StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: Jiggle Wiggle Waggle Walk with Charles Liu

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Do swimmers need less oxygen? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice answer patron questions about athletics and science with Geek-in-Chief astrophysicist Charles Liu. Could Chuck be a gymnast? NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-jiggle-wiggle-waggle-walk-with-charles-liu/ Thanks to our Patrons Courtney Miller, Victor Beaton, Charles Anglesey, Rudy Amaya, Tomek, Alex Ornelas, Bronwyn Allen-Kaeser, Jake, Andrew, Heather Turner, and Hector Flores for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: XIAOYU TANG, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition, and this is going to be a Cosmic Queries grab bag. I love those because they go everywhere, and we're responding to your depths of curiosity out there. We're going to do three segments. In the first segment, we're going to do Cosmic Queries. In the second segment, more Cosmic Queries. And in the third segment, even more.

And I got with me my co-host, Chuck Nice. Chuck. Hey, Neil. Good to have you there. All right. Professional comedian. And I got a former professional soccer player in the guise of Gary O'Reilly. Gary, I feel privileged to have you, have access to you.

I feel reciprocal feelings. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. And we said in previous episodes, there's a wiki page where your legs are on full display. And Chuck couldn't stop talking about it. Fill up Betty Grable. That's the list. For our listeners, Google that,

because it's going to go probably way over your head, but there you go. And, you know, I think I'm pretty good with grab bag cosmic queries, but I know someone out there who's better. We all do. He's beloved, a friend of StarTalk. My friend, my colleague, Charles Liu.

Charles. Hello, Neil. It's a pleasure. And Chuck and Gary, great to see you guys again. Thank you so much. It all goes well. The champion returns. Because whatever I know, you know more of it. That's what I mean. That's why. Not at all, Neil.

It is evidence that the geek spectrum goes infinite in each direction. Okay? Wherever you are in it, there's someone geekier than you, and arms reach away. And that's what we've got right here. I would just like to think that we complete each other. Oh, that's right. I don't know.

I can supplement and vice versa. We're a team, dude. That's very nice. Well, we're recording this right in the middle of the Olympics, and finally, finally, track and field kicked in. So, Chuck, are you on top of that? Yes, absolutely. The Olympics, I'm watching none of it.

No. How is that possible? How can you avoid it? Okay, Charles. Okay, I asked the wrong person. Charles. I'm going to be very honest. I tried. I can't find it. I can't avoid it? Okay, Charles. Okay, I asked the wrong person. Charles. I'm going to be very honest. I tried.

Do over. I can't find it. I can't find it anywhere. I'm serious. Really? Do over. Charles, how have you been doing with the Olympics? Oh, I have been following it.

I've been watching some stuff, and I confess that I was staying up till all hours, once or twice this past week, just checking things out live because somehow there is a difference between watching something happen in real time compared with watching it packaged in prime time. All right. So Gary, Chuck, you got the questions out there. So let's see what we've got. And are all these from Patreon? Yes, they are. I'll start off, Chuck, and follow up with the next one. J Maggi, here here we go is oxygen deprivation a major case with

swimmers who train and compete for olympic gold what kind of transformation do their bodies go through in being able to push their bodies while getting less oxygen okay charles over to you yeah charles let me tighten that question a little bit and ask you. Sure. Are the better athletes better because they do well with less oxygen or because they've done something with their physical fitness so that they always have more oxygen available? Both are kind of true. And I presume it doesn't focus just on swimmers, just anybody with this major muscle performance.

And in fact, there is a method of blood doping where you add oxygen, hemoglobin-rich stuff, into your body. So there's a way to cheat on that too. But oxygenation is a very good question. Wait, wait, wait. If you add oxygen-rich hemoglobin, that's not a separate chemical different from the rest of what's in your body. But if you have a higher percentage of hemoglobin in your blood,

then you can process oxygen a little bit better. And then you won't get caught. Right. Yes. Or supposedly. I believe they call that the Keith Richards. He's still alive. You train at altitude, Charles.

You harvest blood that obviously is able to take in more oxygen. You keep it knowing that you're performing at sea level and then you dope with your own blood. With your own blood. Tour de France cyclists are in fact infamous for doing this kind of work. And no disrespect to people who don't like this guy. One of the reasons why- That reminds me about the disrespect disrespect him. Yeah, okay. Yeah, well, no, no, no. No, I'm saying I understand why you may not like him, but one of the greatest cyclists of all time because of the way he metabolized,

he was able to retain oxygen in his blood, is Lance Armstrong. Well, his doping is now well-recorded and legendary, and if he were not doing that, maybe he would not be one of the greatest cyclists of all time. But that's another conversation for another time. To answer specifically the oxygenation question. Can you just diss Chuck Nice on that?

I know, man. That was just politely. Well, I'm sorry. Chuck, Charles was polite. That's what I was saying. I said, if you don't like him, I understand. Charles was polite. Okay.

No, no, no. It had nothing to do with like. It was just the facts of the circumstances. But okay, go on. Go on, Charles. Yeah. With oxygenation, it's very interesting. For swimmers, for example, asthmatics, people who have a hard time taking in air sometimes

are told to swim to help them deal with that better. Some of the world's greatest swimmers of all time actually have asthma. For example, Amy Van Dyken, who won many gold medals in swimming, was asthmatic. And as a result, for example, the way that she swam, she was able to use her muscles and work her body despite the fact there was a difficulty in her being able to take in air.

So is it because you force your body and train it to breathe at these regular intervals? So it's really a breathing exercise at that level? Not only breathing, yes, but also the ability to do something very effectively, even though you're not intaking more oxygen. Okay, so what about the sprints, like the 50-meter sprint? They don't even come up for air. No, they don't. That's right.

Hussein Bald is so good, he actually held his breath the entire time he was running, just to try and make it fair. Just to make it fair. Can't tell if you're joking or serious. He was still tying his shoes when everyone else began. But, yeah, it's true uh the the people who are doing the 50 meter sprint swims over the 20 ish seconds where they're working like crazy they might come up for one breath that's it wow yeah all right keep it going what else we have okay yeah wow look at that well we're not gonna make you hold your breath for the next question i got to add something astrophysical here so earth's

atmosphere didn't always have oxygen uh it was likely carbon dioxide in its very earliest stages and the whole ecosphere at the time fed on carbon dioxide and and and released oxygen as a byproduct. And so we can argue here, I think, Charles, but I think we'd agree the biggest climatic change ever was the conversion of our atmosphere from CO2-based to oxygen, to have significant oxygen. The Great Oxygenation took hundreds of millions of years, and it was the most significant extinction event in the history of life on Earth.

Oh, wow. So it was like, for us, what global warming would be. Cool. Cool. Very possible. Very cool. Except global warming is happening on the timescale of human lifetimes,

whereas that's happening to take care of hundreds of millions of years. Yeah. So way too long. So oxygen then enabled a whole other level and classification of metabolism to take place. It's like rocket fuel for macroscopic animals. Yeah.

Sweet. But it took forever to evolve that, and everything that didn't evolve that died out. There it is. Okay. Give me another question. Give me another one. All right, here we go.

This is Michael DiCola. And he says, hey, guys, which sport of all sports in your scientific opinions requires the highest level of eye-hand coordination and why? Baseball, hockey, tennis, badminton, ping pong? Oh, I love it. Let's get to that. We got to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to fight over who thinks. Clearly in soccer, there's no hand-eye coordination

because they don't use their hands. So you're not in this conversation. Keepers. I'm in this conversation, but it doesn't have to be about soccer. Okay. When we come back, more StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries with my friend and colleague, Charles Liu. We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

Grab bag. All Cosmic Queries all the time. In this episode, I got Charles Liu with me. He's an astrophysicist with the City University of New York. And I've known this guy for 20-something years. And wherever I am on the geek spectrum, he's beyond it. He's multiple steps beyond. So that's why we have him here.

It is a synergistic relationship. All right. We work with why we have him here. It is a synergistic relationship. All right. We work with one another. Thank you. As you said in the first segment, we complete one another maybe. That's what it is. And Chuck Nice and Gary O'Reilly,

let's do this. Okay, so what was that next question? When we last, before we left, Michael DiColo wanted to know which sport of all sports, in your scientific opinions, requires the highest level of hand-eye coordination and why? I'm going to vote real quick.

And I would not have had this answer except for the Olympics I saw two days ago. And I have to say table tennis because, oh, my gosh. What the hell are they doing? How are they – how it is happening? And I can't even follow it. I'm dizzy just looking at them, and they're actually playing the game. So I vote for table tennis, hand-eye coordination. I agree that that is very impressive,

but my watching has led me to believe the thing that's even more crazy and even harder is fencing. Wow. I cannot tell when people score. I just can't see the blade. It is funny where they just sort of remove the mask and cheer and say, what the hell just happened? They move so fast. And we should also qualify, right, Neil and Gary?

I know you're about to say something about this too. There are many different versions of hand-eye coordination. There's the whole hand, like in fencing. There's individual finger craft, right? There's the ability to move the arm in general. It's a very complex system. So the term hand-eye coordination is very complicated, and there could be many correct answers to this question.

And for me, I kind of like the triple play in baseball. That requires very high hand-eye speed coordination and accuracy. But still, the ping pong, my head is still bouncing back and forth from three days ago's matches that I saw. So, Gary, soccer game. You don't get a vote here because soccer... No, I have a non-scientific opinion, so I'm kind of just... I'm running for fun, as it were. So, it's a non-Olympic sport,

but I have to push forward Formula One racing to be able to travel at 200 miles an hour, coordinate everything in your ears that's coming from your team to assess intuitively the situation of your car on the road at those speeds whilst driving. I would push that forward, but there's an argument for and against, I'm sure.

My argument against that is everybody's going 200 miles an hour. Right. And the car is helping a little bit. It's not going in a straight line. That's the thing with Formula 1. It doesn't go in a straight line. You've got a very, very different track. You have to steer.

That's right. You do have to steer. You have to steer. Wow. Chuck, how about you? Well, I tell you, man, I'm confused now because ping pong is a blurringly fast sport where you can't even follow the ball. And I don't know how they create that much force to slam that little teeny ball that doesn't even, I can't even throw it.

And they're smashing it so that it travels. But then fencing is so incredible the way they're moving these foils in such a way that they're blocking each other and you can't even see it. And they're saying things like, hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You're my father.

Prepare to die. I think they should replace fencing with lightsabers. All right, there it is. Now I'm watching all the time. Olympics or not. That'd be the future of fencing. Lightsaber fighting in Star Wars is much more like the style of playing kendo,

which is a sword fighting technique. Oh, yes, I like kendo. Yes, I know kendo. Kendo is great. A kendo may well be an Olympic sword at some point. Use a cane. Use like sticks. Sticks, basically. Kendo is great. Kendo may well be an Olympic sport at some point. Use a cane. Use like sticks. Sticks, basically. Represent swords, yes.

So instead of like cutting you in half with them, you just want to hurt each other. Yeah, you just end up with a knot on your head like this. Yeah. Well, they're heavily armored. Yeah. But I don't know when Formula One is going to become an Olympic sport. All right, so what do you guys think about baseball? Baseball.

Baseball triple play. Tremendously difficult. All right. So what do you guys think about baseball? Baseball, baseball triple play is tremendously difficult, very hard for the hand-eye coordination of pitchers got to throw the ball at a hundred miles an hour and land in a box. Yeah. And a little tiny box. And then the batter's got to, you know, make sure that you take a little stick and hitting this ball that's coming towards you at a hundred miles an hour, very complicated. So really every sport has a case to make for what is the most difficult hand-eye coordination i don't think we can arrive today on a truly it's just not soccer because they don't use their hands that's all i'm saying what is it with soccer and you keepers what's your problem i love you but in this case i love you but not that much i got nothing for you next question what do you got?

All right. Here we go. Next question's up and it's Violeta and it's broke down frenetically for us and my mom Izzy. They're back.

We know Violeta. We know Violeta. So now Is she still 11? No, no, no. Here we go. Breaking news. I am finally

13 years of age. She's a teenager. And I am writing to you from D. She's a teenager. Yay! And I am writing to you from D.C. And here we go. Yeah. Right down our lane. What are the weirdest sports to ever officially be part of the Olympic Games,

past or present? And why, though? So has anyone got – I got to vote. I got to vote here. You go first. I got to vote here. So it has to be the tug of war, which was in the first few Olympics.

And they said, no, we're not doing this anymore. Wow. So that was just kind of weird, right? The tug of war. So the rule was, as I understand it, everybody in the tug of war had to have a common profession. And they have to dress in whatever it is that that profession required of them, so that it was a unit. It wasn't just random people from your country. So it would be like

all police officers or fire people or whatever. And so it turned out the Brits kept winning it because they put their bobbies in it, you know, the police police and they have these long boots with steel shanks in the at the heel and so once they dug in their heels you can't unpull that and so they were winning every time and they just they just gave up in the tug of war so we broke we broke the sport of tug of war yeah i think so yeah so tug of war that was kind of weird equipment technology yeah yes yes they make they probably could have gotten around that but that was kind of weird. That's an equipment technology issue. Yes, yes. They probably could have gotten around that, but that was kind of weird. And I would say one of the weirdest sports we still have,

not including all the really weird ones, just traditionally weird, the triple jump, I can't get around that one. I'm sorry. All right. That's got so much physics in it. I mean, for me. Let's not just jump once.

Let's jump three times. There you go. Wait, first hop first. and then it's like, and then skip, and then jump. It's a happy event. You get to skip in the middle. All right, so my... Okay, that's my vote.

All right, my obviously, as I've said already, non-scientific is speed walking. Oh. That, you know, I get walking around, but walking like that, you like that to all the athletes. So it's like go as fast as you can, just don't run. Just go as fast as you can and look almost as ridiculous as you can doing it. With respect to every speedwalker.

Nobody looks good speedwalking. I don't get it. But walking is cool because the rule that you have to have one foot on the ground at all times is a fascinating physical requirement. But that's not why they look weird. Right. They look weird because. It is. No, no, no. They look weird because the leg that's coming under your body has to have a locked knee.

Yeah. That's it. Yes, yes. So as you put down your foot in front of you, as your body passes over that foot, your leg has to be straight. And so otherwise, you ever see the posters keep on trucking? You could truck faster than you can speed walk

because you're not limited by the leg going straight under your body. And so it's the straightening of the leg going straight under your body. And so it's the straightening of the leg that shifts the hips up and down and gives you that jiggle, wiggle, waggle walk

that they've got. It just looks painful. So Chuck, how about you? What sport is the weirdest? Very quickly, ribbon dancing. What the hell? No, we still have that.

Rhythmic gymnastics? Rhythmic gymnastics. With the ribbon. Yeah, same thing. The ribbon was only one event. There's also the little ball that you could dance with. Yes, that too. That goes in with the ribbon dancing for me.

It's ridiculous. Rhythmic gymnastics. Stop it is what I'm saying. Just stop. I think it's cool. Yeah, just stop it with your stupid ball and your dumb ribbon. I like the way you said that. Just stop.

Stop. Yeah. Stop it. Stop. No. I love the ribbon. Take your ribbon and wrap dumb ribbon. I like the way you said that. Just stop. Yes. Stop it. Stop. No. I love the ribbon. Take your ribbon and wrap a gift and take your ball and go to the beach.

And leave it out of the damn Olympics. And leave it out of the Olympics. Oh. No love for the rhythmic gymnastics, Charles. I love rhythmic gymnastics. I got one more thing. It's not weird, but I have to confess my urban ignorance. So I think I was maybe 20.

Like embarrassingly, probably a little younger, but still embarrassingly old the day I learned that in water polo, you're never touching the ground. Never touch the bottom of the pool. Right, because it's like seven, eight, nine feet down. And I said, what? And so I don't know that counts as a sport that is weird, but I thought it was weird that they had to swim the entire time.

I said, who would do that? That makes it harder. If you're just trying to throw the ball. The physical fitness of water polo athletes just pretty amazing. I think it's an uncelebrated fact about what they do

and how and why they do it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's get one more before we take

our next break. Okay. Go ahead. Kaylee. Kaylee Sell. Hi, Chuck. Hi, everybody. Are there very many

participants in the sports world working directly with scientists in the pursuit to figure out, it's a long question, by the way, pull up a chair, out of just how durable the human body can be and what these athletes can accomplish? I've heard people saying we should have at least one perfectly average person competing against the world's best in the Olympics. So can we have some frame of reference and a laugh? So basically, Chuck, this is what Kaylee Sell is saying. How much would they need to pay you, Chuck, right, to do gymnastics next to Simone Biles,

and what is the statistical likelihood you would survive to do another StarTalk episode? Oh, that's the rewording of the question. We will find out when we come back whether Chuck should be in the Olympics so we can all laugh at him relative to everybody else on StarTalk. Big thank yous and a Patreon shout out.

Go to Courtney Miller, Victor Beaton, Charles Anglesey, and Rudy Amaya. Hey guys, without you, we could not make this show. So thank you for your support. And anyone else who would like their very own patreon shout out please go to patreon.com slash startalk radio and support us We're back for our third and final segment of StarTalk. Sports edition, Cosmic Queries, grab bag edition. I got Charles Liu.

Charles, how do we find you on the internet? I tweet at Chuck Liu, C-H-U-C-K-L-I-U. All right. And generally just find me around. Okay, fine. Just open some doors. There he is. Just turn on the internet and you'll find Chuck Lewis. So we left off.

I forgot. Was this question directed to Charles Liu or Chuck Nice? This is a Chuck Nice question. About the average person we want to see perform. Right, so they want to see just how good the best in the world actually are by putting what they are – this is Kaylee Sell, by the way. She is saying, right, how much do we need to pay Chuck

to do gymnastics next to Simone Biles, and what is the statistical likelihood you would survive to do – That Chuck will break. Yeah, that we will just completely trash Chuck Nice. I like the idea that we get a reminder of what is average. Yeah, the base level. That's a facet. So instead of the world record line on the pool,

there should be the Chuck Nice line, you know, moving as Chuck Nice would be. Yeah, which, by the way, would be a kiddie pool. I know, but what it does, I mean, spinning that 180, what it does is make you realize just how good these athletes are. And when you say elite, I think in some instances, it doesn't do them justice. Well, if I ever swam against an Olympic,

in an Olympic meet, the other swimmers would also have to wear swimmies to make it even for me. Because I bet you that that would ruin them. Actually swimming with swimmies. We'll help you out. Are swimmies those little inflatable things that are on your arms? Yes, they go on your arms. Okay, alright. That's what I was wondering.

So here's the difference. There are events where you would break if you attempted them, but we all can walk and we know how to run and most of us know how to swim. So I think those are more typical of where you can put an average person in and see where they would land i think that would be an interesting um uh exercise making chuck do the the balance beam or floor exercises

let me just tell you you could not pay me to do the balance beam for two reasons i actually and there's two reasons. Yeah, I know what they are. I actually, and there's two reasons. And I like them both. Okay, all right, fine. That's the end of that joke right there. That's the end of that joke. Okay? All right.

And the second thing is that I have a permanent case of the twisties. So, you know, put them in. All you have to do is a double pike dismount. And you don't have to twist. That's so so here it is chuck i'm going to quote one of your brethren uh stephen wright he says i'm not afraid of heights i'm afraid of widths okay you gotta love that that was good that was. It's not the fall, it's the landing. Right, right, right, right. All right, let's get another one going here in our third and final segment.

So what else you got? You guys going back and forth? Yeah, well, this is Michael Mean. Michael Mean says, hey, Neil and Charles. Lucas, my 10-year-old science enthusiast, wishes to know how many gymnasts jump so high during their floor routines not how many but how how is it they jump so high he forgot to do how do gymnasts uh jump so high uh during their floor he didn't forget to do you added a word that wasn't there okay we should know how gymnasts jump so high that's all don't be blaming it on Michael.

Let me tell you something. Michael didn't write this question the way I told him to. Plus, he should let his 10-year-old ask the question, not himself. So we're answering Lucas here, not Michael. Yes, Lucas, an excellent question. And Michael, thank you for phrasing the question for Lucas on Lucas's behalf. The answer is twofold. One is gymnasts have so much muscle power per cubic inch of their body that they're able to launch themselves in very, very effective ways, kind of like a way a

basketball player can elevate above the rim. But in this instance, it's elevating their whole bodies in unusual... Could it be that they're smaller? They're smaller. Being smaller helps. It's got to, because a flea can jump many times its height, but a hippopotamus can't. That's right. So that's part of it, right.

Imagine a jumping hippopotamus. That would be amazing. Oh, I would love to see that. But the second point, which sometimes people don't know as much actually have you seen baby hippos they're the cutest thing they do jump with our four feet okay go on yeah and they didn't cut you in half with their mouths yeah they are they are powerful powerful animals yeah they're all jaw yeah okay so go on go on the other part is that a lot of

people don't realize that in the floor exercises, there are springs under the floor. It is a very small amount of give and elasticity on the floor just in order to allow the athletes to have that extra push and see all the cool things that we get to see when they are performing their acts. So that means the energy that they give themselves by jumping high, when they hit the pad again, that energy goes into the spring and goes back to them, and it's not absorbed by anything. So there's no dissipation of the jumping energy. Inelastic, you end up burning up the energy, losing the energy to some friction, I guess, or heat.

Now, apparently somebody wasn't content with the four exercises, and they introduced the trampoline to the Olympics. Oh. Okay. We need more springs. That is an amazing, amazing sport. We're not jumping high enough. Right.

Yeah. Right. This guy's going 30 feet in the air. It's beautiful to watch. It's beautiful to watch. Fascinating. Okay. Keep it coming.

Give me some more. All right. Thank you, Lucas. We're going to fill one in, which kind of seems off-topic, but I think we'll find a way to make this work. Josh has asked, what fields does a physics graduate work in

minus teaching? I wish to switch my degree to physics, but I am worried about the lack of job prospects. Well, we are a science sports show. So, Charles, do we have the answer here? Wait, he's asking if he majors in physics, is there a job? You know, so the thing is, he's looking in the want ads or whatever they are today and say,

physicists needed. That's not how this works. Oh, no. Yeah, Charles, take this from me. Go. Yeah. And by the way, we're not Indeed.com. Regrettably, we may not have the job to offer.

But let me provide encouragement. As Neil was alluding to, physics is essentially the understanding of how the world and the universe work. My undergraduate degree is in physics. Yeah, I have an undergraduate degree in physics as well, in addition to astronomy and astrophysics. The point is that most people would love to hire a physicist for doing something other than teaching. For example, helping athletes be more effective in their athletic behavior because they know the physics of the human body, the physics of the equipment, the physics of the venue. What you need to do in order to take advantage of those opportunities in the world after you've attained a physics degree is to love what you do. Loving

the physics and understanding what's happening allows you to extend yourself into different areas of the world which you might not have thought of was physics and in the in the process literally change how those fields work and and and let me add because charles and i compliment each other uh no no because charles and i complete each other let me add that physics is not so much a body of knowledge as it is insight into the operations of nature. So employers who know that

do very well. And you know who are among them? Google has hired physicists. My wife has a PhD in mathematical physics and was hired by Michael Bloomberg when he began his entire financial empire. When she was hired in, he had only less than 100 employees. And he himself has degrees in math and physics.

And when he became the youngest partner ever at Salomon Brothers, his mother said, but you're not using your physics degree. And then when he left with $30 million and founded a company, an info tech company, but you're not using your physics degree. Then he when he left with $30 million and founded a company, an info tech company, but you're not using your physics degree. Then he becomes a multi-billionaire. You're not using your physics degree. The fact is, he was using his physics degree every step of the way.

That's right. So shut up, mom. No, no, never tell mom to shut up. Chuck him sad because he's a comedian. He's allowed to say that. Okay. But the realization, yes, if you want to switch to physics because you really love it and you want to study the way the universe works, do it. And you will find the employment opportunities there opening up for you. Wait, wait.

And if you're really just into just the physics for the physics sake, then you can be a physicist and be a research professor somewhere. for the physics sake, then you can be a physicist and be a research professor somewhere. But if you don't want to teach and you don't want to do that, 99 other places will take you because you will see the world the way others do not, as a juxtaposition of matter, motion, and energy. In fact, Charles and I are co-authors on a book published in the year 2000, which is basically about astronomy and the universe. In the year 2000, which is basically about astronomy and the universe. In the year 2000.

However, the content was organized by the physics principles of matter, motion, and energy. And that was sort of an innovative way to think about information and knowledge and how it works to bring us the world that we know and understand and love.

One universe at home in the cosmos. One more question. We got another question there? Peter Jacobs. Can we do the Javelin? Do the Javelin. That's a fast easy one. All right.

Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. This is from Roman Prekop. Is there any technology which could make, i.e. javelins, fly further?

I think, Charles, you've got this. We may have touched on this before. No, I got this. I got this. It's called rockets. There you go. Put a, Charles, you've got this. We may have touched on this before. No, no, I got this. I got this. It's called rockets. There you go. Put a rocket on it.

There you go. Low-hanging fruit has been picked. What is a rocket but a javelin with a rocket on it? Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, Charles, didn't they already do this? No, they did the opposite of this. No, no, no. What did they do?

They moved the center of gravity by... There's a weight, so they moved it further back. And so that actually made the javelin throw go less distance. But there was some... Is that because the space in the stadium, they couldn't contain the thrown

javelin in the stadium without risking killing someone on the facing stands? Can you imagine someone in the 5,000? We only lost four fans. And an athlete in the 5,000 meters that was taking the bend. Oh, that happened to me running by. Yeah, imagine how that would explain in that one. There was also, Charles, wasn't there some sort of feathering

on the tail of the javelin as well that they were using to make it fly? So can we explain that as well? That's right. Well, aerodynamically speaking, the javelin as a well that they were using to make it fly. So can we explain that as well? That's right. Well, aerodynamically speaking, when you have something in the tail of an object moving, it helps stabilize the motion and create a better trajectory. And what we always want to do when we're trying to throw things that are not round or even round to some extent is to try to make sure it doesn't wobble or make too many changes in its profile to the air as it moves through the air. Because that'll bring up more air resistance.

Aerodynamic and effective. That would create more air resistance, I see. The fletching creates, yeah, a little bit of air resistance by existing, but what it does is it makes the net air resistance of the entire system much smaller. Cool. So this is why, to just go off sport here,

this is why you can throw a spiral football farther than throwing it in any other sort of kind of trajectory, right? A spiral goes farther because it maintains the same, how did you call it, profile to the air as it moves through. Okay, very cool. So we don't want them to fly farther. That's the point, because we want to contain it within the stadium. We can build bigger stadiums, but that's not cost effective.

Yeah. All right, all right. Let's do one more. Was there one on the Paralympics there? Yes, there was. This is a question from Peter Jacobs from Queensland, Australia. Shouldn't we allow Paralympic swimmers to wear prostheses? Protheses?

Ooh. Yes. Prostheses, yeah. Prostheses, thank you, Neil. Interesting. Interesting. Well, in my opinion, it would be fine if everyone wore the same kind of prosthetic that would allow them to be performing

on a fair level playing field. That's kind of hard to know, right? Paralympic athletes all need different kinds of prosthetics. And so if you- That's part of the interesting challenge of designing the sports and how they would be contested. Then you wind up with, yeah, a circumstance. And really, this is philosophical as opposed to physical. But in my opinion, when a Paralympic athlete is performing, that person is whole.

That person is not incomplete and needs a prosthetic to complete them. They are who they are. And so competing with that in mind, in that attitude, is, in my opinion, probably much more meaningful in athletic competition than prostheticizing everyone to be sort of a uniform in that way. Damn. Otherwise, you'd be like, well, Mike. Deeply philosophical and moral.

Deeply philosophical. And moral. Well, think about it. Look. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, nothing you said has any rebuttal at all. Yeah, which is why I can't stand it because I can't make a joke about it. You can't even make a joke about it. What am I going to do with that?

What you're saying is to say let's put on a prosthetic means we have to turn you into us in order to watch you compete. And that's just wrong. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, Chuck. It's not necessary. What an answer. Charles, what an answer. That is really good. And of course, if you want to

cross over to one of our other postings, we interviewed the archer for the Paralympics who does not have hands. The armless archer is Matt Studsman, Neil. Yeah, we had him on StarTalk and that was quite a show.

And he was sitting there all proud and how he can, you know, pull the bow and he's got a family and he works on his Corvette in his garage. And so, Charles, that's a beautiful note to end on. Thank you for digging into that bit of social, cultural,

what shall we call that? A sense of who we are and a sense of what society can and should be. And you heard it here on StarTalk. All right, guys. We're going to call it quits there. Gary, Chuck, Charles, always great to have this trinity of the three of you

working with me on this show. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. And I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you, as always, to keep looking up.