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.

Shana Fisher at Startup School NY 2014

The Most Gruesome Parasites – Neglected Tropical Diseases – NTDs

View All

The Threat of AI Weapons

I’ll explain more at the end, but let me set up this clip in five words: robot killers, Stephen Fry, watch. Autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and nuclear bombs. They could mount rapid devastating at…

Establishing DNA as transformation principle

So to review how we got at least to this video: in 1865, Mendel first shares his laws of inheritance. He observes that there are these heritable factors, these discreet heritable factors that would be passed down from parent to offspring according to cert…

How The Economic Machine Works: Part 3

[Music] As economic activity increases, we see an expansion. The first phase of the short-term debt cycle—spending continues to increase and prices start to rise. This happens because the increase in spending is fueled by credit, which can be created inst…

Change in angular velocity when velocity doubles

We’re told that a car with wheel radius r moves at a linear velocity v, and this is a bolded v to show that it’s a vector. Suddenly, the car accelerates to velocity 2v. How does the angular velocity of the wheels change? So pause this video and see if you…

Pronoun-antecedent agreement | Syntax | Khan Academy

Hello grammarians! Hello visiting cousin Beth! Hello cousin David! So today, we’re going to be talking about pronoun antecedent agreement. And what is that? So an antecedent is a thing that goes before. So ‘ante’ means before and ‘seedent’ is like a goin…

Last Updated: 2024-11-07T15:51:10Z Thank you for choosing https://yego.me for your web service needs. We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring transparency about how we collect, use, and share your information. This Privacy Policy outline…

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

More Articles