Scientists Unveil Wild New Way to Explore the Edge of Space
Scientists often refer to the mesosphere as the “ignorosphere”—a region that’s too high for planes or weather balloons to explore, yet too low for satellites to probe. Despite our technological advances, we’ve yet to find a decent way to monitor this large stretch of air, which lies about 37 miles (60 kilometers) above the surface. But engineers are inching towards a solution—one inspired by a toy-like invention from the 19th century. A Nature paper published today presents a proof-of-concept f