all to reverse global warming trends and bring ...

Solar storms can destabilize power grids at midlatitudes

The Sun is capable of disrupting electrical systems on Earth in a variety of ways, from solar flares and coronal mass ejections to proton storms. Typically, it is only objects far above the Earth's surface, or systems at ...

Phaethon confirmed as rock comet by STEREO vision

The Sun-grazing asteroid, Phaethon, has betrayed its true nature by showing a comet-like tail of dust particles blown backwards by radiation pressure from the Sun. Unlike a comet, however, Phaethon's tail doesn't arise through ...

As solar wind blows, our heliosphere balloons

What happens when the solar wind suddenly starts to blow significantly harder? According to two recent studies, the boundaries of our entire solar system balloon outward—and an analysis of particles rebounding off of its ...

Enabling graphene-based technology via chemical functionalization

Graphene is an atomically thin sheet of carbon that has attracted significant attention due to its potential use in high-performance electronics, sensors and alternative energy devices such as solar cells. While the physics ...

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