Humor, Popular Culture, Science And Society

Hope This Doesn’t Happen In Tonight’s Game

23 Comments

What happens when a ball is pitched at 0.9c?

Verlander’s good, but I don’t think he’s got that kind of arm.

[Update at the bottom of the first inning]

Wow. Between Verlander and (non)Fielder, the Tigers just screwed the American League team. They’re down 5-0 in the first, and the National League hasn’t even batted.

I’m guessing that Verlander’s problem was that he’s not used to pitching just two innings, and was off his early game.

23 thoughts on “Hope This Doesn’t Happen In Tonight’s Game”

  1. Anybody who can throw 102 mph on his 120th pitch is otherworldly as it is. The guy’s unbelievable.

    My son is in high school and pitches. I’ve got several videos of Verlander that I use as models for proper mechanics. JV is just about picture-perfect in his delivery. If more pitchers followed his form, we’d see a huge decline in arm injuries.

    There is a burgeoning school of thought that pitching mechanics have been taught wrong for decades now. Several organizations have hired out consultants to restructure their coaching systems. The Orioles are in the middle of a top-to-bottom analysis of their farm system, in order to correct the problems.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. If the proper techniques are taught, then we’ll start to see a whole new batch of kids coming up who are mechanically sound and physically strong. That will be a joy to watch.

  2. Verlander assumes the ball is strong to withstand the enormous acceleration and drag forces. I don’t believe it.

    Also, he forgets about recoil. When the pitcher accelerates the ball to 0.9c, he’s going to move backward. Since the player:ball mass ratio is roughly 100:1, the player would accelerate to 0.009c — but that’s Newtonian and fails to consider the mass expansion at relativistic speed. So, the pitcher actually accelerates to over 0.7c and quickly exits the solar system — again, assuming that his body remains intact.

    On the plus side, this would actually turn baseball into an interesting game.

    1. The first paragraph of the scenario lists the assumptions, which include that the ball goes from 80mph to 0.9c magically, AFTER the pitcher releases it. So, no recoil, and presumably no acceleration. Not that acceleration would matter, as the shape and structure of the ball are irrelevant, it’s just mass that will matter.

      1. Magic always recoils back on the user. Numerous fantasy novels confirm this.

        And there’s still the matter of drag.

        1. I don’t think you can throw that hard, in drag.

          Besides, heels and hills don’t mix, I’ve heard my wife say so 1000 times, so no drag on the mound.

      1. Josh,
        those are the kinds of questions I used to ask in Catholic Grade School that got my knuckles whacked with a ruler and cleaning the chalk board for a WEEK for Sister Mary Michael. So unless you like cleaning chalk boards with crunched knuckles…be careful what you ask about God and his fast ball.

      2. Heh, did you know the answer? One of the prerequisites of being a God is that you are not the kind of guy that creates paradoxes for fun – otherwise you are promptly kicked out of space-time, and never existed anyway.

  6. I didn’t realize the All-Star Game was going to be like watching another Rangers game. I see Rangers uniforms all over the place. My how far my team has come…

        1. Once again, Astros fans have to deal with the fact that the team pushed Nolan Ryan out the door.

  7. I pitched a wiffle ball to the grandsons tonight. I had NO ideas how dangerous it could have been. Tomorrow night, lead aprons, face shields and welding gloves!

  9. The analysis is cute, but innumerate: At 0.9c, the fact that some fusion might be happening on the front surface is as utterly irrelevant as the fact that some chemical combustion might be happening. For that matter, it would not make much difference if the baseball were made of pure antimatter.

    The “magic” that accelerates the baseball to 0.9c, imparts it with kinetic energy E > MC^2, all of which will be rapidly transformed to heat and thus radiant energy by simple friction. Reactions chemical or nuclear will be lost in the noise.

    Total energy release approximately four megatons. Surprisingly, the dense plasma cloud that used to be a baseball looks like it will travel roughly ten kilometers in air over thirty microseconds before fully thermalizing; should still flatten just about everything within about five kilometers of that path.

    1. I believe the explanation about fusion is how the 4 MT of kinetic energy is transformed into a nuclear fireball–it’s not as if the ball just stops and kinetic energy is magically transformed into heat, after all. The fusing H, C, N, and O atoms aren’t creating additional energy, they’re transforming the ball’s kinetic energy into radiation.

      For that matter, it would make a substantial difference if the ball were made of pure antimatter. The regular ball at 0.9c has kinetic energy about 1.3mc^2. The antimatter ball at 0.9c would have all that, plus give off another 2mc^2 energy (from both the antimatter and the ambient matter annihilated), nearly tripling the energy output. I suppose qualitatively there’s not that much difference between an 11 MT blast and a 4MT blast, but it’s a significant difference 🙂

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