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.

STOP BUYING STOCKS | The Market Is About To Bottom

How to Make a Hero

View All

Local taxes | Taxes and tax forms | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

When you look around your town, you’ll see a lot of services for you and other people in your town, and you might wonder who pays for it all. For example, in this picture, which I actually generated with AI—very exciting—you see all sorts of local service…

There Is No End of Science

That’s an excellent example of what’s called a crucial test, which is sort of the pinnacle of what science is all about. If we do a test and it doesn’t agree with a particular theory that we have, that’s problematic. But that doesn’t mean that it refutes …

The Perfect Storm | Rebuilding Paradise

The reality is that it was November 8th, and we hadn’t had any kind of significant rain. It had always rained before trick-or-treating, right? I mean, right? And now, and now we’re in these patterns here where we don’t see rain until, you know, into Novem…

Suing Robinhood - Again

What’s down, you guys? It’s Graham here, and this is not a video that I was planning to make today. In fact, I was never planning to make a video like this ever. But given the recent circumstances and allegations, I think this is worth diving into further…

Fiscal policy to address output gaps | AP Macroeconomics | Khan Academy

What we see here is an economy with an output gap. As you can see, the short-run equilibrium output is below our full employment output. This is sometimes referred to as a recessionary output gap. In other videos, we talk about how there could be a self-…

Capacitor i-v equations

We’re going to talk about the equations that describe how a capacitor works, and then I’ll give you an example of how these equations work. So, the basic equation of a capacitor says that the charge Q on a capacitor is equal to the capacitance value time…

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

More Articles