“A new era in computing that will see machines perform at least 1,000 times faster than today’s most powerful supercomputers is almost upon us. By the end of the decade, exaFLOP computers are predicted to go online heralding a new chapter in scientific discovery. The United States, China, Japan, the European Union and Russia are all investing millions of dollars in supercomputer research. In February, the EU announced it was doubling investment in research to $1.6 billion. Computer scientists measure a supercomputer’s performance in FLOPS, an acronym for Floating Point Operations per Second, while ‘exa’ is a metric prefix which stands for quintillion (or a billion billion). An exascale computer could perform approximately as many operations per second as 50 million laptops.” w/ photos

“They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time. The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes. It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place, but stay there too long and you may start hallucinating. It achieves its ultra-quietness by virtue of 3.3-foot-thick fiberglass acoustic wedges, double walls of insulated steel and foot-thick concrete.” w/ photos

“I would have gotten on top of that bus like a baus!” — Montisa2008

“12-year old Tom Schaar lands the first ever 1080 while skating the MegaRamp at Woodward West in Tehachapi, CA.” — redbull

“This is the incredible moment a racing driver broke a world record by hitting 257mph – in a modified Ford. Sean Kennedy, 29, smashed the existing record for acceleration over a mile-long stretch while driving a highly-tuned Ford GT in Texas. The daring motor sports enthusiast rocketed to an incredible 257mph in the humble car, which has been souped up with a 5.4-litre V8 engine and two massive turbo-chargers. Mr Kennedy went from a stationary position to an astonishing 200mph by the halfway mark, before setting the new ‘standing mile world’ by the end of the track.” w/ photos

“Check out this amazing one handed shot from Marcus Camby as he makes it in from full court but got off the shot just a second too late for it to count!” — NBA

“An electrical storm closed in around sunset, providing this surreal scene. I saw the light of the sky and wandered down to take a photo, but ended up staying for nearly 2 hours in the rain! Magical…” — technix32

“Filmed in 1927 at the Chiswick Baths in London, this quirky item shows an apparently 8ft tall woman. What seems to be more obvious is the extremely fat belly on her male friend! Her height should probably be taken with a pinch of salt as a lot of the supersize humans in the British Pathe archive often are given over inflated heights.” — britishpathe

“The most one finger push ups in 30 seconds was 41 and was achieved by Xie Guizhong on the set of Guinness World Records Special in Beijing, China.”

“After receiving a vision he believed came from the Holy Spirit, an Ethiopian weaver went to the mountains to carve entire churches from stone. He has carved four so far… all with basic tools.” — NatGeo