This 4,000mph super-train will get you from London to Edinburgh in eight minutes

Fancy a quick jaunt to Edinburgh without the five-hour train journey? That could soon be a reality thanks to Hyper Chariot, a company which has grand plans to create a super-shuttle that could get you from London to Edinburgh in a mere eight minutes. Eight minutes? It’s hardly worth getting a can of G&T for the journey.

It all sounds a bit too good to be true, but the folks at Hyper Chariot claim that the super-shuttle would use rollercoaster-style technology to catapult car-sized pods through airless concrete tubes, reaching speeds of 4,000mph (no, not 400, we checked: four-actual-thousand).

If it all goes ahead, the company says its wacky new transport system could be operational by 2040. So, best-case scenario, that’s only 23 years to wait. Actually, maybe five hours on the train doesn’t seem so bad.

In other news, could giant vacuums and magnetic wands clean up the air on the tube?