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.

Example multiplying multi digit numbers

Why Nevada Owns Less than 20% of Nevada

View All

Radical functions differentiation | Derivative rules | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Let’s see if we can take the derivative with respect to (x) of the fourth root of (x^3 + 4x^2 + 7). At first, you might say, “All right, how do I take the derivative of a fourth root of something?” It looks like I have a composite function; I’m taking the…

Impactful Things To Copy From Successful People

If you were to copy just a few things from successful people, the things that have the most impact in your life, what would those things be? Well, this is exactly what we’re talking about in this video: the most impactful things you can copy from highly s…

Neanderthals 101 | National Geographic

[Narrator] Neanderthals are often depicted as brutish cave men, but science shows that our early ancestors were actually quite advanced. Neanderthals, or homo neanderthalensis, are our closest relatives in the human family tree. The species lived from abo…

Rewriting before integrating | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Let’s say that we wanted to take the indefinite integral of ( x^2 \times (3x - 1) \, dx ). Pause this video and see if you can evaluate this. So you might be saying, “Oh, what kind of fancy technique could I use?” But you will see sometimes the fanciest …

Warren Buffett's Tips to Prepare for a Stock Market Crash

Now, I’m not a doomsday predictor. I’ve never tried to time the market, and honestly, I never will. That’s a fool’s errand. But it’s no secret that right now, markets are high, and sooner or later, we’ll see another bear market or a full-blown stock marke…

Gyroscopic Precession

Hey everyone, it’s me, Derek from the channel Veritasium. I’ve been following this series by Destin on Smarter Every Day about helicopters, and gyroscopic precession is just one of those things that still blows my mind, as it did Destin. So, I’m here at t…

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

More Articles