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TheSpeedof Life

Everything from a snail to light, racing at real proportional speed.

0 m/s
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Every object below races across the same 2.8 meters. Same distance, different speeds. Try to keep up.

You (walking)

0 m/s

Olympic swimmer

1.4 m/s

Cyclist

2.3 m/s

Dog (sprinting)

6.3 m/s

Usain Bolt

8 m/s

House cat

10.44 m/s

Horse (galloping)

13.4 m/s

Pickleball drive

17.9 m/s

Cheetah

22.4 m/s

Car (highway)

29.5 m/s

Bullet train

31.3 m/s

Peregrine falcon

88.9 m/s

Commercial airplane

108 m/s

Speed of sound

250 m/s

9mm bullet

343 m/s

SR-71 Blackbird

370 m/s

International Space Station

981 km/s

Voyager 1

7.66 km/s

Earth's orbit

17 km/s

Lightning

30 km/s

Speed of light

100,000 km/s

How much faster?

Putting it in perspective.

After a certain point, they all look the same.

A bullet, a spacecraft, lightning, light. At this scale, they're all just instant.

Meanwhile, slower than you…

Tectonic plate

5.05 cm/year · 875,000,000× slower than you

Plates move about as fast as your fingernails grow. Around 5 cm per year.

Fills this bar in ~99 years

Human hair growth

15.1 cm/year · 291,666,667× slower than you

Hair grows about 15 cm per year, or roughly 5 nanometers per second.

Fills this bar in ~33 years

Garden snail

13 mm/s · 108× slower than you

A snail's top speed is about 50 meters per hour.

Fills this bar in ~6 min

Three-toed sloth

40 mm/s · 35× slower than you

So slow that algae grows on their fur, turning them green.

Fills this bar in ~2 min

Giant tortoise

80 mm/s · 18× slower than you

Top speed: 0.3 km/h. They can live past 150 years. No rush.

Fills this bar in ~63s

You blink and light has traveled to the moon. Your heart beats and the ISS has moved 6 kilometers. Since you opened this page, you have traveled through space a total of0 km.Life moves fast enough. You don't have to.

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