SortStack #2349 — 2032-11-13
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- A Venus flytrap snapping shut on a fly 102 ms
The plant can count: it only snaps after two trigger-hair touches within about 20 seconds, which keeps it from wasting energy on raindrops.
- An average human's reaction to a starting gun 252 ms
Athletics rules treat any sprint start faster than 100 milliseconds as a false start — it's considered humanly impossible to react that quickly.
- Jeff Bezos' first Blue Origin spaceflight, launch to landing 10.2 min
The 2021 flight carried both the oldest and youngest people to reach space at the time: 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.
- A standard university lecture 50 min
Attention research suggests student focus starts lapsing after 10-15 minutes — which is roughly when most lecturers are just warming up.
- The construction of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona (so far) 143.9 years
Begun in 1882 and still unfinished, it only received an official building permit in 2019 — Gaudí said 'my client is not in a hurry'.
- A photon's journey from the Sun's core to its surface 170K years
Energy ricochets through the dense interior for on the order of 100,000 years — then crosses the void to Earth in barely eight minutes.