Browsing: centimetres

When a lightning return stroke heats a channel only centimetres wide to roughly 30,000 kelvin, about five times the temperature of the Sun’s visible surface, the air expands so violently that the pressure wave rolls across the ground as thunder

Saving Tips July 28, 2026

A cloud-to-ground lightning return stroke can heat the air inside its narrow channel to roughly 30,000 kelvin, more than five…

At 3 gigahertz, a processor has only a third of a nanosecond between clock ticks, enough time for light to travel about 10 centimetres in vacuum before real interconnects, logic gates and capacitance shrink the distance a signal can cross on the chip

Saving Tips July 24, 2026

A processor running at 3 gigahertz gets one clock cycle every 333 picoseconds, roughly a third of a nanosecond. In…

Russia still custom-builds the Soyuz return seats for ISS crew members using plaster casts taken weeks before launch, because astronauts grow as much as five centimetres taller during a long-duration stay and a seat moulded to their Earth-shaped spine would no longer fit the body that comes home

Saving Tips June 12, 2026

Scott Kelly came back from the International Space Station in March 2016 measurably taller than the brother he had left…

When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.

Saving Tips June 5, 2026

When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov climbed out of his Soyuz capsule on the Kazakh steppe in March 1995, after more than…