Birds lay eggs with a huge variety of colours and patterns, from immaculate white to a range of blue-greens and reddish browns.
Plants & Animals
Oct 29, 2019
1
416
A study published by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shows that polystyrene, one of the world's most ubiquitous plastics, may degrade in decades or centuries when exposed to sunlight, rather than ...
Environment
Oct 10, 2019
0
412
Tokyo 2020 Olympic chiefs have already rolled out everything from misting stations to flowerbeds to beat the heat at next year's games, and now they want to let it snow.
Environment
Sep 05, 2019
1
43
When temperatures throughout the sizzling Southwestern U.S. climb to over 100 degrees, the pavement can get hot enough to cause second-degree burns on human skin in a matter of seconds.
Environment
Jul 27, 2019
8
35
An international team of researchers has brought a new generation of solar cells a step closer to commercialisation, by showing how sunlight can trigger a 'healing process' in the cells to improve their efficiency and stability.
Energy & Green Tech
May 21, 2019
0
16
The chemistry of photosynthesis is still poorly understood. However, researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany and Rice University in Houston have now uncovered a major piece of the puzzle. Their ...
Nanomaterials
May 07, 2019
0
227
The giant 121-segment mirror array used to reflect simulated sunlight into the largest vacuum chamber in Europe seen being hoisted into position within ESA's technical heart back in 1986.
Space Exploration
Apr 17, 2019
0
10
How many years can a mountain exist? Bob Dylan's rhetorical question has just received yet another scientifically based answer. Researchers from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Denmark's Technical University (DTU) ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 22, 2019
0
8
Alfalfa, peanut, and soybean plants take in nitrogen and hydrogen from the air and turn it into ammonia, which helps the plants grow. The reactions to produce ammonia are driven by natural catalysts, which lower the energy ...
Materials Science
Feb 11, 2019
0
4
A side view of ESA's Solar Orbiter as it entered a vacuum chamber for thermal vacuum testing at the IABG test facility in Ottobrunn, Germany, last month.
Space Exploration
Jan 31, 2019
0
13
Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the atmosphere, and the solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. Near the poles in summer, the days are longer and the nights are shorter or non-existent. In the winter at the poles the nights are longer and for some periods of time, sunlight may not occur at all. When the direct radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and heat. Radiant heat directly produced by the radiation of the sun is different from the increase in atmospheric temperature due to the radiative heating of the atmosphere by the sun's radiation. Sunlight may be recorded using a sunshine recorder, pyranometer or pyrheliometer. Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach the Earth. The World Meteorological Organization defines sunshine as direct irradiance from the Sun measured on the ground of at least 120 watts per square metre.
Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux, which includes infrared, visible, and ultra-violet light. Bright sunlight provides luminance of approximately 100,000 candela per square meter at the Earth's surface.
Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, a process crucially important for life on Earth.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
