Brazil seeks to measure energy from solar explosions

Sao Paulo, April 6 (IANS/EFE) A team of Brazilian scientists plan to use a pair of stratospheric balloons to study the energy produced by explosions on the Sun, the head of the project said.

The specially equipped balloons have to reach the stratosphere – 40 km above the Earth’s surface – because the frequencies the researchers want to study cannot penetrate the atmosphere, Pierre Kauffmann told EFE.

Balloons represent a less costly alternative to satellites, according to Kauffmann, a scientist with the Center for Radioastronomy and Astrophysics at Sao Paulo’s Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie.

The first balloon flight, tentatively scheduled for the summer of 2014, will pass over Russia.

–IANS/EFE

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