SortStack #2503 — 2033-04-16

By duration · Order from shortest to longest.

1. A car airbag inflating after a crash 30 ms

   The bag must fully inflate before your head arrives — roughly ten times faster than the blink of an eye, driven by a controlled chemical explosion.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. One full rotation of Earth on its axis 23.9 h

   A true rotation takes 23 hours 56 minutes — the extra 4 minutes of our day come from Earth also moving along its orbit and needing to catch up to the Sun.

5. 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.

6. How long the Hagia Sophia has been standing 1.5K years

   Built in just five years under Justinian, it has since served as cathedral, mosque, museum, and mosque again across nearly 1,500 years.

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