image via – youtube.com

Sometimes things and events that seem absolutely random in and of themselves can end up coming together to form one heck of a story. Whether it is truly random or fated to happen, this is one of those strange turn of events that turned out for the best.

In June a group of students sent a balloon to the edge of space over the Grand Canyon. Despite having planned out the detailed launch, and anticipating where it would eventually land, they were never able to find and recover the craft and the camera or cell phone attached to it.

However, two years later an eagle-eyed hiker in Arizona happened upon the wreckage and the long lost footage was found. The students put together a detailed video and shared it on YouTube so the world could enjoy the beautiful sights that were captured.

The short clip walks the viewer through the background events and all of the preparations that led up to the big launch. First the students tested the balloon with a parachute flight test by dropping it from a height off the ground.

Then they did trajectory planning, made computer models, planned out a custom designed structure, and printed it out in 3D. Finally the day came to send it up into space. The students started out on the road at nine in the morning and headed to a launch site 20 miles west of the Grand Canyon.

There they assembled the balloon and made some last minute adjustments to the spacecraft, switching on the GoPro Hero3 and cell phone which were attached to the chassis. At 10:46 it was launched and less than ten minutes later the balloon had already reached an altitude of 22,967 feet, which put it at a distance of 7 kilometers above Earth’s surface.

By the time an hour and twelve minutes had elapsed, the balloon was 86,558 feet up (26.4km). From that height the enormous Grand Canyon looks like a tiny feature way below on the Earth’s surface, and the curvature of the planet is clear to see. As the balloon spins around you can even catch a glimpse of the moon far off in the distance.

An hour and 27 minutes after launch the balloon reached its highest elevation, 98,660 feet (30.1km), and a clearer view of the Grand Canyon below is shown. That’s also when the craft began its violent descent back to Earth as slow motion reveals the moment the balloon popped and flew away from it.

By the time it landed upside down back on Earth’s surface among some dry grass scrub a full hour and 38 minutes had gone by. The video includes the computer models which show the launch and landing sites relative to the Grand Canyon, and the flight path trajectory as well. Despite these calculations and all of the planning, the students were unable to find the remains of their craft and the video of its journey.

Two years later the camera was found and picked up by a hiker in Arizona who tracked down and returned the footage to the team who launched it. They were able to recover the incredible video and the stunning images that it captured along its epic journey into the stratosphere and back down.

The reason why it was lost in the first place was because there was no cell phone coverage in the area it landed, which the students were relying on to track it down. They had looked at inaccurate coverage maps provided by AT&T and thus the cell never received a signal when it came back to Earth.

The hiker who found the wreckage ironically worked at AT&T. She brought it to a company store and they identified the phones SIM card and tracked down the owner to send back the footage. Check out the awe inspiring film and revel in the beauty that is our home, planet Earth!

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image via – youtube.com

Our planet is at a turning point right now. We have a chance now to change things, if we can all just wake up and realize the destruction we are producing. Animals are going extinct at the fastest rate ever. The air is too polluted to breathe in. The oceans are contaminated with all sorts of toxicity and the economies of the world are all on the brink of a possible collapse in the near future.

We need to all come together as a unified front, and change this world for the better for the future of humanity and all living beings on this planet. We need to not only leave this planet a better place for our kid, but for our grand kids and their kids and so on! It’s time to stop being selfish and start working together so we can bring about huge change and prosperity to earth.

The poem in this video was written and recited by Prince Ea. His message is so potent, no words are wasted and each sentence flows like divine wisdom. This truly is a message everybody on planet earth needs to hear and think about. It concerns every last one of us in this world. What do you think of this poem?

Let us know after you listen below.

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Imagine walking through the woods on a cool, windy day. You look around and take all the sights in, from the trees above to the floor below. As you head through the trees you carefully step over dead branches and jutting roots, then you notice something odd and out of place.

What should be still, solid, stable ground is anything but that. Instead, the Earth all around you is heaving and moving slowly, like it’s alive or possessed by something. That would really freaky and weird, right? For one man, this was reality.

Brian Nuttall captured footage and evidence of his strange walk through the woods this past Halloween, when the weakened remnants of Hurricane Patricia were passing through Nova Scotia, Canada. He had been walking through the forest in Apple River when he came upon the peculiar sight.

In the video he shot the ground appears to be alive and “breathing,” it heaves up and down, and steadily moves around. Mr. Nuttall shared the video he captured with with the Facebook page We Love Nova Scotia. Since it was posted, the clip has quickly caught people’s attention and imagination, and many have offered a variety of explanations for the breathing ground.

The unique forest floor activity has been described as everything from eerie and supernatural to unbelievable and quite unusual. It’s definitely abnormal and it raises a lot of questions, the main one being; what the heck is happening here? Mr. Nuttall put forth his own theory for the movement, centered around the strong winds blowing at the time.

He wrote in the comments, “I believe the larger trees are doomed to blow down but are currently spared, the smaller trees around them help hold each other up, as the wind pushes the trees into one another. The punishing prevailing winds have taken their toll on the side hill, the roots have loosened and the mossy ground from the once shaded forest floor are giving way, soon to be toppled over.”

His explanation seems to be the most logical and plausible one. Plus, he was the only witness present at the time and actually saw everything else near the moving area, so he is in the best position to make an educated guess. That doesn’t mean others haven’t put forth their own viewpoints and theories as to what could possibly be causing the ground to “breathe.”

Some people believe it to be the work of aliens or some type of supernatural entity that lives below the ground, and maybe it’ waking up. More scientific oriented explanations center around the possibility of there being water under the ground. Nova Scotia borders the Atlantic Ocean, so a few people posited that it could even be salty ocean water that’s to blame.

Then there are those who believe that it may be a sinkhole that’s beginning to form. And of course, as with every video that seems too strange and cannot be clearly explained right away, there is the crowd who say that the video is faked and photo-shopped.

Regardless of whatever may be causing the strange ground movement, it’s an awesomely weird sight to see. Check it out for yourself and then decide what you think it is…

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