How fast can a human possibly run 100 meters? (answer: about 7 seconds)

mozz , 3 hours ago (edited 2 hours ago)

Stephen King already debunked this line of thinking though

Albbi , 2 hours ago

Oh, a robot reading a book. Thanks, I guess.

mozz , 2 hours ago

Hm, that's unpleasant. 😕 I'm unable to listen right now and I didn't want to link to somewhere that had a plot synopsis or other spoiler equivalent, so I thought an audio of the actual story would be fine. I fixed it just now to link to something more cryptic but probably also less off putting.

suburban_hillbilly , 2 hours ago

The claim that humanity with all the money, medicine, science, and effort placed into recruiting and training world class sprinters has only managed to achieve less than 70% of the potential top speed for a human and that someone could pop up in the next couple decades that could drop the world record by more than it has moved in the last century in one fell swoop is not plausible. Sprinting is too close to raw power output for this kind record movement and if your analysis says that it is then you need to go back to the drawing board.

thesporkeffect , 1 hour ago

That’s actually what is happening here. Rather than a ‘gut feeling’ about human performance, someone/several people decided to try to model it with the best available information. If it’s wrong, the next step is to prove why it’s wrong and get a new ‘best approximation’.

The next step is not to throw it all out because it doesn’t sound plausible.

AnUnusualRelic , 2 hours ago

You’ll probably still miss your bus though.

geneva_convenience , 2 hours ago

The fastest top speed ever achieved by a human was Bolt’s 12.42 meters/second (27.8 mph).

However, anatomical studies suggest peak speeds up to 15.6-17.9 m/s (35-40 mph) are achievable.

science btw