SortStack #1082 — 2029-05-26

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A chameleon's tongue reaching its insect prey 72 ms

   Small chameleons have the fastest tongues, accelerating at hundreds of g — proportionally the most powerful movement of any reptile, bird, or mammal.

2. A Formula 1 pit stop to change all four tyres 2 sec

   McLaren set the world record at 1.80 seconds in Qatar 2023 — around twenty mechanics working in a window shorter than a heartbeat-and-a-half.

3. A football (soccer) match, regulation time 90 min

   The ball is typically in play for barely 55 of those minutes — which is why competitions now add increasingly enormous stoppage time.

4. NASA's Perseverance rover travelling from Earth to Mars 203 days

   The 480-million-km cruise ended with the 'seven minutes of terror' landing — and the rover carried a small helicopter, Ingenuity, strapped to its belly.

5. The Cold War 43.9 years

   Historians call it 'the long peace' — the superpowers never fought each other directly, but proxy wars touched nearly every continent.

6. The age of the Lascaux cave paintings 17K years

   Four teenagers and a dog named Robot found the caves in 1940 — visitor breath damaged the art so badly that today tourists see a replica.

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