World`s largest medicinal botanic garden set Guinness World Records in China

World`s largest medicinal botanic garden set Guinness World Records in China.

Beijing: A medicinal botanical garden in southwest China has been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the largest of its kind in the world, a garden official said Friday.

Located in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and spread over an area of 202 hectares (over 2 square kilometres), the garden has been confirmed to be containing the most varieties of medicinal plants and the largest cultivated area of medicinal plants in the world, Xinhua reported.

The garden, till date, has saved over 6,000 kinds of living medicinal plants (including more than 100 endangered varieties and over 30 new varieties), more than 3,200 kinds of medicinal plant seeds and 100,000 medicinal plant images.

Built in 1959 by Guangxi`s health department, its objective is to cultivate, collect and save medicinal plants besides conducting research.

The garden is expected to be built into an advanced international medicinal plants conservation base and a centre for traditional Chinese medicine culture and science.

Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is one of China`s most undeveloped provinces. But it is known for its large variety of herbal medicines and the ethnic minority cultures of Zhuang and Yao.

A botanical garden is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names. It may contain special plant collections.

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Israel sets Largest chemistry lesson world record

Israel sets Largest chemistry lesson world record

Guinness World Records says it has recognized Israel's Science and Technology Ministry for holding the "largest chemistry lesson."

Less than two months after an Israeli took home the Nobel Prize for chemistry the country is celebrating a new scientific breakthrough.

The officials at Guinness World Records have confirmed that it is the new record holder for having staged the largest chemistry lesson.

A total of 4,207 gathered in 13 classrooms in September to carry out an experiment first undertaken in space. The original experiment was performed by Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who was killed in 2003 when the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated as it re-entered the earth's atmosphere

Last year an Israeli chess player set a new world record for playing the highest number of games at one time in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square.

Israel's Science and Technology Ministry director Menachem Greenblum said the record showed that Israel was "a scientific powerhouse".

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Largest food drive in 24 hours set Guinness World Record by N.C. School of Science and Mathematics

The new Guinness World Records for "Largest food drive in 24 hours — single location" is held by the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, the U.S. Veterans Corps, Walmart and the Church of Latter-day Saints.

The groups collected 559,885 pounds of food March 5. That was enough for Guinness to certify a new record Wednesday.

"The event could not have happened with the support of a large number of people," said Brent Kappler, president of the Veterans Corps, in a news release. "I am proud of the work of our members and for their commitment throughout the day and night driving forklifts, weighing food, and loading and unloading pallets."

The Durham total beat both the previous official Guinness record of more than 509,000 pounds and a pending record of more than 515,000 pounds.

The school invited the Veterans Corps to help break the record because of their logistical operations experience with events such as Operation Coming Home and Extreme Makeover.

"It was very apparent what the USVC meant to the students and staff of the North Carolina School of Science and Math in achieving this world record," Kappler said. "Congratulations to the students and staff of the N.C. School of Science and Math."

Guinness World Records will present the new record holders with a certificate to commemorate their achievement. The school and others involved also will celebrate the achievement April 13.

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World's Longest Rail Tunnels - Gotthard Base Tunnel, Switzerland

World's Longest Rail Tunnels in Switzerland set Guinness World Record 2011,

Gotthard Base Tunnel, Switzerland, 57 kilometres: Twin-bore rail tunnel, to open in 2017. Will link two Swiss villages on either side of the Gotthard mountain range. Including access passageways, the structure comprises a total of 158.1 kilometres of tunnel.

-Seikan rail tunnel, Japan, 53.8 kilometers: Single-bore undersea tunnel connecting the main Japanese island of Honshu to the northern island of Hokkaido. Opened in 1988.

-Channel Tunnel, France-Britain, 49.9 kilometres: Twin-bore undersea rail tunnel linking the northern coast of France and the southern coast of England under the English Channel. Opened in 1994.

-Loetschberg tunnel, Switzerland, 34.6 kilometres: Twin-bore railway tunnel opened in 2007 under the Loetschberg mountain range in the Alps. Like the new Gotthard Tunnel, it is part of the TransAlp plan to move traffic, particularly freight, off Switzerland's roads and onto the railways.

-Guadarrama rail tunnel, Spain, 28.4 kilometers: Twin-bore tunnel under the Guadarrama mountain range near Seville, in south-central Spain. Part of the high-speed Madrid-Valladolid rail line, it opened in 2007.

-Like the above tunnels, the world's sixth-longest, the Iwate-Ichinohe in Japan (25.8 kilometers), is a rail link.

-The longest road tunnel in the world, and the seventh longest tunnel of any kind, is the Laerdal link in western Norway, which is 24.5 kilometres long and was completed in 2000.

World's Longest Rail Tunnels in Switzerland set Guinness World Record 2011 Video

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Longest eclipse ever observed by civilians chasing the moon in an airplane

Eclipse hunters set a new record on July 11 for the longest eclipse ever observed by civilians chasing the moon in an airplane. While hundreds of eclipse enthusiasts flocked to islands in the South Pacific to watch the moon blot out the sun, astronomer Glenn Schneider and colleagues climbed to 39,000 feet to spend 9 minutes, 23 seconds in the moon’s shadow.

“We cheated Mother Nature by two minutes beyond what she could normally produce,” Schneider said.

Theoretically, the longest total solar eclipse that can be viewed from the ground is 7 minutes, 32 seconds long, a limit set by the geometry of celestial mechanics. Total solar eclipses happen when the new moon passes in front of the sun, casting a round shadow on the Earth that turns day to night. During the few minutes when the moon is directly in front of the sun, called totality, viewers get a rare glimpse of the solar corona, tendrils of gas that dance around the sun’s outer atmosphere. Although a solar eclipse is visible from somewhere on Earth every 16 months or so, totality is only ever visible from a narrow swatch of the planet.

                                                          Longest eclipse ever picture

The geometry of the July 11 eclipse worked out such that, by chasing the moon’s shadow at Mach 0.8, Schneider and his colleagues could stretch totality to from about 5 minutes to nearly 9 and a half minutes.

“It’s something we’re never going to be able to do again,” Schneider said. “It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.”

The plane also provided “weather insurance,” Schneider said. The path of totality for the eclipse crossed the Pacific Ocean, grazing the Cook Islands, Easter Island, parts of French Polynesia and the southern tip of South America. Although there were clear skies for the actual event, the region’s annual weather records suggested that the odds of clouds blocking the eclipse were no better than 50/50, even from the best land-based viewing spots. Getting above the clouds guaranteed a clear view, plus superb shots of the corona contrasted against a dark sky.

Schneider’s flight took off from Faa’a International Airport on the island of Tahiti at 5:45 a.m. local time. On board were eclipse chasers Rick Brown and John Beattie, NASA eclipse predictor Fred Espenak, about 30 paying passengers who contacted Brown through the website eclipse-chasers.com, and four officials from the Tahitian government.

The group flew in a specially configured jet aircraft from Skytraders Antarctic Solutions, an aviation company that ferries scientists and equipment from Australia to Antarctica. The crew removed all the seats from the left side of the plane to give an unobstructed view from the sun-facing windows.

A few minutes before totality, the plane turned to face the approaching lunar shadow head-on. Schneider and his colleagues watched the shadow zoom toward the plane from a hundred miles away, engulfing the clouds below in darkness.

“It looked like the end of the world, this black shadow coming at us,” said Brown, who is a commodity trader by profession but has been organizing group eclipse viewings since 1991. “It was very, very surreal.” As the shadow came closer, the observers could see daylight at its far edge, like a miniature sunrise in the middle of the day.

The plane made a right-angle turn to intercept the moon’s shadow at about 9:15 a.m. At the moment of totality, the plane fell quiet.

“Normally on the ground there’s a lot of screaming, oohing and aahing, and a lot of noise going on, but for some reason it was very quiet in the plane,” Brown said. “People were astounded.”

The plane flew along with the shadow at 500 miles per hour, about a third of the shadow’s speed across the Earth’s surface. At that speed, the time in totality stretched from the 5 minutes, 20 seconds visible from the ground to 9 minutes, 23 seconds. It was the longest totality ever observed from a non-experimental and non-military aircraft. Brown said the team is submitting a DVD to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The longest totality ever observed by an experimental aircraft was 74 minutes, captured by a supersonic Concorde aircraft in 1973. Schneider’s first attempt to beat celestial geometry would have come close to that. For the June 2001 eclipse, he made plans to fly in the moon’s shadow for over an hour in an Air France Concorde plane. But just days before the final planning meeting with the airline, Air France Flight 4590 crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground. All Concordes were grounded a few days later.

“That was the end of that plan,” Schneider said. “Since then, it was always in the back of my head: When can I do something like that again?”

The July 11 eclipse was the fourth eclipse Schneider observed from the air. Since his first total solar eclipse as a 14-year-old in North Carolina in 1970, Schneider has chased 29 eclipses from Australia to Zambia, catching a few minutes of eerie darkness from land, air and sea. He boasts that he has lost just 3.7 eclipses to clouds. That 0.7 was from partly cloudy skies over Wuhan, China on July 22, 2009, which blocked his view of the longest total solar eclipse visible from the ground for more than a century. Of what should have been 5 minutes, 40 seconds of totality, Schneider caught just a minute and a half.

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Hayabusa Space Probe - Longest ever space journey set world record 2010

Hayabusa Space Probe - Longest ever space journey set Guinness World Records 2010 by Japan's space agency

Japan's space agency has applied for a Guinness World Records listing after its Hayabusa space probe returned from a seven-year journey to an ancient asteroid, an official said Tuesday.
Hayabusa, "falcon" in Japanese, left Earth in 2003 and returned late Sunday, completing a five-billion-kilometre (three-billion-mile) round trip to the potato-shaped Itokawa asteroid.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, on Monday applied to the London-based Guinness World Records to list Hayabusa's trailblazing journey, an official with the agency said.

"We are seeking its recognition as the first-ever spacecraft that landed on and returned from a celestial body other than the moon, and also for completing the longest ever (space) journey," the official said.
JAXA is not seeking recognition of the total distance Hayabusa travelled as it is a rough estimate and not scientifically important, she said.

                                  Hayabusa Space Probe picture

As planned, the spacecraft burned up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere, creating a fireball in the night sky over the Australian desert.

Before its fiery end, it released a heatproof sample canister which scientists hope contains material from the asteroid's surface to give them clues on the origins of the solar system.

The pod, which made a textbook parachute landing in the Australian Outback, is to leave Thursday for Japan for analysis.

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UK Apple iPad 2010 - Fastest time to type the alphabet on an iPad

UK Apple iPad set Guinness World Record 2010 - Fastest time to type the alphabet on an iPad

Live from the iPad queue at the Apple Store on Regent Street, the latest Guinness World Record Breaker can be announced today for the fastest time to type the alphabet on an iPad. Joseph Grech, who is 28 and originally from Malta, was queuing from 3am before making his record attempt and setting a new global standard with an astonishing speed of 6.61 seconds for his fingers to go from A to Z.

Surrounded by over a thousand Apple fans, all hungry to get their hands on the brand new Apple iPad, breaking this Guinness World Record was not an easy feat for Joseph.

"I was really looking forward to being one of the first to get my hands on an iPad, so to also end up getting a Guinness World Record today is incredible. I'm really happy and can't wait to brag to my friends about it. The photo of me with the certificate will be my Facebook profile photo!" said Joseph, the latest addition to the hallowed Guinness World Records hall of fame.

The stakes were high as Joseph was up against over 30 other fast-fingers hoping to set a Guinness World Record today. Initially, it seemed Jordan Chitty from Kennington, London, had set an unbeatable time with 6.7 seconds, but with just minutes to go Joseph mustered the need for speed and recorded the Guinness World Record breaking time.

A spokesman from Guinness World Records said, "The new Apple iPad is such an iconic and exciting device. Today it seems only fitting that arguably the biggest launch in Apple's long and distinguished history is also the backdrop to its iPad being involved in a Guinness World Record breaker attempt."

Also queuing for an iPad on Friday morning were the world's tallest married couple, Keisha and Wilco van Kleef-Bolton, in full wedding dress. The couple feature on the new free LITE app created specifically for the iPad: Guinness World Records: At Your Fingertips ( http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/ipad.aspx). The new app offers an exclusive collection of multi-layered, world-record feats including compelling video, images and graphics allowing readers to interact with the content like never before.
Key Features:

    * Nine sample spreads reveal the Strangest, Craziest, Fastest, Deadliest, Tallest, Most Expensive, plus Gamers’ Edition Top 50, Guinness World Record Day and ‘How to be a Record Breaker’.
    * Flick through over 140 records
    * Explore the detail of various records using photos, charts, timelines, spotlight facts and “actual size” features
    * Watch more than 25 stunning video clips as they bring record-breaking to life
    * Galleries offer more than 150 stunning photos
    * Spin the interactive globe to reveal international record attempts from Guinness World Records Day 2009

* iPhone 3GS and latest generation iPod Touch version will also soon be available in the App store. Although this app is not yet available for older generation iPhones and iPod Touches, we are working on optimizing this for your device.

UK Apple iPad Video - Fastest time to type the alphabet on an iPad

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Largest Chemistry Lesson set Guinness World Record - Hooked on Science

West Park Mall, MO, USA -- 268 kids, young and old, participated in a chemistry lesson at the Science Day 2009, an event organized by Hooked on Science - setting the new world record for the Largest chemistry lesson.

"Participants learned all about polymers by creating slime," says Outreach Science Educator Jason Lindsey with Hooked on Science.

   To be exact, folks created 268 batches of the green goop.

    They used slime from the Science Bob store. Science Bob's slime is designed for learning and fun and can be picked up, slowly stretched to over 4 feet, and can even be rolled into a ball.

    This is the third record-breaking science event for Southeast Missouri.

    The Hooked on Science TV segment continues to get kids, young and old, Hooked on Science around the world. The award-winning TV segment can now be watched in 101,156,736 homes in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and the Philippines.

    Look for the segment on Direct TV, Cable Television, TCT World, Sky Angel, and TV stations throughout America during local news and children's programming.


Largest Chemistry Lesson Guinness World Record Video

Source :-worldrecordsacademy

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Growing green Plants Jewellery - New Jewelry Designs 2010

A jewellery designer has come up with the ultimate 'green' collection - rings with live plants growing inside them instead of precious stones.

Featuring tiny Icelandic moss plants sprouting in their stainless steel bases, the pieces are said to be a 'clash of jewellery and gardening'.They need watering like any other plant and if looked after, designer Hafsteinn Juliusson claims they can last up to six months.
But they don't need to be pruned because, according to Mr Juliusson, the moss grows 'so slowly that you cant even see it.'

Mr Juliusson said: "It is important to take good care of Growing Jewellery.

"The owner must water it regularly and nurture it like any other plant. It's up to them to make sure that the jewellery is at it's best."

The 23-year-old said his pieces were designed for city dwellers and are aimed at drawing 'nature toward man.'

"I like to approach design from new perspectives and reach a diverse range of people," he added.

"I want to be involved with society, ecology and I try to avoid mainstream mass production.

"Growing Jewellery is a redefinition of modern values. It is a clash of jewelry and gardening; couture and organism.

"The collection is designed for people in metropolitan cities and is an experiment in drawing nature toward man, as nature being the presupposition of life."

The rings in the striking collection are available to buy with the moss already growing inside. Mr Juliusson, from Reykjavik, Iceland, says each ring will to cost around 485 pounds.

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