Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

At what speed is the brain processing when a pair of Chinese ping pong masters are playing? All of this requires seeing the ball coming from the opponent, subconsciously calculating its speed, angle, and rotation to decide how to move your body, legs, arms, hands, and even fingers to hit the ball at the desired location, with the desired angle, and at the desired speed. A standard ping pong table is 2.74 meters long, and in high-speed professional games, the ball can traverse this distance in as little as 90–140 milliseconds. This means players have less than a tenth of a second to react. It's not just the immense image-processing speed required but also the mental speed to transform that visual data into precise positioning and movement of hundreds of muscles in less than a second. Ten bits per second? No way.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: