StarTalk Radio - Physics of The 2022 World Cup with John Eric Goff

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

What physics are at play in The FIFA World Cup? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore all the science of soccer with physics professor John Eric Goff. Is this year’s official ball made for scoring goals?NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/physics-of-the-2022-world-cup-with-john-eric-goff/Photo Credit: Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Photographer name), 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.

So enjoy the sporting moments and the excitement you feel. And please remember, you could feel just as much excitement from the science behind everything you're watching. Woo! Ooh! Hallelujah. I love it. I love it.

That is one of our threads of our DNA. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And you guessed it. This is a FIFA World Cup special. Ooh.

And we've got Gary. Gary O'Reilly. Dude, are you giddy, Gary? Getting there. Getting there, okay. Getting there. All right, at the time of this recording, only a few games have been played out in Qatar.

And all right, and Gary is like feeling it because the man, this was what he did professionally. And Chuck, this is not what you did professionally. No, this is not. However, I am one of the governing members of FIFA. professionally and chuck this is not what you did professionally no this is not uh however uh i i uh i am one of the governing members of fifa okay so uh just know that i i too am excited because uh let's just say that there's a couple more zeros in my bank account today and you're going to make up

some crazy rule that people will complain about later. Absolutely. Absolutely. We got you. So, Gary, what have you cooked up

for us today? All right. As we've just discussed, the World Cup is underway this year. It is in Qatar. Maybe the greatest show on Earth along with the Olympics.

But each tournament, the sportswear giant Adidas design a new ball. What is interesting about a new ball, you ask? And it's a fair question. Firstly, the material science will have changed. The number of panels will have changed. Their shape will have changed.

The seams that connect them will have changed. There'll be a unique pattern on the surface, which is an intentional construction. All of this will change the physics and the aerodynamics of the ball. Therefore, the style of football that can be played in this Qatar World Cup. Now, for someone to know all of this, they've had to put it in a wind tunnel, throw a whole load of equations at it, come up with a whole load of results and conclusions. And that someone is a dear friend of ours, Professor Eric Goff. Professor! Yes, that professor. And for those of you who don't know Eric Goff, I'll need a refresher. Here we go. He is Professor Eric Goff, Professor of Physics

at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, with expertise in quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. Author of Gold Medal Physics, which is a science-ized view of sporting greatness, as well as another publication, The Physics of Krav Maga. He is a first-degree black belt in karate, a purple belt in Krav Maga, which is an Israeli military martial art. So the basic fact here is don't mess with the prof. Glad to be back on StarTalk. Happy to be talking about the beautiful game here. So Eric, just a curious thing here.

In the design universe, it seems to me something such as a ball should achieve design maturity by now, yet apparently not. So are they just changing it up just to change it up? Or is there real advances in this? And are those advances something you can detect and measure with your tools of physics? Adidas has had the contract for the world cup ball since 1970 and all the way up until 2002 and including 2002 we had the traditional 32 panel ball and in the old days in 1970 the pentagons and hexagons were black and white so you could actually see the ball on a black and white television all the way up till today of, everybody's got phones and color televisions, and you don't

need that kind of color scheme. But the beauty of having a new World Cup ball is that the country who's hosting gets to name it, there's a color scheme, and they get to come out with a new surface design. And as we heard, these things, $150, $160, they fly off the shelves for the World Cup. So there's a reason why a company like Adidas wants to make a new ball every four years. And of course, the goal is to make a ball that's round. What a great starting point. Start A, ball must be round. Right. Okay, we got that. We're with you.

Must be spherical. Well, think about how challenging that was to put pentagons and hexagons together into this kind of buckyball Epcot center shape. Or in the day. Okay. All right. And now you've got these crazy panel shapes where it looks like you need a degree in topology in order to put one of these things together.

So these interlocking paddles, the paddle numbers change, the surface textures change. But the main point is, this right here is the most important piece of equipment in the most important sporting event in the world's most popular sport. So it has to behave in ways that players are familiar with. You can't, as what happened

in 2010, you can't dump a ball out onto the pitch and it's behaving in ways that they're not used to. So there's some standards. So there are physics standards within which, if you fulfill them, everything else is just window dressing. Is that correct? So there are certainly aerodynamic properties that you would like to have with the ball so that it flies in ways the players are familiar with. But as far as that goes, if you can make the panels in arbitrarily crazy-looking shapes and the surface texturing be in a certain way to create a certain roughness for the ball, as long as it behaves in the aerodynamic ways the players are used to, it's a good ball.

So what happened in 2010? Oh, we had to… They tried a cube. Is that what they had? Nearly. Might as well have been. World's Cup Rubik's ball. So we have this lovely fact in physics that seems counterintuitive, that if you take a ball and you smooth it, you polish it, you actually increase the air drag on it at a given speed. The roughness of the ball is very

important. So things like baseball with those lovely 108 double stitches and the 330 odd dimples on a golf ball, that roughness helps lower the drag at given speeds. So what happened in 2010, the panel number from 2006 on the team guys ball at 14 dropped to eight. So you only had eight panels on the Javalani ball, but it turned out to be even with some surface texturing, it was too smooth. So this lovely drag crisis that we talked about in physics, where the high speed flow of air around the bowl that we call turbulent flow transitions to a lower speed that we call laminar and the drag coefficient skyrockets. And that happened at two largest speed. In fact, around 50 miles an hour is where this transition happens. So what would happen with a Javalani,

and I don't have one with me, but the Giavolani would be flying through the air. It would pass around 50 miles an hour. The transition of the air around it would go from turbulent to laminar. The drag coefficient would skyrocket, and the ball would look like it's just slowing too fast, almost like a beach ball that you'd hit really hard, and it would just seem to slow very quickly. So it had a very erratic flight. The players were not used to it. And Adidas has not made that same mistake.

The Brazuca that was used in Brazil, the Telstar 18 in Russia, and this year's Al Rila all have an aerodynamic profile that are very similar. I got one last question before I hand off to my co-host here. So how long do teams have to practice with the brand new ball for the new World Cup? So my understanding is they get a couple of months. And the fact is you can buy this thing off the shelf. So, I mean, players can go and get a ball. It's not like it's only held until the World Cup. So they could certainly play with this thing, even in practice. For $180 in this economy?

I don't think so. Okay, this tournament is at sea level in Qatar. If it were, say, in Mexico, and we were playing in Mexico City, we're at altitude, so we were to climatize. We'd be having to work with the balls. I mean, even back in my day in the 80s, if we were playing a team from another country in their stadium, we would need to get the ball that they use so we didn't walk out onto the field and all of a sudden be surprised by a ball that had a whole different set of characteristics.

We knew. And we will tell the difference. We could blind test balls. So for instance, the Jabulani that Eric was talking about, if you hit it at distance or with power as a shot on goal, the thing would basically knuckleball. And goalkeepers weren't very happy. This then affects the coefficient goal ratio within games, which FIFA quite like because there's a chance there's more goals, so therefore it's more entertaining. It's therefore better global spectacle in markets they're looking to explore. However, the players didn't like it because there's a long history of long diagonal passes, 60 yards, 50 yards, 40 yards. And for that,

you're going to clock over the 50 mile an hour speeds when you hit the ball, in which case, well, the accuracy disappears. So now all of a sudden, if your team is based upon a long ball game, a direct game, forget it because now you're having to play shorter. Your style of football has changed. So now for the ball has to play shorter. Your style of football has changed. So now, for the ball has become a disadvantage to your style of football. And you're going to have to not just evolve as an individual, but evolve as a team to be able to accommodate this ball. And as Gary, that's just a field advantage.

No, no, there's no, no, no home field advantage. All of a sudden you're predisposed with a group. Yeah. But the thing is, in're predisposed with a group. Home ball advantage. Yeah, but the thing is, when you come into a World Cup tournament, the ball is the same for everybody. So you take away that. It's whose style of football suits this type of ball better?

Is there an individual that has a skill set that works better to this particular type of ball? Now, what we need to get into is not just the design aspect of it, but once you put it in a wind tunnel, what do you find out? What have Adidas done this time round that makes this ball another Jabulani or is it closer to Brazuca or Telstar? Where are we going to go? Because this will give us an idea of the kind of thing that we might be seeing as the games progress in the tournament. That's interesting because that's something nobody quite knows yet.

And it could have just be that Adidas needs to make $180 a ball every four years. Because that's my boat. And just to be clear, we're talking about Adidas, right? Yeah, Adidas. When I grew up, it was Adidas. I'm sorry. Can I hear from Eric about his... Do you actually put these in wind tunnels, Eric? Yeah, I have colleagues at the University of Tsukuba in Japan,

and they will put these things in wind tunnels. And the sad thing is when you put one of these... This is the Brazuca. When you put this in a wind tunnel, you have to destroy it because you've got to put a support sting in one side of it. And we can measure the forces felt when the air is blowing over the ball. We can vary the air speed throughout the entire range that players would be playing. It sounds like if you're supporting it, you can't spin it. Right. I was going to say, how do you get an accurate measurement? Because the ball is in

spin. There are ways to spin it where you have the sting coming in from the side and you can spin it. We could also do trajectory analysis where the ball can be actually kicked or even shot through a ball launcher with spin. And then by analyzing the trajectory, we can extract the aerodynamic coefficient from that. That sounds cool. Nice. It's very cool. And why can't you just do all that digitally? Like just get the mass of the ball

and the texture and everything and just model it. The models are actually really gotten quite nice, but the computational fluid dynamics is still just a little bit behind where the wind tunnel results are. Trying to actually get the individual little textures

and surface features programmed into a CAD file and then have those things put into some fluid software or whatever you're using is still a bit of a challenge. What happens is when we used to have those black and white 32 panel, that was all hand-stitched. Now there's a whole noted... Craftsmanship. Thank you.

There is now no longer leather balls. There are no longer hand-stitching. You've got a whole way of thermocoupling these panels together. Their shape, their size, the seam itself has to be analyzed so as you know exactly what this ball will do. Will it knuckle at 40, 50, 60 miles an hour? Will you be able to do anything with it? How is it going to react? And we need to know these things. Hey, do you know this, Gary, or Eric, because all these balls used to be made of leather,

like even baseballs, but now nobody does that. It's all synthetic with a bladder inside, except for baseball has a core. Do you know what the material is? Like, what are they covering that bladder with now? What is the synthetic? I don't know the actual composition of these. I mean, it's certainly just a synthetic material is the best that I could. Is it not a polyurethane?

And this new ball, the Al-Rila, which in Arabic stands for the journey just so as you want to know how romantic and it's called speed shell now that's called what speed shell speed shell yeah so you can imagine there is a coating over the ball i mean as far as i'm aware the the inks that are used are water-based the glues that are used to seal and couple the panels are water-based. They're more environmentally friendly, yeah. So hopefully it doesn't fall apart in the rain. So if you want to eat the ball, it's environmentally, it's organic, right? Dude, we got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to get all in on what Eric does with these balls

because I'm still trying to figure that out. All right, this is StarTalk Sports Edition, FIFA World Cup Special. We'll be right back. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition, FIFA World Cup Special. we're back star talk sports edition p for world cup special and gary's been giddy the whole first segment yay we can't even shut him up that's uh we got a guest here and gary is talking so so let's find out just a few more things from our guest, Professor Eric Goff.

Professor, when you should be doing your quantum physics, why are you worrying about soccer balls? Oh, there's a lot of fascinating physics in these, then there are balls. Yeah, but there ain't no quantum physics, last I checked. Well, Bohr's correspondence principle, we got to remember we got to take quantum mechanics to the classical level, so it's all quantum mechanics. All right. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's all quantum. The physics of D. But also, I really think it's important to get a little bit of science on the sports pages.

A lot of people who are interested in sports may not get exposed to a lot of good science ideas. That's the whole point of StarCraft Sports Edition. Yes. The entire point. Gary, Chuck, you've got more questions for our man here. Yeah, so okay, when you put this ball in a wind tunnel, what sort of speed will the Arilla

begin to knuckle and behave in an erratic way? Because you've got to push it outside of its envelope at some point for the testing to be accurate. But just to be clear, to say knuckle is to borrow a term from baseball. That's okay. Which is the ultimate source of all other sports terms. Okay, so we're borrowing from a good place. That's fine.

No, no, just to be clear, I want to explain that in case people don't know or remember. Okay, sorry, yes. So a pitcher throwing a knuckleball, their knuckles are what touches the ball, not their fingertips. And when they release the ball, because their fingertips aren't touching the ball, the ball is less likely to rotate.

And so the ball just sort of moves without rotating, which makes it hugely susceptible to any wind currents or anything going on between the pitcher and the catcher. And often the catcher can't track the ball. And there are a lot of drop balls or pass balls or wild pitches, uh, when that happens. And so when you say, so, uh, Erica or Gary, whoever, which of you said at the beginning where many of the goalies could not track the ball? It wasn't following some arc that they wanted. So this is a total replication of pitcher-hitter. The guy who's shooting at goal

as opposed to the guy in the goal that's trying to save it. If that goalkeeper has the same scenario of, I don't know where this is going, up, down, left, or right, you've got the replication of a knuckleball. And normal laws of physics are not guiding you, you know, of a projectile. Well, certainly not the vacuum laws of physics and kinematics. But so when you throw a knuckleball, the idea is you want like maybe a half turn on the way to the plate. the idea is you want like maybe a half turn on the way to the plate. So with a little bit of roughness on one side from a seam,

that can delay the separation of the boundary layer. On the other side where it's a little smooth, the boundary layer will separate early. So the wake of air behind it gets deflected to one side. So just like a boat rudder moving the wake of water off to the side, Newton's third law comes in. If the air is getting pushed by the ball one way, the air has got to push the ball the other way. So then when the ball rotates a little bit and you get a little smoothness on one side and a little roughness on the other, then you move back toward the roughness. So you get that little wobble. And the same thing happens with a soccer ball where you might have a little bit more of a rough side with a little bit of a seam on the face on the side here a little bit of a

smooth area over here and you can get a little movement toward the rough side and a little bit of rotation and you can make these things wobble quite a bit so if you're a player are you're are you telling me that you're able to learn how to kick the ball to create that movement the same way Neil talked about the pitcher doesn't touch the ball? You're able to do that? So, Gary, how do you do that? Because that sounds insane. If you look at the profile of a soccer ball and you went north, south, east, west, right? So, you went the pole to pole and then did an equator.

north, south, east, west, right? So you went the pole to pole, then did an equator. Depending on which quadrant you contact with, you can then impart the rotation. You can then, if you're more central to that point where the pole and the equator cross over, you will drive on a more power through the ball and therefore less rotation to either left or right. And then if you go underneath

then you put backspin if you come over the top you can impart that forward spin well wait eric is it fair to say that you could kick the ball with the same speed foot and all that energy goes into the ball but from what gary is, depending on what quadrant, either all the energy will go to propel the ball forward, or some will do that, and some will go into the rotation. That's right. If you kick it right through the center of the ball, your linear impulse is big, your angular impulse is small. You move it with a little bit more of a lever arm away from the center, you get more of that torque to get the ball rotating, and you get those lovely banana kicks.

Love those. The thing is, Neil, we will learn, as we've discussed just previously in the show, each individual ball, and then we will learn to adapt our skill on doing that to each individual ball. I mean, okay, here we go. So Adidas claimed that the Arilla is the fastest ball of any of the World Cup balls that they've designed. You've stuck it in a wind tunnel.

You've thrown the equations at it. Are they telling the truth? So in some orientations that we've tested, the drag coefficient at a high speed is a tiny bit smaller. What we did notice is that the drag coefficient at small speeds, so something in the 20 mile an hour range, was the smallest of the World Cup balls that we had tested. I don't know if players are going to notice that small change in the speed of the ball with some of their intermediate range passing,

but they could notice a slight difference in that. But certainly at the high speeds, there is a reduction in the drag coefficient, but very, very tiny. It very much models the drag curves we saw with the Telstar 18 and the Brazooka. So is Gary right? Is it the fastest ball ever?

If you have the lowest drag coefficient, it's the fastest ball ever. For some orientations, I would say it's faster than the other balls, yes, but not for other orientations. So it's a marketing. It's basically a technical marketing point. Probably, but I can't speak for Adidas' motivation

other than to say, hey, this ball is really cool. And costs $180. Right. Why not just put 303 divots in it like we do golf balls? Yeah. I think making a sphere this large that's got to be inflated and have a bladder like that is going to be a little more challenging because you're still going to need panels. In fact, the Al Riegelen ball, unlike the texturing of past balls, is not

coming out of the ball. It's not embossed, it's debossed. You actually get the texturing going into the panels of the balls. Like a golf ball. It's more... So you're absolutely right, Neil. They have replicated a golf ball. Now this has 20

panels. You have replicated a golf ball. Now, this has 20 panels. You have these eight triangular panels. You get the 12 panels that look like drumsticks that you used to get out of the freezer for dessert. Those are the panel shapes that we have on the new ball. So, they actually raised from six panels in the last two World Cups all the way up to 20, but they made sure the roughness was the same because they brought down the total seam length. The total seam length of this ball, it's only about 6% longer than Brazuca,

and Brazuca had six panels. I'm stuck on frozen drumsticks for dessert. I miss them. That's what these panels look like to me. They look like drumsticks. So what difference does a panel shape make? Apart from, you know, if you've got more panels, then you've got a greater seam length.

But there can't be just, you know, make it a drumstick. No one will notice. There has to be a reason. These things aren't just thrown together. That's right. So talking about Brazuca, you know, how did they fix this from the Java Lottie disaster in 2010? Yeah. So Brazuca, how did they fix this from the Javalati disaster in 2010? Yeah.

So Brazuca has six panels. They have two fewer panels than Javalati, but the panel shapes follow these circuitous lines. It has a panel total seam length that was 68% longer than that on Javalati despite two fewer panels. percent longer than that on javoletti despite two fewer panels the seam widths the seam depths on brazuca were it was wider it was deeper it's also when you touch the seam and the surface parts of the panels it feels rougher so they raise the texturing on it so they actually made the ball rougher despite two fewer panels and that's what made the drag crisis at a smaller speed. Tilster 18, that ball that was used in Russia, who is not allowed to play with the current World Cup participants

because they don't play well with their neighbors. Well, this ball right here has six panels as well, but very different shapes. And its total seam length here is about 30% longer than Brazuca, but to make it the same amount of roughness, it took the seam width, the seam depth, made it a little less wide, a little less deep. The texturing isn't quite as high. It feels a little bit smoother on the panel. So all of these things are compensating. When you change the panel number, you change the total seam compensating. When you change the panel number,

you change the total seam length, the seam width, the seam depth, the texturing type, all of that has to be compensated in a way to give the ball essentially the same roughness as the previous ball. So Chuck, it sounds like to me

they're just changing it to change it. That's what I'm saying. It's not like they're making it better. They're just making it different. I agree. Go back to Chuck's point about this being a little bit commercial or a lot commercial. We've got to repeat, $180.

Okay, go on. Yeah, give or take. It depends on your preferred sports goods place. All right, Professor, we look at NFL, and you see a quarterback with a long Hail Mary pass, and it's spin-st spin stabilized and really quite accurate. So do we have a concern about spin stability with the new World Cup ball? I mean, do you test for that? Because if we're going to see not such a short passing game, but a longer diagonal passing game, because in the modern game, there's a high press, like in a basketball, a full court press. So rather than get caught up in that and lose possession, you bypass it with a long diagonal pass, a pass over the opposing team, which takes them out of the equation.

So to do that, you need accuracy. And if the ball just wibbles and wobbles and becomes this knuckleball, beach ball kind of affair, have we tested for that kind of spin stability on the Arilla? Well, certainly if you're kicking a knuckleball, it's not going to have a lot of spin, so you don't have the spin stability there. But the wind tunnel test that we've done, as I said before, a couple of orientations do look to have a little bit more knuckling than some of the previous balls. Some other orientations, not as much knuckling. Now, we're talking about an infinite number of orientations that you could have that ball facing the oncoming air. And players aren't going to be able to ascertain whether the ball they're about to kick is going to be in one of those magic orientations or not. I mean, it'll be rolling on the pitch,

and then they're going to be kicking it down at some long pass. So I'm definitely looking to see if there's much knuckling going on at some of these high-speed kicks. Is there any team that will derive a benefit, and some teams that will have a detriment because of this ball, like that you know of off the top of your head because I know both of you are really into the game and the

teams and the competition. Well, I'm hoping the U.S. team is young enough not to care about it too much. They've just got to kick it and play with a lot of reckless abandon at times and a lot of energy. So, I'd like to think that our youth could at least prevent us from worrying too much about the physics of the ball.

In that case, in other words, we're effed. No, no, no. Actually, the USA. Chuck, he did just say that. Chuck, he did. In other words, what he just said is our team is not skilled enough that this will make a difference. So hopefully. No, no, I didn't say that. They will just said that. Our team is not skilled enough that this will make a difference. No, no. I didn't say not skilled enough.

I said I hope they're young enough to not let that get in their heads. By skilled, I mean experienced enough. But yeah, I got you. I got you. The USA are in the group stage with England, Iran, and Wales. So there's a very good chance, and the USA haven't played yet as we're recording this, that the USA will do very well in the group stage. So just to add to the professor's point, there's a lot of encouragement. There's a lot of

really, really good talent in the USA team. So I don't think England will be taking them for granted at all. What I would say, Chuck, in addressing your question, a team like Spain, who historically have a very short, sharp passing game, a team like Argentina, who basically play at times, it's like death by a thousand passes. So they will pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. And in doing this, they distort an opposition. So they will pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. And in doing this, they distort an opposition. They overload them to create space in other areas.

And then they make this very sharp, penetrative pass. Those teams that play the shorter passing game on the ground, that will be advantageous. Because if there's any kind of wobbling and knuckling with the longer passing, if their game is predisposed to do that a lot, then that game will then become less accurate gary just just influenced the vegas odds yeah recitation he's saying whoever with this ball whoever whose ever game depends mostly on short passes will have an advantage that's did that

eric did that sound like well in the short pass speeds, the measure of drive coefficients look like they're a little smaller for Al Riehle compared to previous balls. So there could be a slight increase in speed for some of those shorter passes. They're speeding. Neil, FIFA, and with their best friend Adidas, are speeding the game up. It's already got faster and faster now when these short passes that are passed along the surface of the grass it gets even faster then yeah then you really are testing a team's defense you're testing a whole lot of organization so it's it's you know these are the

minute little bits and pieces that go into understanding how this will take place due to the fact that you've got a different design of the ball. Yes. So we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I'm going to start off by asking Eric, what about the valve on the ball? Nobody's talked about that yet. I want to know. I want to know. And then we'll chew the fat on the beauty and majesty of the sport itself being so international and so timeless on StarTalk Sports Edition,

the FIFA World Cup Special. We're back. StarTalk Sports fifa world cup special and gary is giddy because he was a former professional soccer player gary you played with who over in the uk um oh i didn't play at international level i played at club level with tottenham with crystal palace and brighton and they are all currently doing quite well in the english premier league right right but i did england's got a fame you know they're famous for their their premier league right i mean shows are made about i mean we the english invented the modern game of association football however we are no longer any good at it. Okay. Oh, wow.

Yeah, we handed that mantle over to the Brazilians, the Italians, the French. No, it was after you left the sport. That's when England started going down the tube. Most likely. So, Eric, we've spent all this time talking about stitching and drumsticks from the refrigerator. And it's distracted, Chuck. And shapes of the panels. What about the valve? This seems to me to be a profound asymmetry in its structure and its design.

Well, the valve setting in Al Rila actually appears to be a little bit more recessed than some of the recent balls. So when you rub your finger over the valve, you could actually feel that corner edging, but it's actually quite small. And when you're looking at the size of that valve, it's only perhaps about one and a half times the width of the seam. So it's not a huge asymmetry on the ball. No, no, but it doesn't weigh the same. Oh, that's right. It's something that's sticking into the ball. It's a slight mass asymmetry on the ball. No, no, but it doesn't weigh the same.

Oh, that's right. It's something that's sticking into the ball. It's a slight mass asymmetry, yeah. It's a mass, yeah. You've changed the mass distribution of the ball. Very slightly, that's right. We haven't measured that little change in mass asymmetry to see what kind of effect that would have with a spinning ball.

So I certainly couldn't talk to how much that would have influenced. Well, I can ask Gary, Gary doesn't, uh, when the, when they do a, a place kick or whenever the ball is just sitting there, do they align the valve in one way or another on purpose or by accident? Um, they can, and they do. If the ball, if the free kick, right, is more central, then it's most likely a direct strike on goal. And I've seen players place the ball meticulously. I thought I've seen that.

I was just imagining it. They are placing it so as the aperture of the valve is directly where the contact of their foot will be. This then invariably ends up as a knuckleball. Now, there must be, most certainly, a greater change in deformation as for if you were to kick another part of the surface. Now, I would like to know what the physics are behind contacting what is a vulnerable point on the ball in terms of changing how things are inside

and obviously external. Yeah, Eric, you're letting us down here without having checked the valve. What kind of amateur, rank amateur operations are you running? It's just funding. That's all it is. Oh, man.

That's great. That's a good answer. We don't have that Middle East oil money to fund our project here. Well, let's spend a minute just talking about Qatar as a location. We learned earlier that it's sea level, but are the temperatures going to go high? And when you have high temperatures, that usually gives you a thinner, a lower air density, right? So how do these climactic factors matter? And the stadium is open,

if I remember correctly. They have open stadia. In fact, they're going to be air conditioning these open stadia. There's one stadium that's got a roof. Yeah, and even the ones that are open, they're going to be air conditioned. They're still air conditioned, yeah, even though they're open.

Yeah, well, thanks a lot. The earth thanks you. No, no, wait, Chuck, wait, wait, let's settle this. Do you remember, and it's still the case, you can go into a grocery store, and there'll be an open surface of refrigerated items and you'd reach in and pull it out because the cold air stays there. Okay. Because it's denser than the air you're breathing five, six feet above it.

Yeah. So it's going to, it's a cold air falls. It stays put. It's not as energy inefficient as it might seem. I got you. But you're still better off if you cover it. Right. Don't get me wrong.

But if you have a stadium and they're air-conditioned, the air is not going to fly out of the stadium. It's going to stay right where everybody is. You're absolutely right. I mean, that's why, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm... Let me get by, and Eric, we agree on that. We agree on that, and we also agree that if we're going to play the World Cup in Qatar,

that we better do it in November and December and not in July. That's right. Yeah. Well, because you've been playing a lot. Now, at what temperature does this ball melt? Because what I understand, it gets to about 125 degrees there in the summertime. So thank God we're playing it in November. The interesting thing, Chuck, you'll like this.

One of the stadium is made from something like 700 and something containers. And once the tournament is finished, that will be dismantled and then brought out into others. So as much as you say that's a contentious place, they are making some effort to address the sustainability and uh reusability of products and materials well you know listen i i don't have i guess i do i have a real problem with the whole thing no no i'm not i'm not here to excuse anybody i'm just saying that's the fact i was gonna i was i going to try to go along to get along,

but I got a real problem with the whole thing. You know, I got a real problem with FIFA. I have a serious problem, the same problem with the Olympic Committee, the IOCC. I just, I feel as though the amount of corruption that goes into moving these games around the world

is just unacceptable. It's untenable. the amount of corruption that goes into moving these games around the world is, um, just unacceptable. It's untenable and that it leads to, um, it leads to a siphoning of resources unnecessarily. So, uh, it leads to an incredible amount of waste. Um, and $330 billion went in to a few weeks of, of this game. I understand it's the most popular game in the world, but $330 billion went into sports washing to try to give a reputation to a country that should not enjoy any type of reputation. And the same thing was tried in Germany under Hitler. Thank God for one black man that ruined his plans. And we are seeing,

we see this happen all the time. I just think that it's time for us to come up with a different model. It's time for us to come up with a different model. Eric, what's the physics of that? Don't forget the 1934 World Cup went to Mussolini's Italy. So they've been doing this a while.

Yeah. 1978 Argentina. People have come out and said that the World Cup in Qatar was a mistake. I think that's come from the higher-ups in FIFA. Yeah, I'm not just talking about Qatar, though.

I'm really talking... No, I know. I can see the point you're making. The grand scheme of how things or how business is conducted. You know,

I just feel as though, you know, they need to really start at the top. The fish rots from the head. They need to start at the top. They need to remove,

you know, the people who are running these sanctioning bodies. And they need to come up with a new model and a model that most of all has an eye towards sustainability, because I think it is, I'll say, the number one focus in the world where we could turn our collective lens towards making a difference

when it comes to the most compelling existential threat that mankind has ever faced. And that might sound hyperbolic, but it really is. We're going to get our chance in four years, Chuck, when North America is hosting. Yeah. Oh, we're f***ed. Oh, I'm sorry.

Wait, wait, I wasn't up on that. Who hosts in? So it's, am I right, Eric? Canada, Mexico, f***ed. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait, wait. I wasn't up on that. Who hosts in? So it's, am I right, Eric? Canada, Mexico, and the USA. Yeah, Canada, Mexico, and the US. It is, yeah. The three nations. Very nice.

So it's a continental World Cup. Well, and next year, the Women's World Cup will be in Australia and New Zealand. And it'll be interesting to see they have some pretty science-savvy leaders down there. So it'll be nice to see what Ardern and others are going to be doing for that World Cup. I think New Zealand will do a great job. And I think that they'll actually take the responsibility of having the world's eyes on New Zealand and use that as a means of being able to further the message that we all need to do something.

Not as convinced about Australia, to be honest. Just to be clear, Chuck, I don't mean to interrupt your public service announcement. But I know people right now watching this show like, where are the jokes? Shut up. Shut up and give us some jokes. Wouldn't Chuck become NPR central?

No. Screw your conscientiousness, Chuck. Right. So just to be clear, yes, the World Cup is every four years. Yes. And I didn't know they split the men's and the women's. So that means every two out of every four years yes uh and i didn't know they split the men's and the women so that means that means every uh two out of every four years right there's a world cup there's an olympics

one out of every four years there's a winter olympics one out of every four years right which tells us we have four such occasions in four years to drive whatever global message we want. That's right. So I don't know that it's, you know, to put the full weight of a public service announcement on one country in one year, I think it does not do justice to the fact that the world does get together more than on this occasion. Oh, no, that was my point.

That was my point, is that I have a problem, as I said, with the entire scheme. It's not just these games. Like I said, it's been going on, you know, the sports watching,

I have a problem with. That's been going on since Hitler. But what I really have a problem with is the entire scheme of how business is conducted, how countries are selected, and the fact that there is no acknowledgement

that, hey, we have global problems, and this is a perfect opportunity to acknowledge our global problems and then collective solutions. I would say, Chuck, just because I like reading and studying history, I would say that there were many years, several years of the 20th century where there was no international competition at all because we were at a world war.

So I think we should at least celebrate the fact that countries can get together and do this at all. Just... Yeah, there is that. Now, guess what? That I can't argue with. I can't argue with that. Can't argue with that. The fact that we come together and that, you know, this is a means of, you know, as you would put it, friendly competition.

That's it. That's a start. That's a start. That's a start. Okay. See, Chuck, to your point, we have a younger generation now that is intimately focused on sustainability. Yes. And they are going to be the audience that these governing bodies are going to hope to harvest for their hard-earned money.

Now, that audience, for me, will be the driving force for, you know what, we'll turn up, we'll buy the product, we'll buy your $180 football or whatever it is. However, I want this, this, this, this, and this box ticked. And I want this done,

and this done, and this done. And this will then have to be brought to bear on location, on bids, on everything else that goes into making an event like the World Cup or the Summer Olympics. That's for me. Chuck mentioned the $330 billion.

Not enough of that went to those migrant workers whose backs these cities were built and stadia and hotels and stuff. I mean, there's some very horrific working conditions for those people. Yeah, that's true. So, Eric, what's the physics of all that? What the physics is, I think, is that we need to spend more time learning science

and less time focused on 7th century superstitions. How about that? Oh! Oh! Snap! Damn! Eric, that was profound.

That's not the only century. Or first century, or keep on going. Yes, I think it is. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a century without. There's not a century without, that's right. However, there's not a century without, but in this particular century, it makes it that much more egregious because come on. All right, guys, we got it.

We got to wrap this. But I want to get like one sentence wrap from each of you. Chuck, give me one sentence. You know, I just think if it's a beautiful game, let's make it that for, you know, 360. You know, if it's a beautiful game, let's make it that for uh you know 360 you know if it's a beautiful game let's make it beautiful in every aspect and that means that uh you know we shouldn't have uh slavery um involved to create uh the conditions under which the games can be played we shouldn't have corruption that uh allows for the politics uh thanks for your one sentence, Chuck. Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry. Moving on. That's the longest PSA I have ever heard. Okay. Going on for half the show. And let me just end with, I love soccer. Okay, fine. Gary, what do you have for us?

I hope the new ball enhances the game and we get more goals and more entertainment and people go away happy and the love for the game and we get more goals and more entertainment and people go away happy and the love for the game grows excellent and eric take us out so enjoy the sporting moments and excitement you feel and please remember you could feel just as much excitement from the science behind everything you're watching hallelujah i love it i love it. I love it. That is one of our threads of our DNA is the science in the culture. Yeah.

All right, guys, it's been great to have you back, Eric. All right, guys, we got to call it quits there. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition,

FIFA World Cup special. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up. World Cup special. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.