Breaking records......Is there a limit.....?

[Wacky Racer]

OK,

We all know records are there to be broken, but is there a limit that can never be breached?

For example, in 1954 Roger Bannister cracked the four minute mile...will anyone ever do it in three minutes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEgHhijFnEU

The Isle of Man TT lap record has just been broken at over 131mph...crazy...but will it ever get to 150mph......remember, in the mid thirties when it was around 85mph, would anyone have ever dreamed it could reach 130 within a lifetime?......

[Cotty]

You have kind of answered your own question. As technology improves and makes bikes faster then they will go quicker thus records will be broken. Unless you can look into the future and see that no improvements will be made then record will be broken.

[stifler]

I have thought this before about the 100m sprint.

Will a human ever acheive a sub 9 second time?

[Antony Moxey]

I think records will continue to be broken, but by less each time. 100m for instance - it'll never get to be 5 seconds, but will get lowered by the odd 100th here and there and as timing gets more accurate then it'll go to 1000ths of seconds too.

[Pigeon]

Yeah, it asymptotes to some limiting value.

Same with the TT, there's some theoretical maximum speed at which a bike can lap that course - most likely set by human endurance in hanging on to the thing - which the set record will more and more closely approach.

Flying round the world non-stop has got legs, you could make a really reliable solar-powered plane with batteries for the night and stay up until you got bored stless, so it will be circled more and more times by barmier and barmier people until you get people living their whole lives in a plane flying round the world.

(How fast you can do it is much closer to the limit already, because if you go much faster than we already can the plane melts.)

At the other end of the scale there are things like being the first one to climb Everest, which can never be broken, and all you get is a series of first of some particular category to climb Everest where the categories get steadily more and more pathetic.

[Engineer1]

All records have a theoretical maximum, running the 100m at some point the limits of the human body will kick in, and something as daft as the strength of a human leg bone will be the limiting factor. With vehicle speeds it could be the piston speeds or the tyres but something will eventually provide a limit even if eventually those limits come down to fundamental laws of physics.

[Pints]

Considering for a moment the 100m sprint, perhaps the 9 second barrier will be broken but (for argument's sake) 3 seconds? "Highly unlikely" doesn't even begin to cover it. So between 9.69 (or whatever it is now) and 3 seconds, there must be a time that will never be beaten.

[Dupont666]

will anyone break Burt Munro's records? (if you dont know who he is hang your head in shame)....

famous for setting an under-1000cc world record, 183.586 mph (295.453 km/h) in 1967.

I dont think they will due to the run up allowed has now been shortened and as such hopefully his record will stand for a longtime to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Munro

[andy ted]

I was thinking about this the other day! With the 100m there feels like there should be an absolute limit. To say 1 day someone will run the 100m in 5 seconds etc. sounds silly but where is the limit then? I can't imagine a situation where the limit could not be broken by even the tinyest of ammounts, a fraction of a second could be shaved off and given a long enough period of time then the 100m record would start aproaching 0 which sounds even more rediculous.

So I can't imagine an absolute limit that can't be reduced by a tiny ammount but at the same time there feels like there should be some sort of limit!

[Dupont666]

Antony Moxey said:

I think records will continue to be broken, but by less each time. 100m for instance - it'll never get to be 5 seconds, but will get lowered by the odd 100th here and there and as timing gets more accurate then it'll go to 1000ths of seconds too.

depends what you use as the rules and the changing of them to stop people with ideas and inventiveness...

Pretty certain para olympians will start running faster than they able bodied counterparts soon.

Take this for example:

http://www.blahblahtech.com/2008/01/para-olympian-...

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=...

or the banned running spikes with too many spikes that meant the runners were litterally tearing up the track...

editted cuz i is ste at speeling

Edited by Dupont666 on Friday 12th June 11:35

[Cara Van Man]

stifler said:

I have thought this before about the 100m sprint.

Will a human ever acheive a sub 9 second time?

In theory, with training and evolution the time could come down to much less.

[Cotty]

Dupont666 said:

will anyone break Burt Munro's records? (if you dont know who he is hang your head in shame)....

Or you can watch the film
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/