Balloon manoeuvres

Long live the king – of mangoes! In India the famed ‘king of mangoes’, the Alphonso mango, is in drastically short supply after a particularly bad bout of adverse weather. Inspired by the mango’s plight, the Unexpected Elements team takes a look at what fruit science can bear.Fir ...  Show more

How do you translate the latest science work across the 2000 different languages spoken around the African continent? And have you heard of sky mountain? Africa Day has the Unexpected Elements team taking a deep dive into a range of unexpected stories from across the continent.Th ...  Show more

Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of the chemical elements. Today he looks at helium. Helium is a finite resource here on Earth and many branches of science need it. Doctors need it to run MRI machines to d ...  Show more

Balloons are often filled with helium, which has a lifting force of one gram per meter. It's possible to assemble enough balloons to lift yourself from the ground -- but how many balloons does it take? Tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more.

In early February, 2023, the US shot down a Chinese balloon. The US says the balloon was gathering intelligence while the Chinese claimed it was a weather balloon. We look at the history of spy balloons and how they've evolved over time, as well as the dilemma these balloons put ...  Show more

Have you ever accidentally let go of a helium balloon and watched it float up … up … and away? It drifts way up in the sky until it’s just a tiny speck! But what would happen if a balloon made it all the way to outer space? We asked astrophysicist Amanda Farah to help us find the ...  Show more