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.

The Ebola Virus Explained — How Your Body Fights For Survival

15 Ways Your Worldview Changes As You Get Richer

View All

Mr. Freeman, part 63

All right, hot-shots, no small talk or bullshit today! Just cold reality and stark, naked truth. Don’t wanna know, or friggin’ scared? Door’s there! Whattaya waiting for? Thanks for sharing, get the hell out! I’ve had it with your snobby fed-up attitude a…

The Social Ranking of Meerkats | Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom

On a sunny morning at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park, the meerkats come outside to catch some rays. They like to lay in the sun. Some people call them solar powered, so they sit like this with their little bellies up to the sky. You’ll see them kind o…

Breaking apart 2-digit addition problems | Addition and subtraction | 1st grade | Khan Academy

Let’s think about ways to break up addition problems. And this is useful because if we break them up in the right way, it might be easier for us to actually compute the addition. So let’s look at this first question. Lindsay isn’t sure how to add 39 plu…

Climb Ancient Temples in Belize's Maya Ruins | National Geographic

Coming up now at the top of the observatory, I need to catch my breath. I’m Marie McCrory with National Geographic Travel. Belize is home to about a dozen major Mayan ruins, which are visited by over 300,000 tourists every year. But the largest Mayan site…

Homeroom with Sal & Dave Travis - Wednesday, September 9

Hi, everyone! Sal here from Khan Academy. Welcome to our “Homeroom Live Stream.” I’m out here in California where the sky is looking very ominous. It looks like, yeah, you can’t—it’s bizarre. I’ve never quite seen this. For those of y’all who don’t know, …

Constructing exponential models: half life | Mathematics II | High School Math | Khan Academy

We’re told carbon 14 is an element which loses exactly half of its mass every 5,730 years. The mass of a sample of carbon 14 can be modeled by a function m which depends on its age t in years. We measure that the initial mass of a sample of carbon 14 is 7…

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

More Articles