SortStack #3630 — 2036-05-17
By duration · Order from shortest to longest.
- One heartbeat of a hummingbird in flight 48 ms
Hummingbird hearts can hit 1,260 beats per minute in flight, then crash to about 50 at night when the bird enters a hibernation-like torpor.
- 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.
- The men's 100 m freestyle world record swim 46.4 sec
Pan Zhanle's 46.40 at Paris 2024 stunned the field — he won by over a second, an eternity in a sprint event decided by fingernails.
- A typical national anthem performance at a sports event 1.5 min
Uruguay's full anthem runs about five minutes, while Japan's 'Kimigayo' has just four lines — the shortest lyrics of any anthem on Earth.
- The Isner-Mahut match, the longest in tennis history 11.1 h
The 2010 Wimbledon first-rounder stretched over three days with a 70-68 final set — the scoreboard wasn't programmed to go that high and broke.
- 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.