A team of researchers at Penn State has achieved a historic breakthrough. They strongly violated Kirchhoff’s 165-year-old law of thermal radiation. This discovery could revolutionize solar energy ...

If you take an object and set it out in the sun, it will begin to warm up. This is because it is absorbing energy from the sun's rays and converting that energy to heat. If you leave that object ...

What Kirchhoff’s “thermal law” is and why it’s important. How researchers have determined that the law breaks down in some circumstances. Why others disagree with those findings. Engineers of all ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

For more than 160 years, engineers building anything that generates or manages heat have worked under a rule so reliable it might as well have been gravity: whatever surface absorbs infrared radiation ...