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The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

Death-Defying Science at 75,000 Feet

The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

Sam Kean

Arts, Books, History

4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You wouldn’t think a lanky, awkward balloon geek would inspire Hollywood. But the death-defying Auguste Piccard was a worthy namesake for Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame...



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Transcript

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0:00.0

When the barometer shattered, August Picard could only watch in horror as Mercury spilled

0:06.6

everywhere.

0:08.6

Picard and his assistant were floating several miles in the sky, in a metal shell dangling

0:13.6

beneath a balloon.

0:15.2

Unfortunately, the head shell was aluminum, and Mercury is not only poisonous to breathe,

0:21.2

it also eats through aluminum like acid.

0:25.0

If Picard did not figure out how to clean up that Mercury and fast, a hole would open

0:30.1

up in the shell.

0:31.7

All their precious air would rush out, they would suffocate in minutes, and there was

0:36.7

more at stake here than just Picard's life.

0:39.8

He had ascended that day to run some experiments, experiments with big implications.

0:45.7

This work could firm up Einstein's theory of relativity, and according to some people,

0:51.0

it would reveal the fate of the cosmos, and even whether God existed.

0:56.9

But to do all that, Picard first had to survive this flight.

1:01.1

It would not be easy.

1:03.1

But in doing so, Picard would live up to his future namesake, in boldly going where

1:08.7

no man had gone before.

1:18.4

In the Science History Institute, this is Sam Keane and the Disappearing Spoon, a

1:23.5

Topsy, Turvy, Sciencey History Podcast, where footnotes become the real story.

1:35.6

August Picard was born in Switzerland in 1884.

1:40.2

He stood six foot six with a body like a cornstock.

1:44.3

He looked like a happy Edgar Allan Poe, with tuffs of hair sticking out in a gaunt

...

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