This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
GoPro Camera Found After Two Years Shows Breathtaking Footage of Grand Canyon From 'Edge of Space'
The Grand Canyon is truly a sight to behold. It's 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep in parts.
"The Canyon’s mile-high walls display a largely undisturbed cross section of the Earth’s crust extending back some 2 billion years," says the National Park Service. That fact really brings to mind the expression, "man, if these walls could talk ..."
Thanks to geologists and other scientists who have extensively studied this beautiful area, public opinion of the Grand Canyon region changed dramatically from that of "a worthless locale" to "the most sublime of earthly spectacles," says the park service. And "after nearly 150 years, geologists are still not finished studying the Grand Canyon."
In June 2013, a group of students sent a GoPro camera attached to a balloon "to the edge of space" (the stratosphere) over the Grand Canyon. The video of that effort was just published last week, and the footage is pretty breathtaking. So, why did it take two years for the footage to be posted? One of the students explains on Reddit how the camera got lost, despite the group's planning.
The group planned to use GPS to track the camera once it fell to the desert floor. They programmed a cell phone attached to the camera to send a text message once it had a signal as it was returning back to Earth. “The problem was that the coverage map we were relying on (looking at you, AT&T) was not accurate, so the phone never got signal as it came back to Earth, and we never heard from it,” explained the student.
Ironically then, the footage ended up being retrieved two years later when "a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert," said the student. "She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!”
Here is the footage from that GoPro camera:
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Shocking Polar Bear Photos Show Stark Reality of Climate Change
Bees Win Big in Court, EPA’s Approval of Toxic Pesticide Overturned
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Erica Cirino
Visit a coral reef off the coast of Miami or the Maldives and you may see fields of bleached white instead of a burst of colors.
By Jason Bittel
High up in the mountains of Montana's Glacier National Park, there are two species of insect that only a fly fishermen or entomologist would probably recognize. Known as stoneflies, these aquatic bugs are similar to dragonflies and mayflies in that they spend part of their lives underwater before emerging onto the land, where they transform into winged adults less than a half inch long. However, unlike those other species, stoneflies do their thing only where cold, clean waters flow.
By Bob Curley
- The new chicken sandwiches at McDonald's, Popeyes, and Chick-fil-A all contain the MSG flavor enhancement chemical.
- Experts say MSG can enhance the so-called umami flavor of a food.
- The ingredient is found in everything from Chinese food and pizza to prepackaged sandwiches and table sauces.
McDonald's wants to get in on the chicken sandwich war currently being waged between Popeyes and Chick-fil-A.
'We Have So Much More to Do': Youth Climate Activists Declare as Global Elite Close Out Davos Forum
By Andrea Germanos
Youth climate activists marched through the streets of Davos, Switzerland Friday as the World Economic Forum wrapped up in a Fridays for Future demonstration underscoring their demand that the global elite act swiftly to tackle the climate emergency.
Trending
By Tim Radford
The year is less than four weeks old, but scientists already know that carbon dioxide emissions will continue to head upwards — as they have every year since measurements began — leading to a continuation of the Earth's rising heat.