yego.me
yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

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 Robots That Bend Are Better
Khan Stories - Sean

More Articles

View All
How to have the best summer of your life
We all want to have a good time this summer. I personally look forward to the summertime every single year because I live in British Columbia and 90% of the year is overcast, rainy, gloomy, cloudy. It’s not a fun time. When the weather starts to get good,…
How Many Calories are on a Smudgy Screen?
Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. And I’m home for the holidays. I’m in my parents’ basement, using a different camera than usual. But you know what is always different? Fingerprints. The palms of our hands and the soles of our feet are weird. They are covered w…
Comparing the effects of the Civil War on American national identity | US history | Khan Academy
It’s hard to imagine anything more transformative in American history than the Civil War. Before the Civil War, the United States was a largely rural, barely unified collection of states, not making much of a blip on the world stage. After the Civil War, …
How To Invest In 2020 | My Concerns
What’s up guys? It’s Graham here. So let’s attempt to answer the age-old question—a question that’s been unanswered for thousands of years, a question that historians have been pondering since the beginning of time—and that would be: how to invest in 2020…
How a Shark Attack Survivor Invented Cage Diving
A lot of people would say you have got reason more than most to hate sharks, and yet you don’t. Can you explain it? It was in a spear fishing championship that I was the reigning champion. It was a six-hour competition. After four hours, many fish had …
Fundraising Fundamentals By Geoff Ralston
We’re gonna have two lectures on fundraising: the this one, which is going to be a high-level overview, which I’ll do, and then next week my partner Kirsty will do a deep dive into the mechanics of fundraising, which are really fun, so you wouldn’t want t…