Spider In Amber. It’s Amazing! 🕷

This enormous wolf

In 2015, a 777-200 made the Newyork-London route in 5 hours,16 minutes where the usual journey time is ~7 hours.

The flight reached ground speeds of up to 1200 km/h (745 mph),riding a powerful jet stream of up to 322 km/h (200 mph) tailwinds and breaking the sonic barrier ( 1224 km/h (761 mph)).

Tail and headwinds

The principle is analogous to those high school problems in relative velocity:

“A man rows a boat in a river. The velocity of the boat is … Find the stream velocity”

If you are headed downstream i.e in the same direction as the river stream you will reach your destination faster than if you were rowing upstream.

Similarly a tailwind is one that blows along the same direction of the aircraft increasing the net speed of the aircraft ,and headwind is one that blows in the opposite direction and slows the craft down.

So, does this mean that if you are moving at v kmph and there is a headwind of -v kmph, you would just hover? Hell yeah!

Take a look at this video:

Wind shear

A phenomenon known as ‘wind shear’ occurs when the wind speed changes abruptly, which can cause turbulence and rapid increase/decrease in velocity of flight.

This can be really challenging during landing since if the headwind turns tailwind, there is a possibility of the aircraft overshooting the runway due to the increased velocity.

What causes this ?

The aviation industry takes advantage of trade winds and jet streams in order to cut time off the flight and save fuel.

Tradewinds are caused by the unequal heating of the atmosphere at different latitudes and altitudes and by the effects of the Earth’s rotation (Coriolis effect).

                           Trade wind pattern. Credit: Earth Wind Map

Jet streams on the other hand are this narrow current of fast moving winds in the upper troposphere flowing west to east. And riding one can definitely make your travel time shorter.

                               Jet streams in the northern hemisphere

As a result of jet streams, within North America  the time needed to fly east across the continent can be decreased by about 30 minutes if an airplane can fly with the jet stream, or increased by more than that amount if it must fly west against it.

How do pilots know about this ?

Pilots receive a weather briefing actively during flight. Included in the briefing is the best combination of jetstreams and other wind patterns that the pilot can take advantage of saving time and fuel.

Many airports have runways facing in different directions in order to allow the pilots to use the runway that faces the wind during take off/landing.

Have a great day!

Top Shot: A Lion’s Gaze

Top Shot features the photo with the most votes from the previous day’s Daily Dozen, 12 photos selected by the Your Shot editors. The photo our community has voted as their favorite is showcased on the @natgeoyourshot Instagram account. Click here to vote for tomorrow’s Top Shot.

Your Shot photographer Pratha Narang photographed this lion after a buffalo hunt. Your Shot Producer, David Y. Lee writes, “Fantastic portrait of this magnificent animal. I agree with Your Shot photographer Jiawei L. who commented, ‘This is such an intense photo! I love the frame gives me an opportunity to look through the blur branches and finally reach the eye of the lion. It is such an intense spot!’” Photograph by Pratha Narang

“Baignade en rivière” again

Stanley Kubrick | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Kids parenting.  

Give your child a warm embrace.

Fiann on Instagram: “Here is a shot along the vertebral column of my smallest ichthyosaur called Bella. At the end you’ll see how her vertebrae compare to the biggest vert I’ve found from the same location. This huge bone is from an animal that would have been over 8 metres long, which is a bit bigger than poor little Bella! These fossils are both around 198 million years old. Bella was prepared by the ever talented @alexander_james_moore.