Flight at the Edge of the Ozone Layer | One Strange Rock

2m read

·Nov 11, 2024

NARRATOR: 30 years ago, we discovered man-made chemicals had punched a hole in the ozone layer. Is that hole here to stay, waiting around to kill us? Today, we're trying hard to find out. Morgan Sandercock is about to test an experimental plane, perfect for sampling ozone.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Copy that. So I felt pressure rising.

MORGAN SANDERCOCK: (VOICEOVER) We think we can go as high as 90,000 feet.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Jim, you ready to go?

JIM PAYNE: (ON RADIO) We're ready.

MORGAN SANDERCOCK: (VOICEOVER) That's the big boy territory. That's where things can go wrong very, very quickly. If we lose cabin pressure, then, the pilots could very easily pass out. And we don't have any automatic systems to recover from that.

WOMAN: (ON RADIO) Getting ready to roll.

NARRATOR: Now, a glider might sound like a dangerous choice so high up. But gliders don't have engines, which means they can't pollute the team's samples.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Confirm [inaudible] off.

WOMAN: (ON RADIO) [inaudible] is off. Wing wheel is off.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Been running at 11:32.

MAN: (ON RADIO) 11:32. Written down in GPS 5.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Airborne. [music playing]

NARRATOR: The Perlan glider uses air rising over the Southern Andes to reach extraordinary heights.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Airspeed, 70 knots. Looking beautiful.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Yeah?

MAN: (ON RADIO) Really high.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Traffic.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Yeah.

NARRATOR: 52,000 feet up makes this the highest glider flight ever. But you've got to get this high to get a great picture of the ozone layer. The good news is that thanks to a global ban on ozone-harming chemicals, it looks like the hole is healing up. Our shield is regenerating.

Why you're unmotivated and how to get motivated?📚🧑🏻‍💻

Born 4 Months Early, This Tiny Survivor Beats the Odds | Short Film Showcase

View All

Life On the Watchlist | Explorer

The watch list, also known as the terrorist screening database, is used by U.S. intelligence agencies to nominate people as known or suspected terrorists. Over the past 15 years, the list has grown from a few thousand to more than 1 million names. But the…

Mean of sum and difference of random variables | Random variables | AP Statistics | Khan Academy

Let’s say that I have a random variable X, which is equal to the number of dogs that I see in a day. Random variable Y is equal to the number of cats that I see in a day. Let’s say I also know what the mean of each of these random variables are, the expec…

Hard Pill to Swallow | Badlands, Texas

Something was taken from Tringa that can’t be given back. I don’t think in my lifetime Tring was ever hit this hard. This was an atrocity; that’s a hell of a thing for a community to try and swallow. But they ain’t going to forget. Tony Flint just walked…

The Truth About Toilet Swirl - Northern Hemisphere

Hey it’s me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. Here’s the deal. I’ve created a video in the northern hemisphere and Derek from Veritasium has created one in the south. You have to synchronize these two videos in order for this to make any sense, b…

Multiplying whole numbers by 10 | Math | 4th grade | Khan Academy

Multiplying by 10 creates a really neat pattern with numbers, so let’s try a few out and see if we can discover the pattern. Let’s try to figure it out. We’ll start with one that maybe we already know. Let’s start something like 2 * 10, and maybe we know …

Types of health insurance plans | Insurance | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

So there are three ways that you might be able to get yourself health insurance. The first way is that you just get it directly, and that would be an individual plan. You pay the premium, you get the insurance. The second way is, many employers will prov…

Flight at the Edge of the Ozone Layer | One Strange Rock

More Articles