Japan's New Levitating Train Is Breaking World Speed Records

Japan’s new maglev train is pretty fast. How fast? In the time you took to read this sentence, it crossed two kilometers.

According to The Guardian, the futuristic train achieved 603km/h on Tuesday as it moved around a Mount Fuji test track, beating ts own record of 590km/h…. set one week earlier.

Maglev stands for “magnetic levitation,” which is precisely how it achieves such unthinkable speeds: hovering 10cm above the tracks, the train is propelled by electrically charged magnets.

Jesse Pinkman would be proud.

Unfortunately, the Japanese will have to wait until 2027 to ride this train. The construction costs – for a track between Tokyo and Nagoya - are estimated at $100 billion.

Until then, they’ll have to settle on the Shinkansen (aka, Bullet Train), the fastest speed of which is a comparatively snail-like 275.3 km/h. Why, it’s hardly worth the trouble of boarding!