An anechoic chamber swallows almost every sound thanks to walls bristling with foam wedges and massive insulation. The quietest one ever measured reaches −24.9 decibels, below the threshold of human hearing. Visitors report hearing their heartbeat, their breathing and even the faint creak of their own joints.
Cooled below −183 °C, oxygen turns into a pale blue liquid. Pour it between the poles of a strong magnet and, instead of flowing away, it hangs suspended between them. The reason lies in its unpaired electrons, which respond to the magnetic field. Liquid nitrogen, by contrast, is colourless and pours straight through.
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a capsule hanging beneath a balloon, about 39 kilometres up. In that extremely thin air almost nothing slowed him down, and he reached around 1,358 km/h in free fall, or Mach 1.25. He became the first person to exceed the speed of sound with nothing but his own body.