Teens send Lego man on an a balloon odyssey 24 kilometres high

 "Two weeks ago, Ho and Muhammad launched a homemade balloon carrying a Lego passenger and four cameras. It fell back down to Earth 97 minutes later with astonishing footage from an estimated 24 kilometres above sea level, three times the typical cruising altitude of a commercial aircraft."

"The project cost $400 and took four months of free Saturdays. It wasn’t a school assignment. They just thought it would be cool."

"They ordered a professional, $85 weather balloon online, and bought $160 worth of helium from a party supply store. Ho purchased a special wide-angle video camera he had been coveting with his own money."


"Finally, they assembled the whole thing, carefully carving out space inside the Styrofoam container for the three point-and-shoots, the wide-angle video camera, and a cellphone with a downloaded GPS app. They super-glued their Lego astronaut to a gangplank on the outside, and printed off a Canadian flag for him to hold. "


Source and video here: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120808--toronto-teens-send-lego-man-on-a-balloon-odyssey-24-kilometres-high

How much energy would the Death Star require?

"This planet is going to be modelled after earth with the exception that it is a solid planet. It is then possible to use the gravitational binding energy of the target planet to estimate the amount of energy required to be supplied to the Death Star's laser beam in order to destroy it [...] The energy required to destroy the planet in question is 2.25 ⨉ 10^32 J. However, the destruction of large planets such as Jupiter can require much larger energy demands [...] we can estimate this energy to be 2 ⨉ 10^36 J "

Source: http://io9.com/5876473/how-much-energy-would-the-death-star-require-to-destroy-earth