High Altitudes facts
While investigating facts about High Altitudes May Produce Hypoxemia By and High Altitudes Cause Seizures, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Human Evolution solves the same problem in different ways. Native Early peoples adapted to high altitudes differently: In the Andes, their hearts got stronger, in Tibet their blood carries oxygen more efficiently.
how high altitudes affect your breathing?
Deceased Tibetan Buddhists are given a “sky burial” in which the body is folded in half, walked to the burial site on someone’s back, and then dismembered and fed to vultures. There is no wood for a cremation, and the ground is too hard to dig due to the high altitude they live in.
Why do athletes train at high altitudes?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering why is it difficult to breathe at high altitudes. Here are 50 of the best facts about High Altitude Meaning and High Altitudes And Asthma I managed to collect.
why is there less oxygen at high altitudes?
-
In 2016, Capt Bertrand Piccard was the first person to fly around the world in a plane powered entirely by the sun; 25k miles w/o a drop of fuel. His great uncle, Jean Felix Piccard, was a high-altitude balloonist and inspired Gene Roddenberry to create the STNG character Capt Jean-Luc Picard.
-
The Sun is actually white. Viewed from space or a high altitude, it appears as its true color white. Whereas viewed from a low altitude, atmospheric rendering makes it appear to be what we believe as yellow.
-
Digital cameras are often shipped by sea rather than by air because the increase in gamma rays at high altitudes can fry some of the pixels on the sensors. This issue was experienced while filming Superman Returns.
-
Nike founded and oversees an ultra-elite running group, with state of the art equipment such as underwater treadmills, and whose athletes live in a specially designed house where filters remove oxygen so the athletes develop more red blood cells in a simulated high-altitude environment.
-
Photoflash bombs existed. Dropped by reconnaissance aircraft, these 100lb bombs created a blinding 500,000,000 candlepower burst of light, enabling nighttime aerial reconnaissance photography from high-altitude
-
Winston Churchill had an oxygen mask made for him for flying in high altitude airplanes during WWII that was customized to allow him to smoke cigars through a hole in the mask.
-
Flight attendants hate serving Diet Coke because at the high altitude it takes up to three times longer for its fizz to settle than for other soft drinks.
-
Bumblebees hold the insect record for high altitude flying. They have been discovered on Mt. Everest at more than 5,600-meters above sea level, and flew successfully in a flight chamber which recreated the thin air of 9,000-meters.
-
About Ruppell’s griffon vultures which can fly at over 37,000 ft high, higher than the altitude of an average airplane
-
"Arsenic Eaters" - a group of Austrians who ingested doses far beyond the lethal dose of arsenic trioxide without any apparent harm. They used to eat up small doses initially and gradually built up to 300-400mg as a mithridate to help enable strenuous work at high altitudes in the Alps
High Altitudes data charts
For your convenience take a look at High Altitudes figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why is there less oxygen at high altitudes?
You can easily fact check why do athletes train at high altitudes by examining the linked well-known sources.
The reason birds can fly at such high altitudes is because their respiratory system allows them to inhale and exhale at the same time, significantly increasing it's efficiency.
Project Mogul was a US Airforce secret project to detect nuclear test acoustically with microphones mounted on high altitude balloons. When one such balloon crashed in Roswell, NM in 1947, they covered it up by saying it was a weather balloon. - source
You can safely land a helicopter from high altitude without engine power. - source
In 1942, hundreds of skeletons were found around an obscure high altitude lake in India. The skeletons were the remains of a 9th century AD party killed by a freak hail storm.
Oxygen deprivation worsens depression, which has caused Colorado Springs, CO (with its high altitude) to become the second most suicidal city in the U.S. - source
Can you travel to high altitudes when pregnant?
The British RAF filled their reserve fuel tanks with beer in order to quench the thirst of troops at the front lines in WWII. They were called "beer bombs" and the high altitude kept the beer cold en route.
How do tibetans survive at high altitudes?
about the death spiral. It's when two eagles soar up to high altitude, lock talons, and tumble and cartwheel toward Earth They let go before reaching the ground, it is part of a mating ritual
Gasping for air in a high altitude environment, plus UV light reflecting off snow will cause the roof of your mouth to get sunburnt.
The largest nuclear test conducted in outer space. Starfish Prime, a July 9, 1962 high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States was launched from Johnston Island. The resulting EMP damage shut down communications, street lights and set off burglar alarms in the Hawaiian islands.
During WWII American pilots found a way to manufacture ice cream on board. They would “place prepared ice-cream mixture in a large can and anchor it to the rear gunner's compartment of a Flying Fortress. It is well shaken up and nicely frozen by flying over enemy territory at high altitudes."
Dzo has low pulmonary artery pressure which prevents pulmonary hypertension when this animal inhales thin (rarefied) air on the high altitudes. Only few animals have this trait.