What's the Highest Distance You Can Possibly Fall From

**The Thrill of Freefall: Exploring the Highest Vertical Drops on Earth and Beyond**

Falling is something nobody truly enjoys, even if they claim to love activities like skydiving or bungee jumping. The thrill we feel during a fall is an instinctual panic, deeply rooted in millions of years of evolution, reminding us of the countless ancestors who met their end pursuing such "fun" endeavors. This primal fear sparked curiosity about the highest possible vertical drops one could experience, both on Earth and beyond.

**Earth's Tallest Man-Made Structure: Burj Khalifa**

The tallest man-made building from which one might consider jumping is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, standing at 828 meters. A freefall from its summit would last approximately 20 seconds. However, nature far surpasses this feat.

**Mount Everest's Misleading Majesty**

While Mount Everest is often considered the ultimate challenge, it doesn't offer a clean vertical drop due to its jagged terrain. Jumping from its peak would result in tumbling rather than continuous freefall, making it unsuitable for our quest.

**Tionne Cave: A Super-Deep Vertical Shaft**

In China's Tionne Gene Cave lies a shaft plunging 1026 meters vertically—a deeper drop than Burj Khalifa. Jumping into this abyss would offer over 24 seconds of freefall in complete darkness, a daunting yet fascinating experience.

**Mount Thor: The Steepest Cliffs on Earth**

Nestled in Canada's Baffin Island is Mount Thor, home to the steepest confirmed vertical cliff in the world. This 105-degree incline drops 1250 meters, offering an intense 28-second freefall. However, due to its remote location, other cliffs in Greenland may rival this height but remain unexplored.

**Trango Towers: Pakistan's Vertical Challenge**

In Pakistan's far north, the Trango Towers present a formidable challenge. Great Trango's nearly vertical cliff plummets 1340 meters, providing a freefall lasting around 30 seconds—two seconds longer than from Mount Thor.

**Outer Space: Maranda Moon's 20-Kilometer Cliffs**

Venturing beyond Earth, Uranus' moon Maranda hosts a staggering 20-kilometer vertical cliff. With reduced gravity, a jump here would last 12 minutes at just 124 mph, making survival plausible with proper safety measures.

**Skydiving Records: Breaking Barriers in the Stratosphere**

The realm of skydiving knows no bounds. Vesna Vulovic holds the record for surviving a fall from over 10,000 meters without a parachute, falling for around 3 minutes and 25 seconds. Felix Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos jump from 39 kilometers broke records with a 4-minute 19-second freefall, reaching supersonic speeds. Alan Eustace later surpassed this, falling 41.4 kilometers in 4 minutes and 27 seconds, the longest recorded freefall.

**The Future of Freefall: Pushing Limits**

While current records stand, future endeavors may push these limits further. The Red Bull Stratos team envisions jumps extending into the six-minute range, highlighting the potential for even greater achievements.

**Understanding Physics: The Key to Mastery**

For those seeking to explore skydiving or break records, a grasp of physics is essential. Brilliant.org offers courses like "Physics of the Everyday," teaching concepts through real-life applications, from refrigerators to crime scenes, fostering a deeper understanding of the subject.

**Conclusion: Embrace the Thrill with Knowledge**

While the allure of extreme freefalls draws many, true mastery lies in understanding the principles behind them. By exploring Brilliant.org's courses, enthusiasts can enhance their knowledge and safely pursue their passions, whether on Earth or beyond.

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This article provides a detailed exploration of the highest vertical drops, both terrestrial and celestial, while emphasizing the importance of physics in mastering such endeavors.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video was made possible by brilliant learn complex topics simply by being one of the first 200 to sign up at brilliant org slash real-life floor falling down is something that nobody really likes even if you think you like skydiving or bungee jumping or BASE jumping you don't really or at least your body doesn't really because that thrilled that you feel while you're falling is kind of more like an instinctual panic built up over millions of years of evolution that's trying to remind you of all of your ancestors that have died doing what you think is fun anyway this got me thinking about what's the highest possible distance that you can jump off of and fall from anywhere in the world but before we get into that we need to establish a very important rule the distance of your fall needs to be continuous and vertical meaning that you can't just jump off of something hit something else and bounce off and continue falling some more we're looking for the longest and cleanest vertical jump you can make anywhere in the world so let's look around a bit at some of the contenders the tallest man-made building that you could jump off of is theoretically the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 828 meters tall your fall from the top down to the bottom would take approximately 20 seconds of continuous freefall but that's absolutely nowhere near the tallest height that you can take a jump from because nature continues to totally dominate this category you might think that the obvious answer here would be Mount Everest but that's just absolutely not the case remembering our major rule from earlier about a strictly vertical freefall eliminates Mount Everest from the contention because while Everest does have some pretty steep cliffs I mean look at these the mountain is overall pretty jagged in structure so if you jump from the top you would just hit another piece of rock die bounce off of that and then make more of a tumbling motion down the mountainside like this that's not exactly what we're looking for and there are cliffs elsewhere in the world that offer significantly higher free Falls than any of the ones do on Everest one of these cliffs is more like a super deep hole in the Tionne gene cave of China there's a shaft inside of this cave that plummets down 1026 meters below in a directly vertical deeper than the Burj Kalifa is tall theoretically you could jump into this hole and freefall for roughly 24 seconds in total complete darkness before hitting the bottom but other natural features will even outdo this one in epicness if you're looking for the absolute highest vertical drop to fall from in the world then you need to schedule a visit here on Baffin Island in the Nunavut province of Canada it's one of the most sparsely inhabited places in the world but if you make the trek out into the middle of nowhere to the epicly named Mount Thor you'll discover the single tallest confirmed vertical cliff anywhere in the world this cliff you see here is actually at a 105 degree angle so it's even steeper than vertical human beings didn't even successfully manage to climb up to the top of it until 1985 but if you could somehow get up there and jump off from it you'll experience a truly vertical freefall from 1250 meters above the surface that'll last for roughly 28 seconds long before you impact the surface however I said that this is only the tallest confirmed vertical cliff in the world owing to the extremely remote location that it's located in there are other cliffs scattered around none of it and a Greenland that could potentially be even higher but they've never been identified so we have no idea right now but there is actually one confirmed cliff that's actually a higher vertical drop and it's located around here in the far northern portion of Pakistan a group of mountains here called the trango towers offers up a pretty spicy challenge to the tallest vertical drop claim offered up from Mount Thor the tallest mountain in the group called great trango is widely considered the most difficult mountain in the entire world to climb and for very very good reason because it features a nearly vertical cliff that plummets one thousand three hundred and forty meters over the top the cliff isn't quite literally as vertical as the cliff on Mount Thor is so there's quite a bit of cliff controversy and arguments in the geography world over at status but that's all for the Nerds to figure out you came here because you just care about the tallest drop so if you made it to the top of great trango and jumped off you're nearly vertical fall would clock in at roughly 30 seconds long or two seconds longer than a jump from the top of Mount Thor would be Congrats you've now discovered the highest possible point and jump off and experience a freefall from anywhere on the Earth's surface but what about outside of Earth I mean cliffs exist elsewhere in the universe right surely there must be a cliff even higher up than anything we have here on earth and it turns out there are if you could somehow make it over to Uranus or excuse me Uranus and then hop on over to Uranus is moon Maranda you can discover a cliff that's a whopping 20 kilometers high that's a vertical cliff base more than twice the height of Mount Everest is on earth and you can also totally jump off of it and survive because the gravity on Maranda is way less than it is on earth it would take you about 12 minutes to jump off from the top of it before you'd hit the bottom and you'd only be falling around 124 miles per hour I mean that still does sound pretty bad I guess but all things considered if you had some airbags you could probably end up making it work out now I know what everybody is going to say next what about jumping out of airplanes that definitely does count for a vertical freefall so let's move on to these types of jumps next a woman named vesna vulovic currently holds the world record for the tallest height ever survived falling out of an airplane without a parachute I made an entire video already just focusing on her incredible story but in short she managed to survive a fall from over 10,000 meters up in the sky after her plane blew up and she did all of it without a parachute she probably fell for around 3 minutes and 25 seconds give or take but that's far from the longest free fall famously in 2012 this dude named Felix Baumgartner and the team at Red Bull Stratos broke the world record for the world's highest freefall Baumgartner rode in a capsule attached to a balloon up to a freakishly scary height of 39 kilometers above the Earth's surface before he just jumped out with nothing but a pressure suit and a pair shoots his freefall lasted for four minutes in 19 seconds and his body reached a speed of 840 3.6 miles per hour becoming the first human being whose body broke the sound barrier without the assistance of any engine the Red Bull team believed that his free fall could have been extended safely to anywhere between 5 minutes and 6 minutes but he deployed his parachute a little early instead just two years later however in 2014 his freefall record was broken by another dude named Alan Eustace rather than going up in a fancy capsule Eustace just tethered himself to a balloon flew up to a rediculous 41.4 km/h 37 thousand six hundred and sixteen meters before he deployed his parachute and it took him four minutes in 27 seconds to accomplish earning him the title of the guy that's fallen the farthest and the longest in all of human history his record still stands tall today but the limit that humans can endear is certainly even beyond that the Red Bull Stratos team estimated that they could potentially pull off a freefall pushing into the six-minute range and the feats of Baumgartner and Eustace have proven that human bodies can endear drops from the stratosphere and speeds that break the sound barrier whatever the limit of human freefall actually is it certainly hasn't yet been reached and I'm certain that the world record will continue to be pushed upwards and broken in the future by somebody that somebody may even be watching this video right now and I can only hope so if you're serious about skydiving BASE jumping bungee jumping where you really do want to break the freefall world record one day or you're just into anything that really gets your adrenaline pumping you'll need a serious understanding of everyday physics and there's no better place to learn about that than on brilliance with their physics of the everyday course physics is of course a pretty daunting field and while a lot of places will just teach you some physics concepts brilliance will help you understand how physics works in your everyday life from refrigerators and motor two airplanes and crime scene investigations brilliant focuses on the fundamentals of subjects by teaching them in an approachable intuitive way that really helps you understand how to use what you end up learning later on in the more advanced classes like moving on from everyday physics up to quantum mechanics brilliants many interactive courses on physics are just some of their many fantastic courses which also include daily problems that will help teach you something new every day complete with a framework that you need to tackle them so if you want to learn complicated topics easily during your spare time then it's totally worth checking them out right now to learn more about brilliant you can click the link in the description or go to brilliant org slash real life lor and sign up for free but then the first 200 people who go to that link will also get 20% off of their annual premium subscription which is the subscription that I've been using to learn even more about physics and as always thank you for watchingthis video was made possible by brilliant learn complex topics simply by being one of the first 200 to sign up at brilliant org slash real-life floor falling down is something that nobody really likes even if you think you like skydiving or bungee jumping or BASE jumping you don't really or at least your body doesn't really because that thrilled that you feel while you're falling is kind of more like an instinctual panic built up over millions of years of evolution that's trying to remind you of all of your ancestors that have died doing what you think is fun anyway this got me thinking about what's the highest possible distance that you can jump off of and fall from anywhere in the world but before we get into that we need to establish a very important rule the distance of your fall needs to be continuous and vertical meaning that you can't just jump off of something hit something else and bounce off and continue falling some more we're looking for the longest and cleanest vertical jump you can make anywhere in the world so let's look around a bit at some of the contenders the tallest man-made building that you could jump off of is theoretically the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 828 meters tall your fall from the top down to the bottom would take approximately 20 seconds of continuous freefall but that's absolutely nowhere near the tallest height that you can take a jump from because nature continues to totally dominate this category you might think that the obvious answer here would be Mount Everest but that's just absolutely not the case remembering our major rule from earlier about a strictly vertical freefall eliminates Mount Everest from the contention because while Everest does have some pretty steep cliffs I mean look at these the mountain is overall pretty jagged in structure so if you jump from the top you would just hit another piece of rock die bounce off of that and then make more of a tumbling motion down the mountainside like this that's not exactly what we're looking for and there are cliffs elsewhere in the world that offer significantly higher free Falls than any of the ones do on Everest one of these cliffs is more like a super deep hole in the Tionne gene cave of China there's a shaft inside of this cave that plummets down 1026 meters below in a directly vertical deeper than the Burj Kalifa is tall theoretically you could jump into this hole and freefall for roughly 24 seconds in total complete darkness before hitting the bottom but other natural features will even outdo this one in epicness if you're looking for the absolute highest vertical drop to fall from in the world then you need to schedule a visit here on Baffin Island in the Nunavut province of Canada it's one of the most sparsely inhabited places in the world but if you make the trek out into the middle of nowhere to the epicly named Mount Thor you'll discover the single tallest confirmed vertical cliff anywhere in the world this cliff you see here is actually at a 105 degree angle so it's even steeper than vertical human beings didn't even successfully manage to climb up to the top of it until 1985 but if you could somehow get up there and jump off from it you'll experience a truly vertical freefall from 1250 meters above the surface that'll last for roughly 28 seconds long before you impact the surface however I said that this is only the tallest confirmed vertical cliff in the world owing to the extremely remote location that it's located in there are other cliffs scattered around none of it and a Greenland that could potentially be even higher but they've never been identified so we have no idea right now but there is actually one confirmed cliff that's actually a higher vertical drop and it's located around here in the far northern portion of Pakistan a group of mountains here called the trango towers offers up a pretty spicy challenge to the tallest vertical drop claim offered up from Mount Thor the tallest mountain in the group called great trango is widely considered the most difficult mountain in the entire world to climb and for very very good reason because it features a nearly vertical cliff that plummets one thousand three hundred and forty meters over the top the cliff isn't quite literally as vertical as the cliff on Mount Thor is so there's quite a bit of cliff controversy and arguments in the geography world over at status but that's all for the Nerds to figure out you came here because you just care about the tallest drop so if you made it to the top of great trango and jumped off you're nearly vertical fall would clock in at roughly 30 seconds long or two seconds longer than a jump from the top of Mount Thor would be Congrats you've now discovered the highest possible point and jump off and experience a freefall from anywhere on the Earth's surface but what about outside of Earth I mean cliffs exist elsewhere in the universe right surely there must be a cliff even higher up than anything we have here on earth and it turns out there are if you could somehow make it over to Uranus or excuse me Uranus and then hop on over to Uranus is moon Maranda you can discover a cliff that's a whopping 20 kilometers high that's a vertical cliff base more than twice the height of Mount Everest is on earth and you can also totally jump off of it and survive because the gravity on Maranda is way less than it is on earth it would take you about 12 minutes to jump off from the top of it before you'd hit the bottom and you'd only be falling around 124 miles per hour I mean that still does sound pretty bad I guess but all things considered if you had some airbags you could probably end up making it work out now I know what everybody is going to say next what about jumping out of airplanes that definitely does count for a vertical freefall so let's move on to these types of jumps next a woman named vesna vulovic currently holds the world record for the tallest height ever survived falling out of an airplane without a parachute I made an entire video already just focusing on her incredible story but in short she managed to survive a fall from over 10,000 meters up in the sky after her plane blew up and she did all of it without a parachute she probably fell for around 3 minutes and 25 seconds give or take but that's far from the longest free fall famously in 2012 this dude named Felix Baumgartner and the team at Red Bull Stratos broke the world record for the world's highest freefall Baumgartner rode in a capsule attached to a balloon up to a freakishly scary height of 39 kilometers above the Earth's surface before he just jumped out with nothing but a pressure suit and a pair shoots his freefall lasted for four minutes in 19 seconds and his body reached a speed of 840 3.6 miles per hour becoming the first human being whose body broke the sound barrier without the assistance of any engine the Red Bull team believed that his free fall could have been extended safely to anywhere between 5 minutes and 6 minutes but he deployed his parachute a little early instead just two years later however in 2014 his freefall record was broken by another dude named Alan Eustace rather than going up in a fancy capsule Eustace just tethered himself to a balloon flew up to a rediculous 41.4 km/h 37 thousand six hundred and sixteen meters before he deployed his parachute and it took him four minutes in 27 seconds to accomplish earning him the title of the guy that's fallen the farthest and the longest in all of human history his record still stands tall today but the limit that humans can endear is certainly even beyond that the Red Bull Stratos team estimated that they could potentially pull off a freefall pushing into the six-minute range and the feats of Baumgartner and Eustace have proven that human bodies can endear drops from the stratosphere and speeds that break the sound barrier whatever the limit of human freefall actually is it certainly hasn't yet been reached and I'm certain that the world record will continue to be pushed upwards and broken in the future by somebody that somebody may even be watching this video right now and I can only hope so if you're serious about skydiving BASE jumping bungee jumping where you really do want to break the freefall world record one day or you're just into anything that really gets your adrenaline pumping you'll need a serious understanding of everyday physics and there's no better place to learn about that than on brilliance with their physics of the everyday course physics is of course a pretty daunting field and while a lot of places will just teach you some physics concepts brilliance will help you understand how physics works in your everyday life from refrigerators and motor two airplanes and crime scene investigations brilliant focuses on the fundamentals of subjects by teaching them in an approachable intuitive way that really helps you understand how to use what you end up learning later on in the more advanced classes like moving on from everyday physics up to quantum mechanics brilliants many interactive courses on physics are just some of their many fantastic courses which also include daily problems that will help teach you something new every day complete with a framework that you need to tackle them so if you want to learn complicated topics easily during your spare time then it's totally worth checking them out right now to learn more about brilliant you can click the link in the description or go to brilliant org slash real life lor and sign up for free but then the first 200 people who go to that link will also get 20% off of their annual premium subscription which is the subscription that I've been using to learn even more about physics and as always thank you for watching\n"