I was watching a SciFi tv show where large objects had an outer speed limit of 18000 kph and that got me wondering what things in everyday life are faster than even 500 kph.
I know bullets can be fast, but they are not exactly everyday life (at least in my life).
I included mass for obvious relativistic reasons.
The crack of a bullwhip is caused by the tip exceeding the speed of sound, around 750 mph/1250 kph.
Neutrinos. About 100 trillion go through you every second with about .000001 percent interacting with you. And they have a non zero mass.
When you were a kid: The velocity of the adrenaline rushing to your brain triggering a “fight or flight” mode (mostly flight) after you hear the sound of your mother saying your full name in her native dialect.
(Actually the fear remains well into adulthood)
Rockets?
International space station goes around the earth at about 7km/s if I recall correctly. And it’s quite big.
That’s the kind of speed of any rocket going to meet with ISS or being put into earth orbit. Things reentrying from orbit hit the atmosphere at about that speed too.
Things going or coming to the moon need slightly more, I think ballpark is 10km/s, and above that you’re travelling to Mars, asteroids, Venus, Jupiter, etc etc.
I feel like that’s even less like “everyday life” than OPs example of bullets lol
I get your point but I’ll nitpick anyways:
Isn’t satellites as much part of everyday life as submarine internet cables, and our lives would be radically different without satellites but having only submarine cables?
Or do we need to see them to believe it?
Hmmmm that’s a good point.
I still wouldn’t count that as every day life because you’re not physically interacting with the satellite or submarine internet cables, even if you’re interacting with the effects of their existence.
But now I have to justify why my stance of “being physically near but still unable to see or touch directly” (as an internal mechanism of something) is any more “everyday life”. It feels like an internal mechanism counts as just as every-day as the thing its a part of, but is it really?
I don’t have a solid justification. It just feels different to me.
Hmm how about CRT monitors/televisions? Not that common these days but they are basically little particle accelerators that shoot electrons at a pretty good fraction of the speed of light (like 30%). But I guess that’s not really an answer to you question unless you define electrons as objects. I guess my other answer would be airbags which deploy at about 300 kmph
Mantis shrimp punches travel 12 to 23 meters per second (approximately 27 to 51 miles per hour) in water the acceleration involved can reach up to 10,000 Gs.
The peak force generated by a mantis shrimp’s punch can be as high as 1500 Newtons, which is over 2500 times the animal’s own body weight.
The acceleration of their punch is such thay it creates a cavitation bubble which, when it collapses, can generate 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit – nearly as hot as the sun’s surface at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.We named ours Smeagol.
The Mantis Shrimp is one of the few things that make me question pure raw evolution. How the fuck can you just evolve a sci fi plasma pistol?
The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.
- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
That manhole cover.
I wonder where that thing is nowadays. Probably landed in the ocean somewhere, or even burned up if it didn’t just flat out leave earth orbit.
Most likely never went far before it vaporized.
The crack of a whip is a sonic boom caused by the tip going supersonic.
That’s cool
Super sonic means above 340 m/s, give or take some meters.
Some sex includes supersonic elements, then.
Traditionally, you use a rider’s crop in sex, in which case, the cracking sound is the flap clap when you slap.
Bull whips, the ones that go supersonic, are often considered less sexy because they rip flesh and make people stop feeling all good and sexy.
Not that I’ve ever used either in sex. This is just what was explained to me back when I did photo shoots for BDSM community members and events.
That’s awesome knowledge! Thanks for sharing and enlightening me! :D
🎵 I wanna make a supersonic man out of you 🎶
Gotta go fast
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Glass cracks propagate at an absurdly fast rate. Something like 4x the speed of sound (1400m/s). Not a physical thing moving, but very common.
I think it would propagate at the speed of sound in glass.
It seems that depending on the type of glass and the direction of the waves (longitudinal, shear, or Extensional) the speed of sound in glass can be between 2300-6000 m/s
Longitudinal is the type we normally think of though, and that is between 3900-5600 m/s. Which is still much more variation than I was expecting.
The speed of sound in air is around 340 m/s depending on temperature.
So if the op is correct about the speed, then it seems the cracks propagate slower than the speed of sound in glass.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/sound-speed-solids-d_713.html
OP specifically asked for something with mass. This is not a thing with mass. This is the same as saying a shadow can move faster than the speed of light.
breaks a pane of glass over your head
let me see you do that with a shadow
Haha
Interesting… how do you know about this?
Slow Mo Guys on YouTube have filmed glass cracking and calculated its speed many times. Very lovely channel that I recommend!
When uncorking a champagne bottle, the gasses inside expand so fast that the white mist it can usually be seen is actually frozen CO2
This is my high school chemistry talking here, but don’t expanding gasses heat up? Ideal gas law and everything? Is there something weird happening like the CO2 instantaneously pressurizing or something right before expanding?
It’s the other way around, expanding gasses cool down and compression heats them up.
I remember there being something misleading about the “temperature” in pV=nRT, but yeah, I think I was getting confused because I was thinking about it purely formulaicly.
But if the pressure drops and the volume of the gas increases, in order for it to cool, that would mean the drop in pressure is much less significant than the rise in volume?
But yeah, I should’ve remembered that expanding gasses cool, because I know how aerosol cans work. It’s time to touch up on this stuff lol.
I had a similar conversation with my wife a few weeks ago. We were watching the hydraulic press channel, where they were compressing water to very high pressures. When the water inevitably squirted out of the chamber, it turned to steam. My wife said yeah that makes sense, applying that much energy to compress the water would increase its temperature, so it wants to expand to become steam. Then I thought about it a while, and said wait, according to first principles of thermodynamics, shouldn’t compressing water lower it’s temperature?! The turns out the real world is correct, I was wrong.
You’re mixing cause and effect.
The effect of lowering temperature is shrinking gases. If you force a gas to shrink it will increase temperature.
The air leaving your lungs during a sneeze is moving roughly 100mph.
Wow, that’s nuts
That’s probably the fastest thing a human body by itself can produce…
Modern MLB pitchers can regularly throw a baseball 100+ mph. Currently, the flick of the wrist during a curveball throw is the fastest human motion recorded.
Some viruses particles explode out of cells with crazy force. I don’t know it off the top of my head but I remember reading about that somewhere.
thing a human body by itself can produce…
…but nobody has measured my farts yet.
We have liftoff
Road
runnerfarter
Some MLB pitchers are able to throw baseballs faster than 100MPH. Nerve signals can travel through the body at 200MPH.
Commercial airliners (800 - 950 km/h). By far the fastest “everyday” experience for a human is flying.
The tips of the turbine fan blades are going much faster than the plane itself.
Do you know any rough numbers?
According to this document, the Trent XWB from Rolls Royce has a fan diameter of 3m and a reference rotational speed of 2700 rpm for the low pressure stage, which would result in a blade tip speed of 424.1 m/s or 1526.8 km/h according to this calculator
There are quite a few bullets capable of >4,000 feet per second (or 2,700 mph, or 1,220 m/s or 4,390 kph).
You could call them an everyday occurrence if you live in the US
That’s what kids learn in applied physics class
Gotta go being jingoist. Take your nonsense over to a political sub
Don’t know where you’re saying that. There were over 14,000 gun related deaths in the US in 2025. That’s more than 38/day and that’s not including non-fatal shootings. January 1st saw over 90 deaths alone.
No fewer than 19 people were shot and killed each day in the United States. (One of those least deadly days was in Q4, on November 24).
One of many reports. When you have that many, it very much is a “daily occurrence” in the US.
We’re a country of a third of a billion, so even as astronomically high as 19/day is, it by no means makes it an everyday occurrence for every single one of us.
it didn’t happen to me, how dare you say it’s hurting people!
in everyday life?
It depends if you are in Usa or Ukraine, or in a peaceful country.
Wait, I thought everyone played “Gun fire or fireworks” 🤔
Yet another ignorant jingoist
Take your nonsense over to a political sub
