10 Cool Guinness World Records In 2011

Biggest bottle cap scultpure
Alistair Galpin poses with the largest bottle cap sculpture, made of 19,205 caps, in Auckland, New Zealand. The caps were used to create a sculpture in the shape of rugby ball. It took 18 months to complete and was finished to unveil on Guinness World Records
Largest collection of Smurfs Stephen Parkes (UK) began collecting Smurfs as a child, when they were sold by a chain of garages across the UK, and has never stopped. As of Jan. 28, 2010, his collection totals 1,061 and includes Christmas Smurfs, Easter Smurfs and Smurfs dressed as historical figures.
Largest pumpkin
Talk about a great gourd: Guinness World Records has confirmed that a massive pumpkin grown in Wisconsin is officially the world’s heaviest. It weighs 1,810.5 pounds and was grown by Chris Stevens in Wisconsin.
Longest domestic cat
5-year-old Maine Coon named Stewie was certified as the new record holder for world’s longest domestic cat after measuring 48.5 inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail bone. That’s a little more than 4 feet long.
Longest nose
The longest nose on a living person measures 8.8 cm (3.46 in) long from the bridge to the tip and belongs to Mehmet Ozyurek (Turkey). It was measured on the set of Lo Show dei Record in Rome, Italy, on March 18, 2010.
Most arrows caught by hand
Joe Alexander catches 43 arrows from the air, shot by German archers Peter Dubberstein and Robin Puls in Germany. Alexander caught 43, and the record to beat was 36.
Most concrete blocks broken while holding a raw egg
Joe Alexander, of Germany, breaks 24 concrete blocks, assembled in three stacks of 8 while holding a raw egg in the hand of the arm used for breaking the blocks. After the third stack had been broken the egg was still unbroken. The record to beat was 14 and the final result was 24.
Most spoons balanced on a face
The highest number is 17 and was achieved by Aaron Caissie (Canada) on the set of Lo Show Dei Record, in Milan, Italy, on April 18, 2009.
Most straws stuffed in a mouth
The most straws stuffed in a mouth is 400, achieved by Simon Elmore (Germany), who held them there for 10 seconds at the Mark ‘n’ Simon Show, Sollhuben, Bavaria, Germany, on Aug. 6, 2009.
Oldest twins in the world
Sisters Ena Pugh, right, and Lily Millward have been confirmed as the oldest twins in the world at 100 years and 10 months. Both live in the United Kingdom.

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Awesome images of Betelgeuse reveal how explosive red supergiant loses mass

It looks like a catastrophic explosion in the latest sci-fi action thriller but this awe-inspiring image is actually based on the latest state-of-the-art space imaging.

The artist’s impression, inspired by the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse, reveals an enormous plume of gas almost as big as our own Solar System blasting outwards.

The discoveries, revealed by the latest techniques on the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope, could help unravel why the mammoth plasma ball spews out material at such an incredible speed.

It looks like a catastrophic explosion in the latest sci-fi action thriller but this awe-inspiring image is actually based on the latest state-of-the-art space imaging.

The artist’s impression, inspired by the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse, reveals an enormous plume of gas almost as big as our own Solar System blasting outwards.

The discoveries, revealed by the latest techniques on the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope, could help unravel why the mammoth plasma ball spews out material at such an incredible speed.

Almost 1,000 times larger than our sun, Betelgeuse is the second largest star in the constellation of Orion and one of the biggest stars known to man.

The red supergiant is also one of the most luminous stars, emitting 100,000 times more light than the Sun.

For decades, astronomers have struggled to explain how the mysterious red supergiants expel such vast amounts of material. They can shed the mass of the Sun in just 10,000 years.

One theory was that the loss could be shed from areas above the star’s polar caps as they rotate.

But the two teams, who have studied the supergiant with the NACO and AMBER instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have concluded that it is powerful gas motions within the star that force out the huge mass of gas.

One team captured the sharpest image to date of Betelgeuse using NACO, an adaptive optics instrument, and a ‘lucky imaging’ technique, which combines the sharpest exposures to surpass the accuracy of a long exposure.

The resulting image approaches the theoretical limit of resolution possible with the 8-metre telescope. It is so sharp it could even spot a tennis ball on the International Space Station from Earth.

‘Thanks to these outstanding images, we have detected a large plume of gas extending into space from the surface of Betelgeuse,’ lead researcher Pierre Kervella from the Paris Observatory told the website PhysOrg.

The plume bursts out to at least six times the diameter of the star - about the distance from Sun to Neptune.

‘This is a clear indication that the whole outer shell of the star is not shedding matter evenly in all directions,’ adds Kervella.

Meanwhile, results from AMBER revealed intense up-and-down motion of gas within Betelgeuse’s atmosphere.

Keiichi Ohnaka from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, said: 'Our AMBER observations are the sharpest observations of any kind ever made of Betelgeuse.

'Moreover, we detected how the gas is moving in different areas of Betelgeuse’s surface - the first time this has been done for a star other than the Sun.

Combined, the unrivalled observations have led the astronomers to propose that these large-scale gas motions roiling under Betelgeuse’s red surface are behind the ejection of the massive plume into space.

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