SortStack #2083 — 2032-02-21

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A camera speedlight flash firing at full power 1 ms

   At low power settings, flash bursts get even shorter — down to around 1/30,000 of a second, fast enough to freeze a bursting balloon mid-pop.

2. Sunlight travelling from the Sun's surface to Earth 8.3 min

   If the Sun vanished right now, we'd keep seeing it — and orbiting it — for another 8 minutes and 20 seconds before noticing anything.

3. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 25 days

   The world's largest arts festival stages over 3,000 shows — by ticket sales it trails only the Olympics and the football World Cup.

4. Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday 46 days

   It's famously a 40-day fast, but the calendar span is 46 days — Sundays are feast days and traditionally don't count.

5. Voyager 1's journey from launch to interstellar space 35 years

   It carries a golden record with greetings in 55 languages and Chuck Berry — and it still phones home daily on a 1970s 8-track-era computer.

6. The time since a human last stood on the Moon 53.4 years

   Gene Cernan traced his daughter's initials in the dust in December 1972 — no boots have touched the surface since.

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