If you stop and think about it, it’s kind of unfair that some athletes get to compete using marvels of engineering like incredibly light and streamlined bikes and some don’t. Instead, we should be assigning every 100m dash runner this backpack jetpack developed by Arizona State University.
Called the 4MM because the ultimate goal is to propel a soldier fast enough to run a four-minute mile, the jetpack is being developed by Jason Kerestes with funding from DARPA, because the military always gets the coolest toys first. The prototype weighs in at eleven pounds which by itself isn’t particularly heavy, but in addition to everything else a soldier has to carry it certainly adds up. So the hope is that overall there are still some speed gains when wearing it, and so far in testing it’s been found to shave almost 20 seconds off a runner’s 1.6km dash. [Arizona State University via Pocket-lint]