Dumpster Diving for Science

Or: Techno-Archaeology and the Tale of the Whale-Oil Tapes

Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center recently were able to recover some very old and useful data.  The Nimbus II satellite created a detailed mosaic of the earth's cloud cover and heat radiation in 1966.  Such old and detailed climate data is a boon to today's researchers, but it wasn't easy to come by.  Indeed, the data was lost for quite some time due to the tapes on which it was recorded – the secret to their longevity w...