I’ve always thought parts of Europe resembled a profile view of Marge… So, here ya go.
– Best viewed in “Satellite” mode sans labels.
Last year, Usain Bolt stunned athletics fans when he hacked 0.11 seconds off his previous world record for the 100-metre sprint. But what’s the ultimate human speed limit?
Intrigued by this question, Mark Denny at Stanford University, California, decided to work out how fast a human could possibly sprint 100 metres. He examined previous records for various athletics competitions – and greyhound and horse races for good measure – since the 1920s, and found that performances in many events followed a similar pattern, improving steadily until they reached a plateau. Horses in the Kentucky Derby, for example, appeared to approach their speed limit in 1949. Since then any improvements have become minimal and increasingly rare.
Human athletes, too, seem to follow this pattern. Timings for the women’s 100 metres approached a plateau in 1977. Male sprinters are still improving, but having constructed a model based on other events, Denny says they too seem on the verge of topping out. He predicts an absolute limit of 9.48 seconds for the 100 metres, just 0.1 seconds under Bolt’s current record. “If he keeps on course he will soon come close to the absolute limit,” says Denny.
An amazing collection of postcards from the dawn of the twentieth century that depict what life would be like in the year 2000. The site claims that the postcards were produced by Hildebrands (a leading German chocolate company of the time).
Windows 7 has sold more than 100 million licenses in 6 months. The operating system was launched on 22 October, 2009 and has gone on to sell more than 100 million licenses, making it the fastest-selling Windows OS in history according to Microsoft.
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