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submitted 6 months ago by Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

Alt text:
I wonder what surviving human held the record before balloons (excluding edge cases like jumping gaps on a mountain bridge). Probably it was someone falling from a cliff into snow or water, but maybe it involved something weird like a gunpowder explosion or volcano.

Explainxkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3039:_Human_Altitude

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[-] kbal@fedia.io 51 points 6 months ago

I'm more interested in the altitude of the median human. I suppose it's increased slightly since the invention of office buildings, chairs, and so on.

[-] sbv@sh.itjust.works 38 points 6 months ago

Chairs were a game changer

[-] Repelle@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

Chairs are overrated. I pretty much always choose the floor. Even the couch tends to be used mostly as a backrest for sitting on the floor

[-] thejml@lemm.ee 10 points 6 months ago

The floor is great. It’s really hard to fall off the floor.

[-] Frozengyro@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

vertigo enters chat

[-] pixelscript@lemm.ee 12 points 6 months ago

I wonder if it may well have gone down with the combination of boom in population and rapid urbanization around coasts.

[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 19 points 6 months ago

I thought this was a beautiful way to see our progress out in one frame. Then I thought, what about human object reach? So Voyager 1 would be about three more log ticks up at 25 billion km (about the top of the nav buttons) with other probes falling below that at their appropriate times.

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 6 months ago

The pre-1800 numbers sound too low. There are lots of old buildings much higher than 10 meters high, and I doubt they were all unoccupied at the same time.

[-] Fermion@feddit.nl 3 points 6 months ago

Even before tall buildings, trees should put the noise floor above 30 meters.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 6 months ago

very approximate

But what are the constant dips between years?

[-] jungle@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

Must be years without launches.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

So in 1882 nobody went above 1.5 meters.

[-] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 6 months ago

Something weird must've been going on for sure. Two years later Flatland was published.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Lol, immediately as the 2D book is published, boom, 3km in 3rdD!

[-] Tilgare@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

I want to see how this looks without the log scale on the y axis.

[-] j4yt33@feddit.org 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[-] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Poster's note: I just noticed it uploaded and didn't see it posted yet, so I rectified that.

[-] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

But the Apollo program was fake propaganda!

this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
253 points (100.0% liked)

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