Rubber Chicken Flies into Solar Radiation Storm
April 19, 2012: Last month, when the sun unleashed the most intense radiation storm since 2003, peppering satellites with charged particles and igniting strong auroras around both poles, a group of high school students in Bishop, California, … launched a rubber chicken.
The students inflated a helium balloon and used it to send the fowl, named “Camilla,” to an altitude of 120,000 ft where she was exposed to high-energy solar protons at point blank range.
(HT Leslie Lawrence)
BONUS: “CHICKEN” was the theme of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. The ceremony included the premiere of the mini-opera “Chicken versus Egg”. Here is a photo of that year’s prize, the design of which reflected the theme of chicken, and also touched on some subtleties of the opera.
BONUS: The classic article, “Chicken Chicken Chicken“, and a recitation (in the video below) thereof by its author, Doug Zongker, at an Improbable Research show at the AAAS annual meeting.