I have a theoretical question. What do you think is the absolute fastest time possible for a human being in the 100 yard freestyle. One way I was looking at it was to start at 1.00 second and say, will anyone ever be able to swim it in 1.00 sec. No. Will anyone ever be able to swim it in 2.00 seconds. No...so on and so on. At what time do you stop and say, hmmm, maybe someday someone would be able to swim that fast.
It's a very interesting question. Perhaps if someone with algebraic skills and the history of the 100 m world record (this might be a better distance to look at because more people have swum it), you could plot the performances over time. I would assume the rate of improvement has been slowing, and you might be able to come up with some sort of asymtote type line we'll likely never, as a species, bust through.
One other thing to factor in: though the top swimmers in history have been fantastic athletes, it's quite possible that the absolute best potential swimmers never took up the sport--concentrating instead on other sports. Not that Michael Jordan would necessarily have had a great 100 but--doesn't it seem that somewhere out there exists close to the ideal sprint swimmer--huge hands and feet, incredibly tall, loose, explosively strong, tons of fast twitch muscles, etc. -- but who is playing some other sport and maybe doesn't even know how to swim?
Just a thought.
With nothing more then watching some really fast swimmers over the years...I think someone can and will swim under :40...but not by much...Just a wild guess!
WHEN time takes on full circle and human beings return to where we originated ....the sea and develop fins and fish like features ....check out dolphin(mammals)100 times..about 10 seconds...yep thats what im aiming for in 2004...!!!!!!
Originally posted by sparx35
WHEN time takes on full circle and human beings return to where we originated ....the sea and develop fins and fish like features ....check out dolphin(mammals)100 times..about 10 seconds...yep thats what im aiming for in 2004...!!!!!!
Would that be in this, or some other parallel universe? ;)
Now you made me think of Schrodinger's "Cat in the box".
If that cat is alive, how fast could it swim?
Ugh, I have work to do, I can't be thinking about that cat now...
;)
In the future I predict the following with certainty:
I will annoy the Bug on this forum.
I will pay too much in taxes.
I will die.
Other than that, it's really just for fun to guess.
I know what the S stands for but I can't tell anyone.
Elaine -
No, the shifts of yesterday can not predict the shifts of the future. For example, in the pole vault, poles were originally bamboo and then they went to steel. Despite the fact that people assumed that there would eventually be a change in materials to something better, no one then could have forseen the degree to which fiberglass and composites could have changed things. As another example, look at the backstroke and what Berkoff (sp?) did with his underwater start. That was almost completely unexpected from what had gone in the past. There are other analogies: Fosbury flop in the high jump, Mexican technique in the racewalks circa 1974-1976, etc. Sadly, the development of better performance enhancing drugs will play a role as will the eventual use of *shudder* gene therapy. All these can completely throw away any possibility of prediction of a limit based on past and present performances.
The Asimov Foundation analogy is a very good analogy, BTW, if you are familiar with it. (Highly recommended, but you can NOT skip ahead and read the end or you will have to do breath-holding sets till you puke.)
So, if Ian Thorpe and Janet Evans get married and have kids with size 28 feet, take hideous drugs, come up with a new tfreestyle echnique and eat their Wheaties, we can expect the middle and distance world records as we understand them, to go bye-bye in a dramatic, not incremental, way.
-LBJ
no I'm not saying it can predict the future. Can you identify when an event caused a change in times through an analysis of the times? Can you identify the magniture that event had on the times? Then can you, in an analysis that predicts future times consider the impact of an event the magnitude of a past event?
