StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: Space Balls?

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Quidditch in Space? Badminton on Mars? On this episode, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice answer a grab bag of patron questions about all things athletics with our geek-in-chief astrophysicist Charles Liu. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-space-balls/ Thanks to our Patrons CNASTY!, Jilam Dickson, Aden Hahn, Sam O'Neill, Austin Allen, Devan, Phil Brady, Bruce Ryan, Rose, William for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI), Public domain, 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. This is going to be Cosmic Query's grab bag. But a particular kind of grab bag, because we want to think about sports not only on Earth, but off-world. And of course, I've got with me my co-host, Chuck Nice.

Hey, Neil, what's happening? Off-world. Right, our professional stand-up comedian, who's actually in pretty good physical shape, even though you never really did any sports in your life. Is that correct? I mean, I have played sports in my life. i just don't talk about the disaster that it was okay that's all there it is okay that's honest and i've got gary o'reilly former soccer pro from the uk gary my co-hosts all right dudes

well so this kind of subject is fun because it involves sort of the physics of sports as played in different sort of gravitational atmospheric environments. And while I can take you some of the way there, when you really want to do it right, we

gotta go for our geek in chief. And there's only one person with that title in this sector of the universe perhaps the entire universe perhaps the multiverse itself charles lu charles welcome back to star talk i'm not worthy thank you oh no it's such a pleasure to be back thank you thank you thank you man you know we have to bring you back with enough frequency so that I don't get big headed about my own geek expertise right because after a while I say yeah I got this I got this and then you put you in the same room with me and it's like no I don't got this we're in this we are all in this together Neil you have

your expertise I have mine we know the continuum, you come in from beyond the horizon of the continuum that I occupy. Let me just say it that way. How's that? I do not know if I agree, but thank you for your kind words. It's always a pleasure to be here and talking about science and sports and literally everything else with you. Well, everything. And Charles is a friend and colleague, and he's a professor of physics and astronomy at City University of New York on Staten Island.

And some people don't know that he was with me 20 years ago when we were building and finishing the new Hayden Planetarium in Rose Center. Yeah, I was six at that time. So I was being squeezed into the corners to make sure that children couldn't get stuck in the various spaces. Charles Lill, the young Sheldon of the Hayden Planet. The young Sheldon. Exactly. So we got you, Charles, here.

And so we just want to, could you just, you know, we've got questions from Patreon, which has been our sole source. So if you want to get questions on Cosmic Queries, you can join Patreon for a very low entry level. I mean, we want you to, you know, go a little higher, but entry level gets you at least this far on it. And so, Charles, you have just an overarching thought about sports on Earth versus what might be necessary on other planets, if we were a multi-planet species, for example. Oh, yeah. The basic point is that all human motion is fundamentally pushing against gravity. Everything we do, whether we're walking or we're standing or we're jumping

or anything like that, trying to hit a baseball, trying to keep it off the ground, everything is based on gravity when it comes right back down to it. So in the end, if you're in an environment where there is no gravity or microgravity, then your own personal forces take over those activities. Suddenly your physiology matters way more. Suddenly the environment in which you are playing, the size, the shape, the speed, all the different things matter. It's going to change sports fundamentally, no matter where we go in the universe,

as long as it's not 9.8 meters per second squared acceleration. Wow, so finally we can play Quidditch in outer space. Except that, you know, if you get hit by a bludger, you don't fall. Where are you going to go? Oh, that's right. Yeah. I forgot about that because even though they're flying around,

they're still magically, if they fall off, they fall to the ground. And that hurts. Gravity still dominates the play field. However, if you were playing jetpack Quidditch and your broom has its own propulsion as in rockets,

when you do get hit, you'll be knocked off course. You have to correct in order to come back. But you won't fall to the ground. That's right. What's the fun in it if you don't hit the ground? As a spectator, I haven't come to see you do quite nicely. I've come to see you go splat. Gary, did you just say,

what is the fun of Quidditch in outer space? No, yes, without the floor to land to smash into. Without falling. Wait, wait. So, Charles, so maybe we're thinking, we're too narrow in our thinking. Maybe the sports that we have honed on Earth were conceived in a sort of a 1G environment.

Maybe if we go to the moon at 1 sixth gravity or Mars at 38% gravity, maybe we should say, what sports would, can we invent sports that would be best served by those gravitational fields and not try to port something from Earth to these other locations? I agree with you completely. Whole new kinds of sports. I thought I have an argument. You're just agreeing with me, Charles? You just agreeing? Completely. Well, on

Mars, I know it will be mutant badminton, where your little mutant, like Quatto, is the only one actually allowed to hold the racket. So the little mutant growing out of your chest. I got you. There it is.

I thought the mutant comes out and does a slow, soft shoe. Well, yeah, but he'd have to use your feet. That's the problem. Oh, no. Not again. So that's a good way to think about it. Now, so who's got the questions, Chuck? Do you have the questions from Patreon? Both.

Oh, you both do? I have questions. Okay, so who goes first yes i'll jump in i'll jump in william one of our patreon patrons uh what elements or considerations would be important for an outer space sport so we're going to drill a bit deeper into what we just discussed he says i'm guessing it's a he william i would love to see an enders game style arena but what would really be entertaining to watch people compete at in space? So we've got, again, the entertainment. I need someone to hit the floor.

So when he says space, he implies zero G, I think, when he's saying in space, right? So without the net to save you or no net to not save you, where is the risk factor that we all are going to watch someone defy the risk due to their expertise? For those people who aren't familiar with Ender's Game, that was a novel written by Orson Scott Card a number of decades ago, where to fight an alien menace, a number of children were put into a place called the battle school. And they were out in space and trying to figure out all kinds of new strategies and methods that the adults put them in uh and it was a little creepy of a book actually um but nevertheless

chuck i knew that i knew everything you just said i knew that yeah and so no of course you do but but the it was very interesting orson Neil, your nose is grown by about six inches. No, of course you do. But it was very interesting. Orson Scott Card did a good job trying to imagine what fighting and combat would be like in Zero-G in a number of those cases. It was later made into a movie with various CGI effects

and things like that. I don't know that they did as well as we would have liked them to. But what would be fun in a boxing match, if I hit you, we both recoil from that contact. Yeah, that's right. So what we're probably going to be talking about, my guess is that you're going to be thinking much more about evade and capture type games as opposed to retrieving an object type games. So football, soccer, baseball, and those kinds of things. You hit a ball, it's going to go everywhere. You just have to go get it. And then there's no air messing with it. The spin will be hard to work with. Rather, it'll be like, can you grab that person that's going from point A to point B

before the person gets there. There's probably going to be issues of musculature. Are you going to bounce off a corner? How big is the space going to be? Can you change your position? And then the equipment will matter so much too, just as Chuck was saying earlier about jetpacks. Right. If you can't, as soon as you launch yourself up in the same way that a basketball player leaving the floor knows where you're coming down, you're going to have to launch yourself and know where we choose because there's friction between us and some other surface that enables that. But in space, any time you want to change direction, you have to give up some mass in order to do that. Right?

You can't just choose to change direction. Something has to come out of you so that you recoil in the opposite way with your momentum. And that's the only way you can change direction. Something has to come out of you so that you recoil in the opposite way with your momentum. And that's the only way you can change direction. I thought you meant you had to pray in order to change direction. Oh, mass. Give up some mass.

Dominus is bitter. That could still happen. That could still be. Yeah. So gymnastics, Charles. Gymnastics. Yeah. I mean, what's the point?

If I do a triple somersault, I can do 30 somersaults. And I'll just keep going. Gymnastics will no longer exist in zero gravity. Right. Well, here's what you would do then, right? You create a circumstance where you have to leave one surface. Maybe you're pushed off of one surface. And before you reach the other surface,

then you have to do all your things. The other thing that you could do, though, is you could have magnetized gravity boots. So from surface to surface, you know, the magnet is turned off on one, you push off, and then as you go, then it's turned on the other,

and that's when it pulls you and sticks. Right. Like space prodders. Yeah. So if it's a magnetic stick, then you always stick the landing because you will connect to the magnet. If it's electromagnets that they just turn on. Yeah. Yeah.

But that could be cool, too, for wrestling. So, Neil, think of it like this. Well, I'm asking. I shouldn't say think of it this way because I've never wrestled anybody except my own demons. Stand strong, Chuck. But, okay, let's say you're on the platform and you have certain points of your body that have magnetized uh like uh like knee pads elbow pads and your shoes okay so while you're wrestling these are turned on okay the the floor is magnetized you guys are actually wrestling but at any point

they can turn it off maybe it's on a cycle so it'll be very fair to everybody. Or it's random. Random. Or random. Or random. Right? So now, how does that change you as a wrestler? Because isn't leverage everything?

Right? And at some points, you're going to be floating. And then what move do you have to think of while you're floating so that when the cycle starts again, you're in a better position to dominate your whole— Magnetic strategies, what that is all about. Very cool. I like that. Yeah. I like that. Damn.

All right. Well, this whole segment is just about sports and space. So let's keep going. Who's got the next question? Cool. All right. I guess I'll bring up the next one. This is from Fitz Fritz Menzel. Hey, Neil, if there were a zero gravity sport that involved actually launching or jumping from one wall of a huge arena to the other, what speed could they reach?

What would happen when they hit the other wall? So, Charles, tell me about the symmetries of jumping and landing in that context. Let's do the quick calculation, okay? D equals one half A T squared. A typical athlete can probably jump about, what, two meters in the air, five, six feet, if they're really, really accomplished. So, if you can just set up a mass six feet in the air, five, six feet, if they're really, really accomplished. So if you get just center of mass six feet in the air, that's pretty good.

But they're working against gravity. If we're just going to put yourself into motion, that's not the right calculation, I don't think. No, no. What I'm trying to do is to figure out how much force and acceleration a typical athlete can create by pushing off. Okay, so then you get a direct measurement. Okay, there you go.

Yes, direct measurement. So 2 equals 1 half gt squared, so that's 5, 2 fifths, 0.4. What's the square root of 0.4? 0.4 is 0. Yeah, it's about 0.6, right? A little bit between 0.6 and 0.7. So you're going for 0.6 seconds deceleration

at 10 meters per second. That means you're able to launch yourself at approximately six-tenths of gravity, right? Six-tenths of a meter per second, something like that. Six meters per second. All right. So you're going six meters per second, and let's say you weigh about 100 kilograms, 220 pounds, something like that. So that's… Okay, but the thing is, if I can jump…

Kilogram meters per second. 220 pounds, something like that. So that's... Okay, but the thing is, if I can jump, if I can propel myself at that speed, I will arrive at the far wall at that very same speed. That's right. So I'm trying to figure out how much damage you would do to your face. The answer

is, well, I mean, we can do the math specifically, but let's just do it intuitively. If I jump at full speed into a wall, right, or if I, let's say I jump as hard as I can and I'm in a room that's only three inches higher than my head, think about the impact that I would feel on my head. Right, especially if you're face up when that happens. Yeah, you'll basically, that's the end of your face. Right. That's right. So it's a lot.

I mean, you can really cause yourself serious damage. Right, so what you'd have to do is, while you were floating from one surface that you just jumped from to the other, you'd have to somehow turn around so that you landed on your feet, and then you use your entire musculoskeletal system to absorb the landing. Absorb. Right, the shock absorber, exactly. So basically,

our sports in zero G will be performed by cats. Or highly padded humans. Yeah, yeah. All right, give me another one. What else you got? Okay. All right. Okay.

Matthew Ritter. I've heard that due to Titan's thick atmosphere and low gravity, that human-powered flight would be possible. Ooh. We'd also be Superman. Ooh, Charles, I had not heard of that. What's the thickness of Titan's atmosphere?

Do you remember? It's a little bit more than Earth's atmosphere. But if it's only a little bit more? Yeah, one point something or two point something. So it's not like Venus where it's 100 times our atmosphere. Yeah, no. Okay, so what do you gain most? Holding aside the fact that you'll get vaporized on Venus, ignoring that complication,

is the atmosphere thick enough for you to gain lift just by your own strength, or do you have to go to the lower, because Venus has Earth gravity, or do you have to go to the lower gravity of Titan and take advantage of that fact against the slightly higher density atmosphere? I would go with, I would go to Titan. The advantage,

because you realize that Venus's atmosphere is so thick that it's like being down half a mile in Earth's oceans to be at the surface of Venus, right? So even our best nuclear submarines have a hard time surviving at that level. So even if you can build an airplane, you could be crushed like an egg anyway, right? You're much better off in a moderate atmospheric area where you can actually survive. And so to fly, let's just say, for instance, we're somehow adapted to the pressure, right? If you have an atmosphere that thick, do you still need the same aerodynamic lift and everything to fly? aerodynamic lift and everything to fly? Or would you be just resting

on the actual atmosphere? To your point, Chuck, it is possible for the atmosphere to be so thick that you don't have to fly because you're just floating in it. That's your point. Yeah, that's my point. It would be like being in the middle of the ocean.

It's like, yeah, I don't have to fly in the ocean. I just float in the ocean. It's like, it would be like being in the middle of the ocean. It's like, yeah, I don't have to fly in the ocean. I just float in the ocean. Well, there's a difference between density and pressure in that kind of environment, right? So if something can have high pressure but relatively low density, although there is a relationship, as we all know, the so-called ideal gas law, right? PV equals NRT. So there is a direct relationship between, well, it's a relationship,

I don't want to say direct necessarily because that's mathematically specific, but all these different factors come into account. It is possible for something like a balloon to float in Venus or on Venus in its atmosphere, right? And in that case, if you were floating on the atmosphere, you would rather be above the cloud tops of Venus than above the cloud tops of Titan. Because then you would have more buoyancy because of the pressure. But how about just my own strength to fly just by, you know, put on some wing-looking appendages, right? Like all those old 1918 films where they show guys trying to jump off a cliff. All those guys, right? Like all those old 1918 films where they show guys trying to jump off a cliff.

All those guys, right? If they were on a different planet with a thicker atmosphere, I bet some of them would have flown away. They probably would have. Some of them might have been successful. But again, the only problem is that everything else has to be adapted accordingly, right?

If your wings get crushed and shredded because of the pressure before you even get down there, that's going to be a very Icarus-like situation, but in the opposite direction. I'm just picturing a guy falling from a cliff, flapping his arms, going, if only I had a little penis!

You really think those were his last words, Chuck? It's probably, oh, shit! All right, we've got gotta take a quick break when we come back more StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries kind of a grab bag but it's about it's about athletics in space and but when we come back let's talk about sort of more exotic

things here on Earth. We're back. StarTalk. Cut the queries. SportsTalk. The Queries. Sports edition. And we're just talking about sports in space and on Earth and all the ways that the laws of physics dictate what you can and cannot accomplish. And I've got with me Chuck, Chuck Nice. Hey, man.

And Gary O'Reilly. I know. And I got my resident geek in chief, Charles Liu, who's got his own sort of fan base within the StarTalk fan base. Oh, without a doubt. There are people who are all into Chuck, Chuck Liu, Charles Liu. Charles. That's right.

Sorry, if I say Chuck, I really probably mean Chuck Nice, but occasionally a Chuck slips out when I'm talking to you, Charles. So just. Yes, I know. My Twitter handle is at Chuck Lee. Oh, it is? Okay. So let's keep going. These are Patreon members' exclusive questions that they get to ask.

So who's up next? This is Violetta, your number one fan. She's an astrophysics fan and she's a sports fan she's she's asking about the two main types of muscles fast twitch slow twitch fast twitch are good for quick bursts of energy like sprinting and slow twitch are good for endurance sports supposedly people genetically have one or the other so which one would be better for space travel also and this is the kicker ps i'm the. I'm the fast twitch type. I can sprint from home to first base

like you wouldn't believe. Whoa. I love it. That's fantastic. Actually, most baseball players are primarily fast twitch types because you have to be ready to move at any given time

and then move explosively when the opportunity happens. So if I remember correctly, Violetta is indeed an excellent baseball player. So I'm not at all surprised. And I think, Charles, you do get a combination, but then the majority is one or the other. And that allows you to...

Every muscle has a mixture. And in fact, the slow and fast twitch, the fast twitch muscles, so-called themselves, are actually divided into two kinds as well. The type one we call the slow oxidative. And then the type two, there's a 2A fiber, which is a fast oxidative and glycolytic fiber. And then there's a 2X, which is just fast glycolytic fiber. What does all that mean?

Does that mean I can run? Do you tell me the fast twitch fibers have slow twitch fibers in them? No. Each muscle has a number of fibers. I got you. And the combination of fast and slow... The mixture of those two. Got it. That's right. Is where you wind up with your

particular brand of fast twitch. And for people who have an equal amount, they just sit around and do nothing. I can't go fast. they can't do nothing. They're like, I can't go fast. I can't go slow. I'm just on the count.

So now I have to eat potato chips. Okay, so the perfect mixture is good for the thumb on the remote control, right? It's just... No, no, no, no. Actually, the folks who do triathlons, right, they, of course, are slow twitch supposedly because everything is an endurance sport. But I could imagine a sport in space someday where you combine slow and fast. You have to do both kinds of things, like run the equivalent of some sort of marathon and then quickly sprint.

And then shoot a gun and then throw a discus. Yeah, well, that's biathlon. That's to Catholic. But, I mean, we have those sort of sports right now. If you think about basketball, if you think about soccer, they're explosive. Oh, that's true. But they're over an extended length of time, and you don't get breaks. So we kind of have a combination of that sort of thing.

So, yeah, it's lucky for Violetta. Yeah, but Charles, we always, any time anyone has portrayed people in space, everything is kind of in slow motion, right? Yeah, you need that Strauss waltz to carry you through that. There is no fast twitching going on in space. So what's up with that? Or is that just how we imagined it?

Again, because we don't have to push against gravity, we don't have to sustain any muscular activity, right? You produce a burst of impulse. And then everything flows out of that. And then you don't do anything. Right. So you feel like you're not doing anything. So the answer to Violetta's question specifically is, and Violetta, one of these days, please tell us whether we should pronounce it Violetta or Violetta because it matters.

Good point. We want to get it right. that because everything matters as far as fast twitch and the impulse, and then what you do with that impulse after you stop the impulse, fast twitch people are definitely better at space sports than slow twitch people. That would be my opinion. And just to be clear, just to highlight what Charles just said, and Gary, here's just something interesting to know. In soccer, you can explosively go from like zero to sort of high speed.

In space, you just have to do that once at the beginning and you just float the rest of the way at that same speed. Whereas you're always overcoming the fact that you're slowing down because there's friction between you and the road. And you need to change direction and all the other stuff. Change direction is another sort of point of acceleration. Charles, tell us about acceleration going from zero to some speed that you didn't have before and acceleration changing direction. Just put that on a table here for us.

Well, when you are speeding up, right, acceleration or slowing down deceleration, physicists normally just call deceleration negative acceleration. So you're just moving back and forth depending on that. Now, when you are going from no speed to a new speed, right, that is actually a quick burst of energy. And what you're doing is you're changing your net momentum. So you're exerting a certain amount of acceleration over a certain amount of time. And force times time, right, is what we call impulse. It's a version of momentum. And so when you're trying to accelerate from zero to something, it's how fast you can exert the force and for, you know, how long a period of time that determines how fast you get to when you get to the zero to the one. And I'm fast. I turn out the lights and I'm in the bed before the room gets dark.

You float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Rumble, young man, rumble. But Charles, I wanted you to talk about what it means for acceleration to also refer to a change in your direction. Oh, that's true. When you're going around in a circle, for example, you could be going at the same speed, but because you're changing direction every moment,

you are experiencing an acceleration. We physicists, as you know, Neil, think of acceleration as a change both in how fast you're going and what direction you're going. And so as a result, you have to take both of these things into account. If you're out in space, you kick off, you're in one direction. And unless you can push yourself or kick off in some other direction, you're going to stay in the same direction moving in that straight line

until you are acted upon by some force. And that's where you have to lose the mass. Or get help from something bigger that has mass. Right? Isn't that what you guys call a slingshot? Gravitational flybys, for example.

You'd have to come really close to a planet or something and come at just the right velocity and you have to move the speed and direction such that you don't get captured by the object but there's like planetary billions do a three cushion speaking of a new sport gravity assist that's what i'm talking about see what size what size would you how small could you make objects like that and and then have that? Would it have to be planets?

Well, you kind of need really large amounts of mass, right? So you might need like white dwarf star or neutron star material that are encapsulated and that would allow you to produce enough gravitational effect within, say, the space of a typical football. That's crazy.

Well, how about this then? Back to magnets. How about you have a game like billiards where the idea is to transfer energy by colliding the balls so that they actually end up hitting a magnetic pole

and that's how you sink it into the pocket. Instead of a pocket, it's the pole and you have to... Would that work how you sink it into the pocket. Instead of a pocket, it's the pole and you have to, would that work? Or would it be something like if you hit it on the wrong angle, like it would just go off forever and you'd be like, look at that, I lost another ball. Electromagnetic force follows the inverse square law just like gravity does. So it is mathematically appropriate if you

use magnetism or some sort of electrostatic repulsion or something like that to mimic the behavior of what gravity would do to us here on earth. That would be perfectly acceptable. The challenge is that here on earth, because we're all on the surface of the planet we all experience the same gravitational acceleration to very very nearly identical amounts so whether i'm at the end zone or whether i'm at midfield i'm still experiencing 9.8 meters per second squared acceleration if you're using electromagnetic stuff as soon as you move some If you're using electromagnetic stuff, as soon as you move some distance, you're going to wind up feeling a difference in the amount of force because your source is so concentrated compared with the earth, which is so broad compared to our football

or our sports arenas. Cool. Interesting. All right. Well, give me some more questions. All right. This one is from Roman Pruckup. And Roman says, hey, Gary, do you think it's possible to improve the shooting speed by engineering materials on football shoes similar to how we have improved shooting strength with hockey sticks? Are you sad you didn't experience these impacts of science in your active career? In other words, bro, are you sad you're old? You're an old fart. Bro, you're like too old to have technology in your sports. That's why we had leather helmets, you know.

I don't think we can get a kick point in a boot like you have in a hockey stick, in an ice hockey stick. But although that just increases the speed and the power immensely, what I could imagine is something that we've discussed from time to time and why Major League Baseball doesn't have aluminum bats, I said it for you, because the exit velocity is so, so fast.

But if you put something that's lightweight and strong, maybe like aluminum, or a ceramic plate in a kicking position on the foot, maybe you could improve the exit velocity off the foot. Wait, Charles, Charles. Maybe you break your instep. Break someone's shins if you miss the ball. Exactly. Charles, let me ask you. Is Gary right here? It'll break someone's shins if you miss the ball. Exactly.

Charles, let me ask you. Is Gary right here? Do you want your shoe to be more rigid, or do you want it to have some kind of a springy, textured skin so that there's like a double sort of springiness to when your foot makes contact with the ball? Which of those would be better? It depends on whether you want force or control, right? Speed or control.

This is true for any material. If you have a longer contact time, you can impart to it more force, right? Because the maximum amount of force that you can produce per given unit of time, you multiply that by more time, you wind up with more net force or impulse that we were talking about going out, right? But the problem is the longer the contact happens, the more the ball and your foot have to interact with one another, thus creating sort of micro forces or directional changes that are beyond your control, things that are not... So the instant your foot touches the ball is not the instant the ball leaves your foot.

So you'd have to recalibrate what all of that would mean. That's right. Yeah. What it would mean in soccer specifically is that you wouldn't want to pass off of that because if you passed off of that part of your shoe then you don't know as well where the ball is going to go but if you were shooting with that part of the shoe that would be to your favor because it'd be like kicking the ball on the valve and the keeper would not have any idea where the ball is going because there's so much sort of but when you're passing

to your friends you end up just screwing up damn Damn it, Ronaldo! How many times are you going to do that? Jeez! They pay you all this money to give the ball to the opponent? So they did some years ago. Adidas brought out a range of boots, cleats called the Predator. And it had these rubberized areas on certain parts of the boot that would allow for more contact, as you just described, Charles, and therefore allowed for accuracy. Now, you can't change your footwear. That sounds like cheating to me.

No, that sounds like there's less slippage between your foot and the ball. Yeah, that's gripping the ball. Yeah, it's gripping the ball. Right, right. So if you get grip on the ball, I can now rotate that ball better. So imagine table tennis bats with stippling on one side. If we call them paddles here,

this is America, Jack. Okay? The word bat is for base frickin' ball, okay? Table tennis. Or cricket. Someone got out of the wrong side of bed, didn't they?

There's a murker, Jack. He sent you back on the next boat. Oh, I don't even get a plane, I get a boat. No, no, no, no, no. The Olympics are starting soon. I can't do that. All right. I just have to get my murker chops going.

All right, let's get another question. We've got a couple minutes left in this segment before we get to the philosophy of it all in our third segment. Right, let's find another question. Who's next here? All right, Eric Varga. You've mentioned this previously in a tweet a few years ago where you said a winning overtime field goal

was likely enabled by a third of an inch deflection to the right caused by the earth's rotation. The Coriolis effect. Thank you very much for paying attention in class. I was wondering, and this is interesting, is there an ideal directional orientation for football stadiums? And could that take full advantage of this effect from earth's rotation? take full advantage of this effect from Earth's rotation? So when I did that calculation, I didn't trust my answer. And I sent Charles Liu an email.

And I said, Charles, I want to post this. Did I do this right? All right, this is the double checking that happens always in science. If you get a result that no one had thought about before, or is it a little weird? Maybe you didn't do it right. Did you carry the two? And so Charles gave me the Charles Liu seal seal of approval i went with the number i made the assumption

it wasn't an assumption it was true for that stadium that the stadium was oriented precisely north south and so my sense was that you get maximal coriolis deflection uh if you did that but then charles you told me that it doesn't have to be north-south. I don't see how you get a Coriolis circulation if it's east-west. It depends on how far directly east-west. If you're exactly east-west, then you're not going to get a deflection from that particular, the east-west rotation of the earth. Yeah. Right? But it's all a matter of where you are. The problem is when you kick a ball, right, you're not always kicking it directly exactly even. There is wind.

Oh, yeah, of course. No, no. All other things being equal. All I said was that the rotation of the earth influenced the path of the ball. All other things being equal. And it only matters because the ball hit the freaking upright. And you have a round ball hitting a cylindrical pole, fractions of an inch, as any baseball player knows, can make a big difference in the resulting reflected direction.

That's right. That's right. So no, you're completely correct that going due north-south, perpendicular, the closer to perpendicular you are to the rotation of your frame, the more of the cardiolus effect the object will have. So the answer to this is put all stadiums exactly north-south. Exactly north-south. Exactly north-south. Right. And then try not to ever kick to the right side of the center. Because then the Coriolis force takes you out of the game rather than into the game. Alright, so that's... It doesn't matter which direction

on the field you're kicking. No, each direction is deflected to the right. Deflected, interestingly, right? Yeah. Sorry, in the northern hemisphere. You want to put all your stadiums on the equator, too. In the northern hemisphere, it'll always deflect to the right. In the equator, there's no, you got nothing.

Yep. And then when you're in the southern hemisphere, everything. It deflects the other way. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, any GM picking a kicker based on this. any GM picking a kicker based on this. May not be too good at his job. We got a lot of sabermetric

type things going on in sports these days, right? They're trying to parse, you know, tiny percentage. I can tell you this, if your ball bounced off the upright and went left and not score versus in and do score and that and and a big game was on the line there you're going to be wishing you had the laws of physics in your favor from the coriolis force true and isn't sabermetrics all about the tiniest little things

that can influence the probabilities of what's happening yep Yep. That's right. And the statistics of them trying to squeeze knowledge about the sport activity from the numbers of data that come from it. A whole other thing. We've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll try to think philosophically about all of the science that's going on in sport. And there's a question that I think I saw there about spitting on your hand when they want to throw the baseball. And wouldn't that give you less grip rather than more grip? I want to make sure I want to lead off with that when we come back on StarTalk Sports Edition. Grab bag the physics of sports on Earth and in space. StarTalk.

Hey, let's give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. See nasty. I'm just reading them. Jillum Dixon and Aiden Hahn. Thank you so much for your support, guys. What would we do without you? We certainly wouldn't make a show this good. And for anybody else who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com

slash StarTalkRadio and support us. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. Cosmic Grab Bag. It's really physics of sports on Earth and in space. I got Charles Liu. Charles, you're tweeting at Chuck Nice.

I'm sorry. Yes. Wow. No wonder. Sorry. No wonder I'm having a problem with Twitter. At Chuck Liu. Yes.

C-H-U-C-K-L-I-U. Okay. So I hope I didn't disappoint people who asked Chuck Nice questions. No, Chuck Nice can answer my questions just as well. Now that was the funniest thing you've ever said. So Chuck Lou, L-I-U, and Chuck Nice Comic. We got you on Twitter there, yeah yeah and my three left feet yes does it have the my in there my three left feet yes okay so i assume you're right-footed so this means

you're you're clumsy it's like a dig on your own coordination is that right totally okay you're not you're not saying that secretly you're another species, right, of human? No, I've never been that clever. Okay. All right, let's pick this up. We've got questions that are more philosophical this segment, but I want to go back. Someone had asked a question about spitballs, I think.

So who carried that? Which one of you? Okay, let me jump in here. Richard L. Sanders. Why does a baseball player spitting on his hands improve his grip? Oh, his hands, not just the pitcher. Okay. Instead of lessening his friction?

Thank you, big fan of the show. Well, you're welcome, Richard. I hope this is the answer you're looking for. Yeah. Charles, this is a mystery to me. It's always been a mystery. Plus, why would you want to hock a Louis on your palm? Yeah.

Right? There is a difference here. We're conflating two things, I believe. One is the spitball, right? Which is where you're spitting your pitcher and you're spitting on the ball. You're trying to get it as wet as possible. So when you throw it, then it winds up with weird aerodynamics and the person who's hitting it has a hard time. So it winds up with aerodynamics that not even the pitcher can predict.

So nobody knows what it's doing at that point. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's like a knuckleball on steroids, right? That's the first thing. So that's now outlawed. The last person thought to have ever thrown a spitball in legal competition was Satchel Paige because he was grandfathered in and allowed to pitch it until he retired.

And maybe nobody wanted to hit that ball because it was nasty. No, they did not. Did he just spit on that ball because it was nasty. No, they did not. They did not. Did he just spit on that ball? Ew. All right. But the idea of spitting on your hands is very similar. Wait, wait. And Chuck, Chuck.

And there they are invoking the grandfather clause on black people once again. This is. Oh. But this time it helped him out. Okay, fine. Right. Satchel Paige from the Negro leagues then made it into the majors. That's right.

One of the great pictures of all time. Now the, the reason people spit in their hands to grip a ball is a completely different thing. That's more akin to someone getting a paper towel damp before wiping a table of crumbs. The idea of a little bit of moisture increasing the ability to connect has to do with static electricity, right? The reason dust clinkings to a wall, for example, is static electricity. And if it's dry and has enough static there, then you can't get the friction necessary to grab the ball.

It's a surface effect. So you're not trying to coat the ball and coat your hands with fluid so that they're slippery. But instead, you're adding that little extra bit of moisture that gets the dry stuff off of the ball and your hands so that you can grip it better. Oh, sure. Okay, now how about, was it Poppy? can grip it better and thus be able to throw it. Okay, now how about, was it Poppy? Who's the one who spit into his hands

when he had hitting gloves on? It's like, dude, these are like soft leather gloves. Now you're spitting on that on top of that? What are you doing? I think Big Poppy did that. Big Poppy.

Wow. In all fairness, he just hated those gloves. My guess there is that maybe there was a mental process where if you, I don't know, have you ever, like, know the difference between wet leather and dry leather? Yeah, they do. Actually, you know, now that you say that, wet leather grips better. Charles, it's really true. If you're trying to open a can of something and you have a dish towel,

it's way more effective if it's slightly damp than if it's completely dry. That's right. So I think maybe that's what was going on there. So even on leather, a little bit of moisture can make a difference. Here's the problem with Big Papi. He's spitting into the gloves. He hits a home run and then wants to high-five me around the baby.

No. No. No. You got to have your wet wipe. Here you go. You get an elbow, big boy. All right.

So let's go on with some of these philosophical questions. What do we have there? Who's next? Right. Sam Couch. Will there ever be a point when humans reach a fastest possible time? In other words, will there ever be a point in sports where no more world records could be set because humans have reached the lowest possible time, assuming you can finish

a race in zero seconds? When that happens, how will timed sports progress? So will we keep diminishing time for the 100 meters, the 1,500 meters? Until it's done in zero seconds? Is that the question? Until Usain Bolt finishes this race in the instant, the day before he started it? Yeah, he's there before he left. I just think it's that point where are we capable of diminishing our world records substantially anymore? Well, I'll lead off with this, but I want to hear Charles's response. You know, do you remember the Banneker Mile, right? This is, when was this, 80 years ago or so? Roger Bannister.

Bannister, the Bannister Mile. Bannister, yeah. Where there's, no one will ever run a four-minute mile, beat a four-minute mile, and they're talking about the physiology and everyone, because no one was doing it. And so the urge to think you've hit some limit, I think is very strong within us, yet that has never seemed to be the case in reality. So Charles, what's your reflection on the limits of world records?

I do believe that it's possible we are reaching some sort of asymptotic limit, right? Where there is some point beyond which we simply cannot exceed. However, I don't know what that limit is. We humans, I think the Roger Bannister example is excellent. There are other limits that supposedly humans could never get. And by the way, if I remember correctly, when he finished the mile in under four minutes, didn't he bring two other people with him under four minutes? I don't know if that happened in that one race, but within a year, many other people had broken. Because the mystique was gone.

Whoa. That's right. So we've got the same thing with the two-hour marathon now, haven't we? Is it Kip Koji? Surprisingly enough, Kenyan runner. If I'm not mistaken. They seem to own the marathon these days. Yeah, it's a great two hours for a marathon.

I mean, that was basically the holy grail, but that seems – it's not official yet because it's not been done in a race or with sanctioned shoes, but it seems like it's doable, as it were. So we could get to a limit someday, but I am not going to make a prediction as to what that limit is. And Gary has made sure that a lot of our programs, our Sports Edition shows, have focused on improving human athletic performance,

but not just who's going to work out harder, but it's what kind of technologies are brought to bear, what kind of nutrition, what kind of maintenance of your physio-skeletal system that you are maintaining. So it could be that we have to start going in these other directions. It's not just psychological, and it's not just who's working harder. And I think if we ever do reach a limit, like it's just a tap out point, then what we'll do is turn to augmentation so that we can break it. And then they'll accept that. That'll be more acceptable.

As long as it's in the rules. As long as it's within the rules. Charles, here's what I thought about this when I saw swimming records getting broken with such frequency. And I said to myself, this can't keep happening at this rate. And then I realized how you do this. Okay? This is how you do it. So swimming used to be timed to a tenth of a second.

All right? Now it's to a hundredth of a second. So maybe future world records, you need to track a thousandth of a second. And then world records beyond that, a ten thousandth of a second. And we'd all be celebrating, oh, you beat him by three ten thousandth of a second. And then world records beyond that, a ten thousandth of a second. And we'd all be celebrating, oh, you beat him by three ten thousandths of a second, whereas that was not even measurable decades ago by the stopwatches that were used. And so you can still set world records, but you'll do it asymptotically. It's you're approaching whatever that limit is.

We don't know what it is, but each next increment is littler than the previous one. What do you think of that, Charles? That may happen someday. It just hasn't yet. Well, we are measuring swimming in a hundredth of a second. We are measuring swimming, yes, but the records are still being broken by approximately the same increments. Oh, is that right? I didn't check that. Okay. Yeah.

We could break them asymptotically if we're actually reaching the asymptote, but we're not there yet. We just aren't. Going to your point, Chuck, if we had actually reaching the asymptote. But we're not there yet. We just aren't. Going to your point, Chuck, if we had ligament replacement. The man who's been injured more than all of us is always talking about wanting to be the bionic man. No, no, it's not.

But you see, you're not going in there to repair damaged ligaments. You're going in there to get stronger ligaments. You're going in there to get stronger ligaments. Therefore, you're able to put more muscle in there. You're able to generate more power if that is what you need to do. And therefore, you may be able to enhance your performance. And this, I don't know if that is within the regulations or whether that would seem like a body document.

I said full body prosthetic. What's that arm still doing here? Gary just, Gary went RoboCop. He totally, he went all RoboCop. That was a line in RoboCop. Lose the arm. Lose the arm. No, lose the arm.

That was like. I said full body prosthetic. Lose the arm. Yeah, that's the bad guy said that. Exactly. Super cool. All right, that's the bad guy said that. Exactly. Super cool. All right, give me some more. We blew a lot of time on that one, but it was an important point of philosophy there.

All right, what else do we have there? Here's one for Gary. Hunter Q-Tone says, yo, yo, keep it hot. This one is for Gary, the man. In international football, how come the United States fails to produce high-level male soccer players? Are women consistently prove themselves and compete to the best? How come we are having trouble creating

a USA World Cup team of men that can achieve what the women have already achieved? NBA has international programs. Does this have anything to do with producing great players? Gary, why do American men suck at this? Okay, go on. That's just it. Is that still the case?

That's a conversation for another time. Otherwise, we will be on this podcast for the next six weeks. The U.S. men's national team are producing, this country is producing a lot of talent. And it's not just average. You've got players

now in not just the big leagues in europe but the biggest clubs you have western mckinney who's playing in one of italy's top clubs juventus oh you're saying americans are going abroad our top americans are competing abroad that's what you're saying yeah because why can't we gather why can't we staple them all back together here and then have a national team you do you bring them together for the national team events. But at the moment, you've got players. You've got Rainer, a young guy, so talented. He's at Dortmund in Germany.

You've got Christian Pulisic, who's in Chelsea in London. You have got all sorts of U.S. players out there. And when they bring them back, they bring back an extra level of knowledge. It goes through the coaching staff. And this is a process that's maybe a bit slower than Hunter wants. But I can tell you now, it is gaining momentum. It's gaining. So we have singularly really good players,

but we don't have the depth yet to sustain that with an inter-league, with league play. Not quite. You've got one player, Jorginho Dest, who is playing in the first team at Barcelonacelona alongside leonel messi you're getting there it's just maybe not as quick as some people want all right there you go you stay out of america you'll make it happen eventually eventually guys we gotta call it quits there charles give me give me some final reflection here to send us out.

Okay. We've been talking a lot about performance enhancement, right? And also in the previous segment, Chuck was talking about feeling about cheating. And I think it's important for us in this overall philosophical idea to realize that we often use the term performance enhancement to euphemize cheating. You can enhance your performance all you want, as long as it's within the rules, both the spirit and the letter. But the moment you're actually going outside the rules, then that's just cheating. We shouldn't call it performance enhancing. So let's say somebody is caught for a performance enhancing drug. Just say, they used an unallowed drug. They cheated.

And that's the kind of philosophical idea, the difference, I think, Gary, between the performance enhancement and Chuck, what you were talking about. So I go to the gym, I'm performance enhancing. I swap out my Achilles tendon with carbon nanotubes and I'm cheating. And you're cheating, right? Unless the rules allow it. If the rules allow it, then fine, go for it. But if you don't, don't try to tell me, oh, it's just performance enhancement.

No, tell me whether it's cheating or not cheating. That's all, that's my take. Charles, you said it right. And I don't think, I think that's unassailable. Wisdom, insight, and advice to us all. Oh, well, hey, thank you for having me. Always good. We've got to get you more.

I miss you. We've got to get you more back on here. All right. All right, guys. We've got to call it quits there. Chuck, nice. Goodbye to you. Thanks.

And as always, Charles Liu, our resident geek-spertise expert. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, keep looking up.