Month: April 2007

BBC pundit supports going metric

Mention ‘k’ to this economist, and it’s not only the size of investment capital that he’s thinking of..

BBC News economics editor and presenter of “Dragons’ Den”, Evan Davis, speaks out in favour of the simplicity of the metric system in an article on his BBC blog. Normally associated in the public eye for financial figures in the thousands of pounds, Evan Davis compares the elegance and simplicity of the metre and kilometre and of decimal currency against the confusion of inches, feet, yards and miles, pounds, shillings and pence.

Is the Moon still metric?

According to a BBC story, Dennis Hope, the self-proclaimed (imperialist?) owner of the moon, is selling plots of lunar real estate by the acre.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6533169.stm

BBC2 – Horizon – 2007-04-10 21:00

This story comes just weeks after a decision by NASA that all future manned moon missions, and permanent lunar bases, will use metric measurements exclusively.

http://www.metricviews.org.uk/2007/01/13/metric-moon-says-nasa/

So just how will future lunar land owners measure out their 1 chain by 1 furrow long on the moon?

World rail speed record, 574.8 km/h

The world rail speed record was last set on 3 April 2007 by a French TGV train, reaching a speed of 574.8 km/h on a special record-setting attempt on the TGV Est route between Paris and Strasbourg.

This is well above the fastest normal TGV operational speed of 320 km/h and also beats the UK rail speed record of 334.7 km/h, set by a Eurostar train, by a very long way.

At this incredible speed it would take just under an hour to travel the 530 km between London and Edinburgh. In comparison, this route is currently operated by InterCity 225 trains which, although capable of over 225 km/h, are limited by signalling to a top speed of only 200 km/h; only 2/3 of the typical TGV speed and barely 1/3 of this world record!