Last Monday, a Lion Air plane, departing Jakarta, disappeared from radar shortly after taking off. After rescue crews confirmed the crash, and found no survivors, the investigation into the why began. And with it, the search for the black boxes.

Whenever an airplane accident occurs, the black boxes are an important tool for investigators to figure out what went wrong. Every commercial air plane is required to have two installed: the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The CVR records sounds, including the pilots voices, which helps investigators figure out what the pilots were thinking and doing before and during the incident. The FDR, on the other hand, collects dozens or more parameters about the plane’s state every second, allowing investigators to reconstruct how the airplane was performing, as well as determine whether any sensors produced faulty values.

And despite being called black boxes, they are not actually black. Instead, they’re painted in a bright orange, to make it easier to spot them in debris. They’re also outfitted with locator beacons, so they can even be recovered if they’re in water. And they’re designed to withstand the enormous forces of a plane crash, as well as surviving any fires or underwater pressures that they might be exposed to afterwards. No matter what happens to the plane, the black boxes must survive it.

We don’t yet know why the Lion Air plane crashed into the sea. But now that the flight’s FDR has been recovered, the primary cause of the accident might become clear soon. And then the various national and international flight safety boards will issue new directives to airlines, to ensure that the same reason won’t bring down another plane.

Getting Warmer

In Issue #80, I wrote about the BepiColombo probe, which just started its travels toward Mercury. The Parker Solar Probe, which launched only a month earlier, has its sights set on a bigger target in the vicinity: the Sun itself. And it’s starting to get close, getting within 42.7 million kilometers to the sun’s surface. And it will be getting even closer: The goal is to close the gap down to a mere 6 million kilometers, so the probe can study the solar winds. Most of the time, they’re responsible for creating the auroras, but strong bouts of solar winds can damage satellites, and in extreme cases, even Earth’s electrical grid. To learn more about solar winds might allow to us to predict them better, like a weather forecast, so we can be prepared if another storm comes our way.

Sun Block

Speaking of the Sun: since we have a problem with rising temperatures here on Earth, can’t we just block it out, so it doesn’t keep heating the Earth up? Well, no, not really, even though there have been a lot of proposals to do exactly that (Video). And while we’re at it: We also can’t terraform Sahara to stop climate change either (Video).

Scandalous Ways of Eating a Burrito

Justin Biber doesn’t know how to eat a burrito. Or maybe he does. Who knows? After all, the person eating the burrito sideways was not only not Biber, the whole thing was staged to go viral, and remind you that you shouldn’t believe everything you see, especially online.

Happiness Cruise Control

You might have heard that cruise ships are small, floating towns. So, Mario Salcedo decided to quit his job, pack his bags, and live on them all the time. Now claims that he is the happiest guy in the world, always vacationing. Does that lifestyle hold up? (Video)

📖 Weekly Longread 📚

Willem “The Nose” Holleeder is one of the most notorious criminals in the Netherlands. And police were never able to pin anything on him, because witnesses either recanted or turned up dead. Until his own sister turned on him — and had to go into hiding for fear of revenge.

🦄 Unicorn Chaser 🦄

An aerial view of dogs herding sheep.