The closest that two planes flying at high-speed have performed a mirror image is 45 cm (18 in) – that is just over the height of this book! The manoeuvre, known as the ‘Calypso Pass’, was performed by two 71,000-hp Lockheed-Martin F-16 Falcons belonging to the United States Air Force Thunderbirds display team at the Aviation Nation Air Show 2005 in Nellis, Las Vegas, USA on 12-13 November 2005. Both planes were flying at a speed of 1,223 km/h (760 mph) – close to the
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Of all the moons in the Solar System, the one which orbits closest to its planet is the tiny Martian satellite, Phobos. Phobos is 9,378 km 5,827 miles from the centre of Mars – which corresponds to 5,981 km 3,716 miles above the Martian surface. Phobos is a small potato-shaped irregular moon, measuring 27 x 22 x 18 km (17 x 14 x 11 miles). It is dark and covered with dusty craters and is almost certainly an asteroid which was captured by Mars’ gravity
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The record for the closest margin of victory in a car race is 0.0005 of a second, when Logan Gomez (USA) beat Alex Lloyd (UK) in the 16th round of the 2007 Indy Pro Series, the Chicagoland 100, at Chicagoland Speedway, in Joliet, Illinois, USA, on 9 September 2007. The Indy Pro Series is the developmental racing series sanctioned by the Indy Racing League. The Sam Schmidt Motorsports cars of champion Alex Lloyd and Logan Gomez battled for the lead with Robbie Pecorari throughout the
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With electricity passing through his body, Slavisa Pajkic ‘Biba’ (Yugoslavia) was able to heat a 15 ml (0.5 fl oz) cup of water from 25 °C to 97 °C (77 °F to 206 °Fin a time of 1 min 37 sec on the set of Guinness Rekord TV, Stockholm, Sweden on 24 November 2001.
The coldest place in the universe is in the Boomerang Nebula, a cloud of dust and gases 5,000 light years from Earth. It has a temperature of -272C (-457.6F). It is formed by the rapid expansion of gas and dust flowing away from its central ageing star. This cold region of the nebula was discovered in 1995 by astronomers using from data obtained by the 49 ft wide Swedish-European Space Observatory-Submillimeter radio telescope in La Silla, Chile. In the areas coldest spots, the gases are
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The coldest erupting lava in the world is the natrocarbonatite lava of the volcano Oldoinyo Lengai, Tanzania that erupts at temperatures of 500-600°C (930-1,110 °F). Common basaltic lavas erupt at temperatures between 1,100 and 1,200°C (2,010-2,190 °F). Oldoinyo Lengai is the only active carbonatite volcano on Earth. The bizarre carbonatite lavas look rather like molten chocolate upon eruption. It is extremely runny and has the lowest viscosity of any lava. Upon cooling it turns white in colour.
14.71 seconds, MELLORS, 02 January 2009
According to the Food Security Risk Index 2010, released by the risk analysis and rating firm Maplecroft, which evaluates the dangers to the supply of basic food staples for 163 countries, Afghanistan is the country at greatest risk to disruption of its food supplies. The current war between NATO forces and the Taliban is the principle reason for its exposure to this risk but poverty, poor infrastructure and failing roads and telecommunications, as well as the potential for droughts and floods, also contributed to the
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The material cost of World War II far transcended that of the rest of history’s wars put together and has been estimated at $1.5 trillion (£1.04 trillion). The total cost to the former Soviet Union was estimated in May 1959 at 2.5 trillion roubles, while a figure of $530 billion (£369 billion) has been estimated for the USA. In the case of the UK the cost of £34.42 billion ($49.43 billion) was over five times as great as that of World War I (£6.7 billion)
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Desertification: the transformation of arable land to desert, has a number of natural causes, including climate variation and soil erosion. Human activities including over-intensive farming, deforestation and even the migration of refugees in wartime can also give rise to conditions that make desertification possible. The situation is at its worst in Africa, where two thirds of the continent has been reduced to desert or dryland.