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.

More Articles

View All
Population diversity and resilience | Natural selection | AP Biology | Khan Academy
So let’s imagine that each of these little circles here represent a member of a population of bugs. We have two different populations of bugs. You could view this as population 1 on the left side of this orange line and population 2 on the right side of t…
Photon Momentum | Quantum physics | Physics | Khan Academy
[Music] A while back I was teaching physics in California. I got to class and I was all like, “Hey class, you want to hear a physics joke?” “Yeah, okay totally!” “Does light hold mass?” “I don’t know, does it?” “No, it’s not even Catholic!” Oh man, …
Mr. Freeman, part 05
Dear friends, citizens of free democratic countries! I, the most popular long-lived viral ad, congratulate you with the New Year! What are you looking at?.. Aaah… Message! The passing year was long and full of events. There was everything - happiness and…
Operons and gene regulation in bacteria
So we’re going to talk a little bit about DNA regulation. This is the general idea that if you look at an organism’s genome, not all of the genes are being transcribed and translated at the same time. It could actually depend on the type of cell that DNA …
Ecosystems and biomes | Ecology and natural systems | High school biology | Khan Academy
So just as a bit of a review, if we take the members of a certain species that share the same area, we call that a population. Population, all of the organisms in this particular population will be members of the same species. There could be other member…
Mellody Hobson on investing in the market during Covid-19 | Homeroom with Sal
Hi everyone! Welcome to the daily homeroom live stream. We have an exciting, I guess we could call it a show today. Just to get everyone on the same page, what this thing even is: if you’re showing up for the first time, we’re doing these live streams as …