Episodios

  • 85: David Bennett & Why Humans Like Harmony in Music
    May 22 2025

    What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it?

    Timestamps:
    (00:00:00) Intro
    (00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony?
    (00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions
    (01:24:04) Outro

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    We also learn about:

    Listening to Carly Rae Jepsen academically, the musical expert said Caroline has good music taste, I’m down hereeeeee, harmony is just the interaction of any two notes, Tom thinks about high school choir harmony all the time, even babies like harmony, even the oldest flutes have the same holes in them, octaves are so similar we call them the same note, watchmojo ranking of intervals, Carly Rae Jepsen - It Has Many Notes!, a spicy dissonant interval can be good in moderation - like a spicy seasoning in food, Tom is just grinning getting to ask these music questions, we invited you as a guest and you bring this dissonance to our home?? the messy sounding tones match to messy looking ratios, why can we even distinguish pitch? we use pitch in communication so much, animal sounds are the only things that make pitch, animals can recognize intervals, we call bird song song - but to them it’s probably more like language, it sounds cheesy - but in every human voice there’s a harmony, we’re asking the question backwards - we needed to understand harmony to be able to decipher a pitch, hearing the difference between notes IN YOUR HEAD, what we hear in our head is different than the world around us, harmonies are audio cheesecake - something we evolved to enjoy pumped to the max, “we can make cheesecake with our mouths”, cheesecake is just molecules, did you not have to learn human evolution in music school? oh my guilty pleasures are Tchaikovsky’s later works, Ella humble bragging about her spotify wrapped, this is going to come off as hostile but hasn’t enough already been said about the Beatles, how different generations experience the Beatles, more like DavidLegoStopMotion, it took 5 years after a dissertation on how to have a career as a musician on youtube, try song ideas and listen to them later, music theory is Descriptive not Prescriptive, liking technical music, the only way you’ll practice is if you enjoy it, the dopamine hit from the cheesecake of practice, can you send that advice to my mom 10 years ago, but you did practice… yeah, teenagers are good at learning instruments because they have free time, start learning music with the music that you love, learning sheet music at the same time as playing is like learning to write as you’re learning to speak, you learn to write after you’ve practiced speaking for years, you’re full of good ideas David who knew.

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    1 h y 29 m
  • 84: Tree Talk & Trading Card Art
    May 8 2025
    Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history?Images we Talk About: Trade Cards3 Modern Trading CardsYuka Morii's CardsTerrorHyalopterus LemurePreposterous ProportionsTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:02:08) Tree Talk(00:52:16) Trading Card Art(01:33:47) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!The answer is yes maybe sometimes and no, talking tree folklore, communication as transferring information, The Secret Life of Trees, Caroline WAS vegan, plants feel pain - GOOD, tree self defense, secondary metabollites, you got me AND Ella to write that down, tannin defense mechanism, volatile organic compounds, giraffes avoiding nearby leaves after eating, maybe trees are eavesdropping, mycorrhizal networks, could it be diffusion or a baby tree suckling on its mother, do a stanford prisoner experiment for trees, that tree is giving mother, mother trees - altruistic fungi - and the perils of plant personification, literally talking to trees, your first priority shouldn’t be to not be boring - maybe second, respect for the organisms that are fundamentally unlike us - their unfathomable lives, the modern boom of trading cards, trade cards, mass produced color images were cool and novel, how many credits for that chromo? absurd advertising from the 1800s, anthropomorphic fruits and veggies were all the rage, trade cards were a microcosm of marketing-invention-and collecting, Ella’s baseball impression, looking at a mainstream sport through the nerdiest lens imaginable, cigarette baseball cards, Doug McWilliams photographed 8% of all major league baseball players, oh right photography is an art, and so is building relationships with players, cards began to stand on their own, Richard Garfield wanted baseball cards for nerds, Magic and Pokemon credit their artists - but YuGiOh does not, Yuka Morii’s sculpture cards, Adam Rex’s Terror, Richard Thomas’ Hyalopterous Lemure, Julie Baroh flipping off her classmates, companies screwing over artists, it’s still art in spite of being a piece of cardboard.Sources:2010 Paper: Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signalsNew York Times: The Social Life of ForestsBook: The Secret Life Of PlantsNational Geographic: Plants can talk. Yes, really. Here’s how.2025 Pape: Shrub anti-herbivore defenses exhibit non-linear and varied responses to increased herbivore density1990 Paper: Acacia Tree Kills AntelopeBook: Ethylene in Plant BiologyBBC News: Plants send SOS signal to insectsTED ED: Can Plants Talk to Each Other?2015 Paper: Inter-plant communication through mycorrhizal networks mediates complex adaptive behaviour in plant communities1997 Paper: Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field2008 Paper: Hydraulic redistribution of water from Pinus ponderosa trees to seedlings: evidence for an ectomycorrhizal pathwayScientific America: Do Trees Really Support Each Other through a Network of Fungi?2023 Paper: Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests2024 Paper: Mother trees, Altruistic Fungi, and the Perils of Plant PersonificationFacts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of TreesVideo: Project gives 200-year-old Dublin tree ‘a voice’[Scientific America: The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading](The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading | Scientific American)Article: The World’s First Talking Tree Helps Young People Reconnect with NatureSmithsonian: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?---Cornell University on History of Trade CardsHistory of ChromolithographyAmerican Antiquarian Society on Trade CardsPBS on Trade CardsBaseball Card Photography HistoryDoug McWilliams via Baseball Hall of FameDoug McWilliams Interview with SABRDoug McWilliams NYTimes InterviewRichard Garfield on Magic's CreationYuka Morii's Pokemon Card ArtMagic Artist Julie Baroh's InterviewMagic Artist Donato Giancola's Points Against Artist PoliciesMagic Artist Melissa Benson's Artist Advice
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    1 h y 40 m
  • 83: The Most Boring Element & Solving Shakespeare's Accent
    Apr 24 2025
    What is the most boring element, and just how boring could it possibly be? Turns out: VERY! And how can we decipher what Shakespeare sounded like, and who among us can lay claim to his accent?Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:52) The Most Boring Element(00:48:53) Solving Shakespeare's Accent(01:26:37) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We’re not going for the easy sappy answer, what makes something boring? all the oxygen stans updating wikipedia, the most boring is obviously bohrium, thulium is used in lasers and x-rays, about 24 grams of astatine per planet, shout out Sir Martin Poliakoff, the 4 elements that came from pitchblende, Caroline stop anthropomorphizing protactinium, the isotope brevium, you could have been called abracadabra and instead your legal name is Actinium’s dad, wow what a fascinating [Rn]5f 26d7s2 ground state electron configuration! give me more random letters and numbers Tom! protactinium is there if your smoke detector is old, the global ocean conveyor belt, THC (Thermal Haline Circulation), that’s the ocean bit- anyway here’s something completely different about protactinium, paleoclimatology sounds a lot like protactinium, Ella realizes the turn, HE DID IT, whoa Caroline doing thumbs up to climate change, they’re de-extincting William Shakespeare, where better to waste my time pursuing this than Let’s Learn Everything, shakespeare is typically performed in received pronunciation, wait this is secretly a UK vs US topic! I’m surprised it took you 3 years to figure out we just keep you for your American accent, Americans have vestigial roticity, the universal beauty of two dudes yapping, what a strange elitism to claim to have Elizabethan English, Appalachian claims of shakespearean accents as a way to boost image, if you want to know what people sounded like back then… look at what people wrote about it! more one to one spellings like “philome” for film, we can deduce the accent from rhymes and puns, I loov this topic, Tom’s accent gets miscalibrated, an open midback is really stylish these days, open mid back unrounded vowel, Ella can move your tongue with her mind, I see why this gameshow didn’t make it to television, don’t wast a reem on a droom, the Rorscach test of the Original Pronunciation created by David and Ben Crystal, flecks of every dialect, “it’s a sound that reminds people of the accent of their home, and so they ten to listen more with their heart than their head”, “American English simply isn’t good enough for Shakespeare”, the Sundry Boroughs of New York baby! the language of Shakespeare is dead but alive in English everywhere, Shakespeare was meant to be played for the public - so it should be spoken like the public, Shakespeare's accent belongs to all of us!Sources:Amazing paper from Nature Chemistry: "The Most Boring Chemical Element"HPS on ProtactiniumLos Alamos Laboratory on ProtactiniumPeriodic Videos on ProtactiniumMining Website on Protactinium's HistoryBritannica on PitchblendeNature Chemistry: "Peculiar Protactinium"NOAA on the Global Ocean Conveyor BeltNOAA on PlanktonEOS on Protactinium for PaleoclimatologyProtactinium/Thorium in Paleoclimatology TextbookCarbonbrief's Climate Tipping PointsThorium Protactinium DatingYu, Francois, and Bacon's first paper on Protactinium Ocean Current Dating---Wiki: British colonisation of the AmericasWiki: Early Modern EnglishHistory of English: Early Modern EnglishBBC: How Americans preserved British EnglishThe Historical Linguist Blog: American English – The language of Shakespeare?Dialect Blog: Shakespearean vs. Modern EnglishNational Geographic: Tangier IslandBBC: The Tiny Island with a British accentLanguage Myths BookDavid Crystal’s Original Pronunciation evidencePaper: Early Modern English PhonologyOxford Dictionary: Early modern English: grammar, pronunciation, and spellingUniversity of Toronto: Early Modern English PhonologyNPR: How Did the Bard Really SoundYoutube: Shakespeare: Original pronunciation
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    1 h y 33 m
  • 82: International Space Law & Taxidermy
    Apr 10 2025
    What laws are there to worry about in the moon? And what does space law teach us about Earth law? And what can we learn about societies throughout history from the lens of stuffing dead animals?Images we Talk About:Orbiting Space DebrisFallen Space DebrisHanging Christian CrocodileHanging Christian CrocodileTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:03:02) International Space Law(01:03:25) Taxidermy(01:46:48) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about: The splash zone of intro to astronomy, space NCIS, the bedrock of 1967 outer space treaty, the first earthling in space (2 tortoises), countries are responsible for their damage and no WMDs, that big tangible moon in the sky, unprecedented lunar traffic this year, potential water ice on the moon could be the next big space race, there’s no moon water regulation, no nation can own the moon, buuuut can an individual - former ventriloquest and used car salesman own the moon?? god don’t call it “untapped resources on the moon”, you can’t own the moon but can you own its resources, there’s a legal officer for the UN officer of outer space affairs! we can allll frack the moon (except no one signed the treaty anyway), we can’t even agree to share moon resources One Day, only “safe and sustainable” space mining allowed, it doesn’t have to be legally binding to make countries want to follow it, a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would be SICK, sorry about all the space junk us 3 put up there, 90 metric tons of re-entry, suing nasa over space debris, if it launched from florida and hit florida it’s actually local state space law, satellite light pollution, satellites don’t die they just crash into a farm upstate, starlink burnt 120 satellites in 1 month alone, there’s no laws about safely deorbiting - no one has to do this, how we treat space is a microcosm of how we treat earth, space law is real, why can’t we bring our optimism from space back to earth instead of the other way around? Ella’s mouse doing drugs, the art of skin arranging, apologies to our ancient Egyptian listeners, the various techniques of Egyptian preservation, arresting from decay, Frederik Ruysch’s wet specimens, crocodiles make a lot of sense for the first taxidermy cause they’re big and leathery - anyway it was hanging in a church…, Tom loses his mind about A SECOND TAXIDERMIED CROCODILE IN A CHURCH, a croc that’s at least from 1623, The Great Italian Taxidermy Crocodile Road Trip, about one third of the british population went to the 1851 great exhibition, the telescope and taxidermy exhibition sounds like a trap for Caroline and Ella, “whimsy and anthropomorphism in taxidermy of the Victorian era”, anthropomorphic taxidermy was considered grotesque, taxidermy didn’t die we just stuffed it back up, environment taxidermy requires knowing an animal inside and out (pun intended), the degrees of ethical taxidermy, ethical is not a binary, it depends on your personal code of ethics, taxidermy as a lens of moral feelings through history.Sources:UNOOSA: Outer Space TreatyUN: International Space Law ExplainedRoyal Museums Greenwich: Who Owns the Moon?Lunar Embassy: Buy Some MoonPolitico: Who Owns the MoonGuardian: Moon ResourcesJet Propulsion Laboratory: Moon ResourcesNASA Moon Mining ContractsBusiness Insider: Mining Disrupting Science on the MoonNASA Artemis AccordsESA Space Environment StatisticsSpaceWatch: SatellitesNatural History Museum: Space JunkGuardian: Florida Family Sues NASAScientific American: Samantha Lawler, Space X DebirsJournal of Space Safety Engineering: Uncontrolled Re-entryUNOSSA: United Nations 2007 Space Debris Mitigation GuidelinesESA Space Environment Report 2024Rolling Stone: Space TrashFCC: Deorbiting Satellites RuleScientific American: Space Junk Polluting Stratosphere---Britannica: Taxidermy2019 Paper: Animal Bodies between Wonder and Natural HistoryBBC: Ancient Egyptian mummification 'recipe' revealedBook: Practical Taxidermy2020 Paper: The Animal Body As Medium: Taxidermy And European Expansion, 1775–1865Museum of Idaho: A brief, Gross History of TaxidermyAtlas Obscura: Crocodile at the Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime ImmacolateUniversity of Dayton: Crocodile Hunting in the Marian LibraryWandering Italy: Grazie, Italy and the Crocodile Church2006 Paper: The History of Taxidermy: Clues for PreservationJournal of Antiques and Collectables: Taxidermy: Exploring one of the Most Complicated CollectiblesThe Royal Parks: The Great Exhibition of 18512012 Thesis: The Shock Proved Fatal: Whimsy and Anthropomorphism in Taxidermy of the Victorian Era, 1851-1899Cardiff University: Frequently Asked Questions in TaxidermySmithsonian: Why Taxidermy Is Being Revived for the 21st CenturyHorniman Museum: Ethical TaxidermyGuardian: Inside the Female-Led World of Ethical TaxidermySussex Wildlife Trust: Putting the Ethical in Taxidermy
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    1 h y 52 m
  • Preview: The Lab Rat Games
    Mar 27 2025

    Welcome to the (preview for the) Lab Rat Games! The GAME show where we compete to learn anything and everything interesting! We love putting games into our topics, so what happens when we make a whole show of them, with each of us hosting their own section! Plus! We're joined by friend of the show and competitive chaos combatant, Sabrina Cruz!

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    38 m
  • 81: Dinosaur Diet Detectives & Proto-Podcasts
    Mar 20 2025
    How can scientist's unravel the mystery of what dinosaurs ate? Well the clues are right in front of our eyes, or should I say their teeth! And poop! And listener you may already know what a podcast is, but how did proto-podcasts in a chicken coop give us the DNA for what we love, and how did podcasts even happen?Images we Talk About:First Iguanadon ToothPuffer Fish TeethFish TeethsIncisivosaurusSaurolophusDinosaur Stomach Contents FossilHam ComicSybil's Baby's Radio RebutTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:33) Dinosaur Diet Detectives
(01:00:51) Support our Show!
(01:04:27) Proto-Podcasts
(02:02:49) Bonus Content!
(02:07:24) OutroSupport us with a Max Fun Membership!Join our Discord!We also learn about: Deep Dive Discovering Dino Diets, dinosaur time, imagining us discovering a new animal, well we know it doesn’t eat nerds, Ella describes teeth perfectly - “is that what you meant to say Tom?”, the mouth is the first stomach, we found the teeth of the first herbivorous dinosaur before the body - and before we had the word for dinosaur, cinderella/goldilocks teeth, dental microwear, food print, the topography of a grasshopper’s mandible, teeth can be more indicative than stomach content, maybe you just tried in and out for the first time when you got captured by aliens, dinosaur teeth are the old coins of ancient civilizations, egg eating oviraptors, it’s not just us but experts that are confused about oviraptaurs teeth, reconstructing the crime scene of a bit mark, this case has been closed for 70 million years! the tarbosaurus seems to have separated the chicken leg to make eating easier, a tyrannosaur leaving a tooth in the scene of the crime, they not only got bit but lived to tell the tale, this proves tyranosaurs hunted living animals - and weren’t just scavengers, hard foods stay in the stomach longer, some dinosaurs used Gastrolith rocks as stomach teeth, rocks natures teeth, Bromalite can be regurgitalite or coprolite, 580 million year old worm poop, we didn’t think grass was that old then we found it in dinosaur poop, we put dinosaur poop in a particle accelerator, we’re not looking at poop - we’re constructing the foodchain of dinosaurs, an ancient egyptian podcast, podcasting is NOT an oral tradition, the chicken coop boys, Sybil’s Little Ham Radio Show 20 years before a woman on proper radio, the Titanic sinking sped along radio restrictions, Tom skipped over the cassette before because its science impact was small but its misc impact was huge, explaining cassette tapes at a high frequency so it doesn’t hurt old people to hear, Lou Otten, the syrian cassette archive, mixtapes, Caroline’s family mix CDs, Tom’s custom Jack’s Mannequin Mix CDs, Pacific Horticulture Magazine being delighted that someone’s interested, Tom’s Magic Corner, I knew it was some journalist doing their thing, apple didn’t come up with podcasting - not even the name, journey back to 1999, the dream of RSS, what’s that facebook shaped cloud on the horizon? the dream of hosting your own feed, somehow podcast RSS survived, podcasts are the Horshoecrab of the internet, “wherever you get podcasts” is amazing, The Lab Rat Games!Sources:NHM London: Iguanodon TeethNHM London: Beyond Jurassic World- What We Really Know About Dinosaurs and HowNHM London: The Seven Greatest Dinosaur Discoveries of the Last 200 YearsBritish Ecological Society: What do Grasshoppers Eat?Phys.Org: Cutting Edge Teeth StudyNPR: Dental Detectives: What Fossil Teeth Reveal About Ancestral Human DietsUniversity of Tokyo: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal What They Didn’t EatBBC: Dinosaur Teeth Reveal Feeding HabitsIncisivosaurus2022 Paper: Incisivosaura Bite ForceUniversity of Pennsilvania: What Fossils Tell Us About the Dining Habits of DinosaursNHM London: Dinosaur Eating Habit Insights from Stegosaurus stenops2010 Paper: New information on scavenging and selective feeding behaviour of tyrannosauridsDave Hone's Archosaur Musings2012 Paper: Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rexSave Our Seas: What Tools do Biologists use to Tell What is on the Menu for Wild Animals?Scientific America: Tyrannosaur’s Stomach Contents Have Been Found for the First Time2023 Paper: Exceptionally preserved stomach contents of a young tyrannosaurid reveal an ontogenetic dietary shift in an iconic extinct predatorSN Explores: Fossil Stomach Reveals a Dinosaur’s Last MealNHM London: CoproliteThe Bristol Dinosaur Project: The Grass DivideNPR: Over 500 Fossilized Poops Show How Dinosaurs Came to Rule the EarthAmerican Museum of Natural History: How Does Studying Dinosaurs Benefit Humanity?---MET on Memory Boards and Luba Oral TraditionsOED Broadcast EtymologyThe Chicken Coop Ham RadioSybil's Little Hame Radio ProgramNYTimes on Titanic's Impact on Radio LawLibrary of Congress on Recorded RadioNPR On Lout Otten and the Cassette TapeWired on Cassette HistoryNPR on the Syrian Cassette ArchiveBerkeley Audio Tape ...
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    2 h y 13 m
  • Tom, Ella, and Caroline join MFD Spring Break
    Mar 17 2025

    It’s not MaxFunDrive without a wild kickoff spectacular! Former real-life VJ and host of MTV's Spring Break 1999, Dave Holmes, takes your favorite MaxFun hosts through some wacky ‘90s- and Spring Break-themed mini games!!

    Featuring: Dave Holmes, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, Dimitry Pompée, Tom Lum, Ellen Weatherford, Alex Schmidt, Brenda Snell, Drea Clark, Alonso Duralde, Dan McCoy, Jordan Morris, Manolo Moreno, Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, Ella McLeod, John-Luke Roberts, Justin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Mike Cabellon, Sierra Katow, Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, John Moe, Christian Dueñas, Christian Duguay.

    Timestamps:

    (00:00:00) Intro
    (00:02:22) Tom, Ellen, Alex, and Brenda Trivia
    (00:32:47) Tom, Ellen, Manolo, and Jeremy on Party Animals
    (00:46:34) Caroline, Ella, Ella, and John-Luke on British Spring Break

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    1 h y 20 m
  • 80: Ify Nwadiwe, The Science of the Peasant Railgun, and a Panoply of Nerdery
    Mar 13 2025

    Host of Um Actually and nerd of many domains Ify Nwadiwe joins us as Tom helps him deconstruct the infamous Peasant Railgun from D&D. Could it actually work? And can we come up with something even more powerful using real science? We also dig into nerdery old and new, and see if Ify can convince Ella and Caroline to embrace their home country's greatest export: Warhammer.

    Images we Talk About:
    A Real Railgun Firing

    Timestamps:
    (00:00:00) Intro
    (00:06:05) The Peasant Railgun
    (00:43:07) Q&A/Nerding Out
    (01:12:19) Outro

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    Join our Discord!

    We also learn about: After this black hole research I do appreciate my family more! we’re here to game, what is a peasant? stealing science experiments for DnD campaigns, Caroline and Ella are delighted to learn the Peasant Railgun for the first time, convincing peasants to hands across america, pandering to the audience telling them their smart, My Monster Manual is On the Origin of Species, a peasant message system/computer, let people accelerate things to the speed of light! I shouldn’t let my players do WHAT, and remember kids DONT use a bong because it gets you SO HIGH, I’m reading between the lines Gary would want us to do this, the real rail gun, UM ACTUALLY ITS A PEASANT COIL GUN, rail guns are more common in fiction, the strength of a rail gun tears itself apart and creates a fireball, Ify would make each peasant in the line roll, if your players try to make the railgun say yes then show them the picture, the peasants have the means of production and destruction - they should unionize, the fastest manmade object, the manhole cover isnt the fastest object recorded, mission to touch the sun, gravity slingshot, it’s not the mass of the planet its the orbit, its not a magnet - its a magnet on a bullettrain, DMs watch out for artificer space programs, the duke of musk keeps stealing our government funding, Morgan you’re welcome to play beyblades with Ify any time, marrying bratz and digimon, England’s main export is Warhammer, can Ify convince Ella to play Warhammer, should we do a separate zoom just talking about nerd stuff? online writing forums, audio books are real books, be mean in magic, playing DnD on stage vs at home, playing true to your character.

    Sources:
    First Edition D&D Player's Handbook
    Knight's Digest on Peasant Railgun Origins
    Earliest Peasant Railgun Mention
    PCGamer on D&D 2024 Dungeon Master Guide Update
    IEEE Early Railgun Research
    Vice "This Is Why the Navy Can’t Have Nice Railguns"
    USC on Railgun Feasability
    Popular Science Interview on Railgun Test
    JPL Chart of Fastest Objects
    CNET on Parker Solar Probe
    NASA Gravity Assist Primer

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    1 h y 16 m
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