Vomit Comet
IMAGINE the sensation of floating like a feather through the air. That's roughly what it feels like to be weightless. You can experience that sensation for 5 minutes by travelling to the edge of space with Virgin Galactic - once its spacecraft has completed testing - for a modest $200,000. If 5 minutes is too brief for you, pay the Russian space programme $35 million and you can buy yourself a whole week's stay on the International Space Station.
But you don't have to go into space (or be a multimillionaire) to feel a similar effect much closer to Earth, if you've got a mere $5000 to burn. That's the cost of a flight in a modified Boeing 727 alarmingly nicknamed the Vomit Comet.
I did a similar trip a few years ago on a modified Russian cargo plane. It was unforgettable. The plane flew in a parabolic arc, accelerating upwards so swiftly that passengers experienced 1.8 g, which glued me to the floor. As we approached maximum altitude, the plane levelled off sharply. I shot up and was flung smack against the ceiling.
Suddenly I was weightless. It was an exhilarating and baffling feeling to somersault like an Olympic gymnast and flip over like a martial-arts champ. Yet when I tried to walk on the floor of the plane, arms and legs flailed around, seemingly disconnected from my body.
The weightlessness lasted just less than 30 seconds before we dived back down and then repeated the roller-coaster ride several times.
WHERE: Zero Gravity Corporation (www.gozerog.com) operates the Vomit Comet, officially named G-FORCE ONE, from Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, as well as other US cities
WHEN: Several times a month
Dark sky parks
FROM the moment electric lights were introduced in 1880, their glow has been spreading across the night sky like a shining oil slick. Today light pollution means that over half the population of the European Union and two-thirds of the US are unable to see the Milky Way unaided. Were Galileo alive today and using his original equipment, he would not be able to discern the rings of Saturn - unless, that is, he was working in one of the few places on Earth that have remained dark enough. Branded Dark Sky Parks (DSPs) by the International Dark-Sky Association, these "optically clean" places are a blessing for astronomers, both amateur and professional.
The first place declared a DSP was Natural Bridges National Monument in southern Utah. It rates a 2 on the Bortle dark-sky scale, a measure of light pollution ranging from 1 (none, as in the middle of the ocean) to 9 (inner-city level). Faint objects like galaxies and globular clusters are clear to the naked eye from here; the night I visited, the night sky was bright enough to read by, the Milky Way was lit up like a celestial highway and faint meteors continually peppered the heavens.
Since 2007, when Natural Bridges was declared a DSP, four more sites have joined the list, including Cherry Springs State Park in central Pennsylvania (Bortle 2 to 3) and Observatory Park in Ohio (4). Europe's first two were declared in 2009: Galloway Forest Park in southern Scotland (2 to 3) and Zselic Starry Sky Park in south-west Hungary (3 to 4).
WHERE: See maps
WHEN: Best to visit during dry months
Catch a kraken
SHE'S got three hearts, eyes the size of soccer balls and a brain shaped like a doughnut. And she's the first colossal squid ever to go on public display.
Caught in 2007 by fishermen in the Ross Sea off Antarctica, she was initially frozen in the vessel's hull, then defrosted and preserved in formalin. She is now on display in her own custom-built tank at the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand in Wellington. At 4.2 metres long and weighing 495 kilograms, she is the most massive invertebrate ever to be studied at close quarters, the museum claims.
The colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) lives in Antarctic waters and is thought to be more aggressive than the famed giant squid (Architeuthis dux) - one of which has been "plastinated" and put on display in Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds exhibition. The giant squid does grow longer than the colossal one, though, and more giant squid have been caught off New Zealand recently than anywhere else, netted mostly by trawlers working the hake fisheries in the deep waters off South Island. So if a preserved sea monster doesn't float your boat, and your wallet is fat enough, you might be able to charter a trawler from a port such as Greymouth, on New Zealand's west coast. If you're seriously lucky, you just might haul up a kraken of your own.
WHERE: Te Papa Museum of New Zealand in Wellington (www.tepapa.govt.nz)
WHEN: Year round
Trinity test site
AT 15 seconds to 5.30 am on 16 July 1945, the world's first nuclear explosion turned 4 hectares of sand into glass and signalled the start of the atomic age. It happened at the Trinity site in the Jornada del Muerto desert of southern New Mexico.
It's hard to imagine a more isolated, desolate spot. Yet the site, part of the White Sands missile range, is open two days each year to pilgrims to this "ground zero" of the nuclear arms race. Aside from a bus that runs between the blast site and a historic ranch house where the bomb's plutonium core was assembled, visitors have to fend for themselves.
There's no crater left today, just a 2-metre lava-rock obelisk, a few historical photos on a chain-link fence and a single stump of the steel firing tower that held the bomb, which was code-named "the gadget". The government has cleaned up most of the "trinitite", the glassy green radioactive mineral formed by the blast. Have no fear: you absorb four to 10 times as much radiation during a five-hour flight as you do on a one-hour visit to the Trinity site.
WHERE: 200 kilometres south of Albuquerque, New Mexico (see bit.ly/LTKKk for more information)
WHEN: Open to the public on the first Saturday in April and October
The Great Stalacpipe Organ
CAVES are disorientating at the best of times, especially ones as baroque as Luray caverns, deep beneath Virginia's Shenandoah valley. But as you descend underground, past Titania's Veil (a gleaming white calcite formation), crossing Giant's Hall and skirting the mirror surface of Dream Lake, you will hear an ethereal music start to fill the dripping hush. Soon it feels as if you are standing inside a marimba made of stone, in a setting designed by Salvador Dalí. The songs seem to come from all around, as if the cavern itself were singing.
You have found the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a unique instrument that uses cave formations to make music. Conceived and built in the 1950s by mathematician Leland Sprinkle, the organ produces tones using rubber-tipped mallets to strike stalactites as its keys are played. It took Sprinkle three years and 2500 tries to find the right 37 formations to serve as natural chimes, ranging over five octaves.
The result is the world's largest natural instrument, covering 1.4 hectares and using over 8 kilometres of wiring. It's played daily through an automated system, and by an organist during the half-dozen or so weddings held there every year.
WHERE: Luray, Virginia, 90 minutes' drive west of Washington DC
WHEN: Open daily
Soudan mine
SEVEN hundred metres below the mountainous terrain of Soudan, Minnesota, lurks part of one of the most important experiments in particle physics. A unique box of tricks designed to detect neutrinos beamed from Fermilab, about 725 kilometres away in Batavia, Illinois, is buried here. This sensitive experiment is sited deep down in this old iron mine to shield it from the "noise" of cosmic rays raining down on the Earth.
I visited the mine to see the experiment for myself. Delving this far down into the Earth's crust is a haunting experience. And the MINOS neutrino detector - 6000 tonnes of steel and plastic - is a sight to behold, towering above like something from the lair of a James Bond villain.
But there's another reason to come here. Far less well known but just as impressive is the mural adorning one of the walls. By Joseph Giannetti, this modern-day cave painting, 8 metres high and 18 metres wide, is an impressionistic celebration of the advances in 20th-century neutrino physics, from Wolfgang Pauli's theoretical insight that neutrinos should exist to crucial neutrino experiments humming away today.
If art helps you contemplate the spirit of science, this may well be the most bizarre place you'll ever do it.
WHERE: The mine is a short drive from Minneapolis. You can organise a tour with the Soudan Underground Mine State Park services
WHEN: Between the Memorial Day weekend (end of May) and the end of September
Star City
EVER since Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space in 1961, all Soviet and Russian cosmonauts have trained at the Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Centre at Star City. It was a highly guarded military facility during the Soviet era, and even in the mid-1990s red tape made it a nightmare to visit. Nowadays, several companies make life easy by offering guided tours.
Compared to the slick NASA visitor centres, Star City, with its Khrushchev-era buildings, has a fascinating raw authenticity. The highlight is undoubtedly the training facilities, where you will see the giant tank where cosmonauts practise space walks under water, a mock-up of the Mir space station and a centrifuge that exposes budding cosmonauts to accelerations of up to 8 g.
Star City also has a museum showcasing spacesuits, charred descent capsules and assorted Gagarin memorabilia, including the YG 1 number plate of the Rolls-Royce that drove him past ecstatic crowds in London three months after his first space flight. You can also visit a replica of Gagarin's office, containing a book which crews still make a point of signing before every launch.
If you're lucky, you might even bump into a cosmonaut. I got to meet Sergei Avdeyev, who clocked up nearly 12,000 Earth orbits and 750 days aboard the Mir space station.
For the brave of heart, some tour operators can also arrange a spell in the centrifuge or flights which simulate weightlessness.
WHERE: An hour's drive north-east of Moscow (www.gctc.ru/eng)
WHEN: Open all year, except at weekends and on official Russian holidays. Permits are required to visit, so contact a tour operator well in advance. Be warned that winter temperatures can plummet below -20 °C
Live the dry life
STRETCHING 2000 kilometres along Africa's Atlantic coast, the Namib desert is one of the driest and most inhospitable places on the planet. Yet life here has adapted in remarkable ways.
Among the residents is the dancing white lady spider (Carparachne aureoflava), which flips onto its side and performs cartwheels to escape predators. Then there's Peringuey's adder (Bitis peringueyi), a mesmerising snake which moves by sidewinding so as to minimise contact with the scorching sand. It often lies in ambush buried in the sand, with only its eyes and the tip of its tail exposed.
If spiders and snakes send shivers up your spine, seek out the tenebrionid beetle (Onymacris plana). It harvests the morning fog by doing a headstand into the wind, so that tiny droplets condense onto its waxy wing-cases and roll down its carapace into its mouth. Finally there's the translucent palmato gecko (Pachydactylus rangei), which burrows into the sand with its webbed "spade feet" and licks dew off its own large eyeballs.
Tracking down any of these creatures requires serious detective work, so hiring a guide is advisable.
WHERE: Tours can be arranged in Swakopmund, Namibia
WHEN: All year
Chernobyl
ON 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl power station in Ukraine became the scene of the world's worst nuclear accident. Today it is a unique wildlife refuge, a construction site (a new steel shelter is being built over what is left of the reactor) and a poignant destination for intrepid visitors.
You would be wise to be concerned about levels of radiation in the area, but it is possible to visit safely. The key is to stick to the paths that have been cleared of radioactive debris, though to to be sure of doing so you will need to hire a local guide. When I visited in 1995, I was led to within a few metres of the remains of the reactor. A badge that recorded my radiation dose over the three days I was there revealed that I received no more than the radiation I would have been exposed to on a dozen flights across the Atlantic - significantly less than I had imagined.
Accept this level of risk and you are in for a unique experience. For a start, the area has rapidly been repopulated by wildlife: lynxes, eagle owls, great white egrets, swans and even bears have been spotted. Be sure to visit the ghost town of Pripyat, too. Once home to 50,000 people, it was evacuated a few days after the disaster.
Having seen the site itself, head to the Chernobyl museum in Kiev. Among the exhibits is footage of the reactor core, shot from a helicopter in the immediate aftermath of the disaster (YouTube hosts a wealth of footage and documentaries too).
WHERE: Tours offered by several companies in Kiev take you to see the remains of No 4 reactor, the one that exploded
WHEN: Best to visit between March and September - the Ukrainian winter can be unforgiving
All taken from here
