“Vomit Comet” is a nickname for any airplane that briefly provides passengers with a nearly weightless environment by following a parabolic vertical flight path. The aircraft mimics the trajectory of an object in free-fall and therefore does not exert any g-force on its contents. As a result, passengers have zero apparent weight relative to the aircraft. According to the director of the Reduced Gravity Research Program, what percentage of passengers on zero-g flights becomes violently ill? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Tay al-Ard, literally translated to mean “folding up of the earth,” is the name for thaumaturgical teleportation in the mystical form of Islamic religious and philosophical tradition. Some explain the concept as traversing the earth without moving, while others explain that it is the earth which is displaced under the traveler’s feet. Tay al-Ard is a common concept in Sunni, Shia, and Sufi belief, though each group interprets it slightly differently. What Quranic verses allude to such travel? 
The daguerreotype, an early form of photograph, was invented by Louis Daguerre in the early 19th c. He collaborated with J. Nicéphore Niepce, who created the first permanent photograph, but completed the design alone following his partner’s sudden death. A daguerreotype, produced on a silver-plated copper sheet, produces a mirror image photograph of the exposed scene. Daguerre’s process made portrait photography possible for the first time. How did the French government describe the invention? 
In the second half of the 17th century, buccaneers began operating under a set of rules that eventually became known as Articles of Agreement, or the Pirate’s Code. While the rules generally varied from one captain to another, most contained provisions for discipline, specifications for each crewmate’s share of treasure, and rules regarding compensation for injury. According to records of the code, what was the punishment for striking another man while in the service of Captain John Phillips? 
Karaoke, a form of entertainment in which amateur performers sing songs using pre-recorded music, was popularized by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue in the 1970s. Inoue invented a coin-operated music player in 1971 after fans requested recordings of his performances—they wanted to sing along with the music on a company retreat. He never patented the karaoke technology and thus forfeited a potential fortune. What song has been banned at many bars in the Philippines for causing too many fights? 
Influenza, commonly known as “flu,” is a highly contagious viral disease that is characterized by fever, respiratory symptoms, fatigue, and muscle pain. The word influenza stems from the Latin root influentia, meaning “influence of the stars,” because before people knew that organisms cause disease, they thought that the stars influenced the spread of influenza. Between 1918 and 1919, how many people were killed in a worldwide lethal flu pandemic? 
Most bats navigate the world and locate prey through the use of echolocation, a biological sonar process in which an animal emits a sound and then uses the resulting echoes to establish the locations and identities of nearby objects. Ben Underwood, who lost his eyes to cancer at the age of three, is one of the few people who has honed his own echolocation skills and uses the technique to determine the position, size, shape, and composition of objects near him. What sports does Underwood play? 
May 1968 is the name given to a series of protests and a general strike that nearly led to the collapse of the de Gaulle government in France. It began as a series of student strikes at a number of universities and lycées in Paris and quickly spread throughout the country. Within a matter of weeks, roughly two-thirds of France’s workforce, or 10 million people, were on strike. The vast majority of the protesters espoused left-wing causes and pushed for change in what areas of French society? 
MOOSE, originally an acronym for Man Out Of Space Easiest and later changed to the more professional-sounding Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment, was a proposed emergency bail-out system capable of bringing a single astronaut safely back to Earth from orbit. The system required the astronaut to exit his spacecraft in a specially-designed suit, climb into a plastic bag filled with insulating foam, and reenter the atmosphere protected by a thin heat shield. Has anyone ever used the system? 
The weightlessness experienced by people in space can lead to a number of adverse health effects including nausea, muscle atrophy, and skeletal deterioration. In order to prevent astronauts from developing such health problems, engineers have proposed the development of artificial gravity devices that can simulate gravity in outer space. Theoretically, a rotating spacecraft could produce this sort of gravity inside its hull. How would a ship’s rotation exert artificial gravity on an object?