
Why driving at 80mph won't save you time
The inner digits show speed in the conventional way: in this case miles per hour. In other words, how far you travel at some velocity in a given time. The small digits around the outside are the paceometer: they show the same information but expressed the other way around. Instead of the distance you travel in a given time, this shows the time taken to travel a given distance. (For maths nerds, there is a similar inversion between the way the US and UK measure fuel economy in cars – we use 'miles per gallon' whereas the US and most other countries flip it and measure 'litres per 100km'.) What you will suddenly realise – something not instinctively obvious – is that the relationship between the two measures is completely non-linear. The faster you are going already, the less time you save by going 10mph faster still. Accelerate from 20 to 30mph and you save ten minutes for every ten miles you are travelling. Accelerate from 70 to 80mph and you save under a minute.
As you go faster, everything unpleasant and dangerous – braking distance, energy consumption, risk of accident, risk of fatality, the likelihood of being mistaken for a German – goes up, whereas the very thing you are attempting to achieve, namely a reduction in journey time, is being attained to a smaller and smaller degree.
This shouldn't be an epiphany, but it is. No one who had studied a paceometer would have demanded HS2 travel so needlessly fast. The distance involved is simply too short for the time-saving to be worthwhile. London to Manchester is about 160 miles. At 80mph that takes two hours. At 160mph you save an hour. But accelerate to 240mph and you have a train that can't stop mid-journey and can't go around corners to avoid the attractive parts of the countryside – in return for which you save a paltry 20 minutes. That's less time than you currently waste on the Euston concourse waiting for them to announce the platform number two sodding minutes before the train leaves.
There are a few questions to be asked here. Could the 'paceometer effect' be applied to other metrics? For instance, could you completely disrupt the whole commercial property market by demanding that prices were listed in 'square feet per £1,000' rather than the other way around?
You might reasonably argue that the paceometer makes a case against increasing the speed limits on motorways, since you could save people vastly more time by reducing the incidence of pointless roadworks and contraflows. But you could also use it to argue that the 20mph speed limit in London is absurdly low, since it notionally increases journey time by 50 per cent.
Or maybe not. In my next article, I plan to confuse you still further by suggesting that the funereal 20mph limit in London might not increase journey time by very much at all.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Scottish Sun
9 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Meet the battle-ready cyborg cockroaches that humans can control for SPY missions
Human operators will be able to control them by zapping their tiny brains with electrical pulses BUGGING OUT Meet the battle-ready cyborg cockroaches that humans can control for SPY missions Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) FIRST there were spy bees, now there are battle-ready cockroaches. Technology is changing, and therefore, so is warfare. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 A human-controlled spy cockroach could go on secret spy missions to expose information about enemy positions Credit: SWARM Biotactics 3 The bio-robotic startup secured €10 million in seed funding last month to help get its bugs onto the battlefield Credit: Reuters It might feel plucked out of science fiction, but German military tech company SWARM Biotactics is working on cyborg cockroaches that can spy behind enemy lines. The insects - hailed for being remarkably durable - are equipped with miniature backpacks fitted with cameras and other tools to gather data on enemies in real time. Human operators will be able to control them by zapping their tiny brains with electrical pulses. Each zap allows humans to control the insects' movements remotely, meaning they don't have to enter hostile environments themselves in order to gather information. "Our bio-robots - based on living insects - are equipped with neural stimulation, sensors, and secure communication modules," Swarm Biotactic's CEO Stefan Wilhelm told Reuters. "They can be steered individually or operate autonomously in swarms." For example, a human-controlled spy cockroach could go on secret spy missions to expose information about enemy positions. The bio-robotic startup secured €10 million in seed funding last month that will help get its bugs onto the battlefield. "Conventional systems fail where control is needed most - denied zones, collapsed infrastructure, politically complex terrain," said Wilhelm. "SWARM is the first company building an entirely new category of robotics: biologically integrated, AI-enabled, and mass-deployable systems for persistent intelligence in places no drone or ground robot can reach. Watch terrifying 'terminator' robot dogs with AI-targeted rifles being tested by US Marines "This funding moves us from deep tech to deployment - delivering the infrastructure democracies need to operate more smartly, more safely, and with total tactical awareness.' But SWARM aren't the only ones trying to bio-hack insects. A team of scientists in China claimed they have created the world's lightest mind control device for bees. While the device is strapped to a bee's back, three needles are pierced into the bee's brain. Operators can then send electronic pulses into the bee's brain and command it to fly in whichever direction they want. During tests, published in the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering earlier this month, the bees obeyed their operator's commands with 90 per cent accuracy. Beyond warfare, mind-controlled bugs could be used to help disaster relief operations. UKRAINE WAR SHIFT Wilhelm believes Europe is entering a decade where "access, autonomy, and resilience define geopolitical advantage". And Russia's invasion of Ukraine seemed to spark that shift, dozens of sources from across business, investment and government told Reuters. Sven Weizenegger, who heads up the Cyber Innovation Hub - the tech accelerator for the German armed forces, said the war in Ukraine removed a stigma towards working in the defence sector. "Germany has developed a whole new openness towards the issue of security since the invasion," he told the outlet. The country has been shaped by the trauma of Nazi militarism and a strong post-war pacifist ethos that has been reflected in its relatively small and cautious defence sector, Reuters noted. But Germany plans to nearly triple its regular defence budget to around €162 billion ($175 billion) per year by 2029. Much of that money will go into reinventing the nature of warfare, Reuters reported, citing sources. Sources also claimed that Chancellor Friedrich Merz sees artificial intelligence (AI) and start-up technology as key to its defence plans. The German leader is reportedly slashing red tape to connect startups directly to its military.


Time Out
2 days ago
- Time Out
‘The Fantastic Four' film they won't let you see (and how to watch it)
'I want a Fantastic Four flick, and I don't want it good – I want it Tuesday!' With these immortal words, German producer Bernd Eichinger commissioned legendary independent filmmaker Roger Corman to make a film based on Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four. The twist? It was never meant to be seen by the public. In the first issue of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's The Fantastic Four comic, published in November 1961, four astronauts – inventor Reed Richards, his scientist fiancée Susan Storm, her younger brother Johnny, and their friend Ben Grimm – were granted superpowers following exposure to an alien phenomenon during the first spaceflight of their experimental rocket. Richards was reborn as 'Mr. Fantastic', able to elongate any part of his body; Susan became 'The Invisible Girl' (self-explanatory); hot-headed Johnny could ignite himself into living flame, becoming 'The Human Torch'; most tragically, Ben's body took on stone-like properties, granting him superhuman strength and the nickname 'The Thing'. It was an instant success, but – Invisible Girl aside – the special effects required to bring such superpowers to the screen were not available to filmmakers until the late 1980s. It was then that Eichinger took an open-ended option to make a Fantastic Four film, on the proviso that it entered production by the end of 1992. In the meantime, Tim Burton's Batman became one of cinema's biggest ever box office and merchandising success stories, opening the doors to anyone with the rights to a hot superhero property. Eichinger hatched a plan as brilliant, cunning and diabolical as any the Fantastic Four's nemesis, Dr Doom, had ever dreamed up. By making an ultra-low-budget film, the producer could hold onto the rights, hoping that in the meantime, he would be able to set up a big deal at a major studio. If such a deal could not be made, the producer would still be left holding the negative of a Fantastic Four film, which could be released at a profit. Roger Corman, who – according to the title of his own autobiography – 'Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime' was chosen to make the film, and Oley Sassone (Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight) was hired to direct. Principal photography began on Boxing Day 1992, just five days before the rights were due to expire. It lasted a mere four weeks. The producer hatched a plan as cunning and diabolical as any of Dr Doom's Alex Hyde-White and Rebecca Staab played Reed Richards and Susan Storm respectively; actor/stuntman Carl Ciarfalio (The Incredible Hulk Returns) donned a convincingly concrete costume to play Ben Grimm, while Jay Underwood burned his scalp and almost fried his hair off, dying his brown locks blond to play Johnny Storm. Lee had longed to see his self-styled 'World's Greatest Comic Book' on screen, but understandably had concerns about the $1.5 million budget – a fraction of Batman's $35 million price tag. 'I have a sentimental attachment to The Fantastic Four,' he said, 'and I was heartbroken to think it might appear only as a low-budget quickie'. Then, just days before its January 1994 premiere, it emerged that Eichinger had bought back the film's negative, intending to shelve it – permanently. 'I feel very, very sorry for the actors and the director and most of the people involved in it,' a disappointed Lee commented. Six months later, 20th Century Fox announced that it had secured the rights from Eichinger, hiring Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire director Chris Columbus to direct a brand new $40 million movie, with real-life couple Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan tipped to star. Corman's budget-challenged yet well-meaning production would be relegated to fuzzy bootlegs sold at comic conventions and under the counters of video rental stores. Ironically, Columbus' film never happened, torpedoed by post- Batman superhero flops such as The Phantom and The Shadow. It would be another decade before Fox cashed in on the noughties success of The X-Men and Spider-Man by making a Fantastic Four film, with the then-unknown Chris Evans – Marvel's future Captain America – as Johnny Storm. A year before its 2005 release, moviegoers had marvelled at another family of superheroes, featuring super-strong inventor Mr Incredible and his wife, stretchy superhero Elastigirl, clearly a riff on the Fantastic Four. The success of The Incredibles did not doom the box office prospects of The Fantastic Four, however: it was as big a hit as The X-Men. But the 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, was a flop and a third film failed to materialise. Now, as Marvel's own The Fantastic Four: First Steps towers over the summer box office like the shadow of Galactus, Roger Corman's 1994 version remains officially unreleased anywhere in the world.


Metro
17-07-2025
- Metro
How a dusty old envelope led to discovery of one of world's rarest minerals
When Roland Eichhorn popped open the dusty cardboard box, he couldn't believe it. There, in the basement of a stuffy government office in Germany, was a pile of six yellow lumps. But these old rocks were one of the rarest minerals found on Earth. Until the discovery, only about a snowball-sized amount of the mineral, called humboldtine, had ever been found, Roland Eichhorn of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) said. 'And we've now found a second snowball,' he told the German newspaper Welt. Humboldtine, named after the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, was first discovered in a rundown brown coal deposit in the Czech Republic in 1821. The mineral is prized highly by collectors because it has only been discovered in 30 locations across eight countries, including the UK. 'We are legally obligated to make geological collection pieces accessible to the public,' Eichhorn said. Archivists were asked last year to digitise the agency's mineral and rock catalogue stored in the LfU basement in Hof, on the banks of the Saale, in 2023. While scanning the shelves, a worker stumbled on a note written by a coal mine owner in 1949. 'Humboldtine from the Mathias mine near Schwandorf,' it read, referring to an old open-pit mine for brown coal by the river Naab. Eichhorn was taken aback, to say the least, not only because of how rare the mineral is, but because it wasn't listed anywhere in the collection. The owner of the Mathias mine likely sent in samples of the rock, but it was never documented by agency officials. Eichhorn's team immediately began rifling through more than 13,000 rocks collected across 250 years, only to discover the humboldtine stored anticlimactically in a drawer. Inside was a box labelled 'Oxalit', German for organic mineral, with the rare material inside. The dusty rock is the 'cyborg among minerals', Eichhorn said. Like all life on Earth, the mineral's crystal lattice contains carbon, water and oxygen, according to the mineral database Mindat. But what sets it apart i the iron these ingredients to life are bound to. Humboldtine only forms when iron-rich rocks contact specific acids in damp conditions, creating a lemon-yellow clump that can contain crystals. Most of humboldtine unearthed so far are only millimetre‑sized grains. But how these yellow-amber crumbs formed in the Mathias mine left Eichhorn baffled. Brown coal, also called lignite, is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels and has a low concentration of carbon. More Trending A brown coal mine isn't exactly the best conditions for humboldtine to form, yet LfU lab tests 'clearly confirmed' it was the precious crystal. Digging at the mine had closed in 1966 and was flooded with water a few decades later. Eichhorn said this makes it almost impossible for officials to investigate the site and obtain clues about where the humboldtine came from. 'Why the yellow nodules formed in the Schwandorf brown coal will probably remain a mystery forever,' the LfU said. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Here's how it could become harder for people-smugglers to reach the UK MORE: Lufthansa CEO's wife 'runs over and kills woman crossing the road' on family holiday MORE: Now I want to watch Netflix's 'ultimate grandmother of all bad movies ever made'