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.

Modeling with composite functions | Mathematics III | High School Math | Khan Academy

Sad, Bored, Anxious? Maybe You've Got Weltschmerz

View All

15 Rules To Win At Life (Part 1)

Life is a complicated game filled with moving pieces, changing environments, changing rules, and unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a rule book. So, we asked ourselves, what would be the common traits and patterns shared by hundreds of people who we beli…

Dividing rational expressions: unknown expression | High School Math | Khan Academy

We’re told the following equation is true for all real values of Y for which the expression on the left is defined, and D is a polynomial expression. They have this equation here; what is D? All right, so essentially what they’re saying is they don’t wan…

What Happens if Earth Suddenly Stops Rotating? #kurzgesagt #shorts

What happens if the Earth suddenly stops rotating? A thing that isn’t attached to its surface remains at its initial speed—not just cars, buildings, and people, but also water and our atmosphere—causing giant tsunami waves and global windstorms. Areas ne…

Ponzi Factor | V-Log 2 | Apple $1 Trillion Joke

Hey, this is time. It’s Saturday night, so that’s one a little more casual - it’s actually Saturday, whoo, Sunday morning now, 1 a.m. Clearly, I go out and party on Saturdays, and I said last time I’m gonna try to stay away from current events. But this t…

Fundamental theorem to evaluate derivative

Let’s say that I were to walk up to you on the street and said, “All right, I have this function g of x which I’m going to define as the definite integral from 19 to x of the cube root of t dt.” And then I were to ask you, “What is the derivative of g ev…

Steve Varsano meets some fans!

Willing to work for free, everybody. Same thing. I need somebody who really knows airplanes. Telling you, it takes a long time. But I’ll tell you what you should go do: you try to find an aircraft charter broker. They will teach you about the business, an…

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

More Articles