SHT: Physics of baseball on the moon

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News : One Thread

"If Baseball Expands to the Moon, Be Sure to Back Up Those Fences"

By BRUCE WEBER New York Times April 28, 2001

It isn't, perhaps, the most pragmatic of disciplines, but Peter Brancazio probably has it all to himself. A lot of people have applied the laws of physics to sports, Mr. Brancazio among them. He's the guy who demonstrated that Michael Jordan's vaunted hang time was only eight-tenths of a second, and that a rising fastball doesn't really rise. (It just doesn't fall as quickly as the batter expects.)

But because he taught astronomy in the physics department of Brooklyn College (he is now retired) Mr. Brancazio, 62, asserts, with as much pride as his tongue in his cheek will allow, that he is uniquely qualified for his current specialty. That would be the physics of lunar sports, which probes the scientific issues that would be involved should, for example, George Steinbrenner contemplate moving the Yankees from the Bronx to outer space.

"About 10 years ago, there was talk about returning to the moon," Mr. Brancazio said. "I taught astronomy, and I'm a sports fan, and I wondered what it would be like to play all sorts of sports on the moon."

His lecture on the subject, delivered last week at the City University of New York's Graduate Center in Manhattan, was initially composed for a science fiction convention. But he eventually discovered its uses as a teaching tool.

"There are things you take for granted in sports that affect the field of play, like the earth's gravity and its atmosphere," he said.

There's no air on the moon, of course. This means all athletes would have to wear unwieldy spacesuits, and how interesting would that be to play or watch? Mr. Brancazio, who brings a measure of earthly practicality to his fanciful calculations, concluded that lunar sports must be conducted indoors, in pressurized, domed arenas where air — and air resistance — would be the same as it is on earth.

Lunar gravity, about a sixth of what it is here, would remain a significant factor indoors, rendering certain sports impossible. Tennis is out; you couldn't hit a ball with enough topspin to keep it on the court. And basketball is out; the baskets would have to be 60 feet high. On the other hand, diving and gymnastics would be more balletic.

Mr. Brancazio's primary focus, however, was baseball; he's the kind of Brooklyn Dodger fan who still winces when you say Ralph Branca, and he seems hopeful if not serious when he envisions future recreational possibilities on a populated moon base. An understanding of how the game would change, he said, begins with the difference between mass and weight. The former is a measurement of an object's resistance to being accelerated; the latter measures the force of gravity on an object. Given equal air resistance on earth and in a lunar stadium, the mass — of a person, say, or a ball — remains constant; its weight on the moon, however, is one-sixth of its weight on earth.

So you couldn't run any faster on the moon than you can here (you would have to develop a kind of low- lying, hopping stride, however, so you didn't launch yourself into the air with every push off the ball of your foot); and you couldn't throw a ball any faster, either.

"The bat will feel lighter when you pick it up," Mr. Brancazio said, because it doesn't weigh as much. "But swinging it" — its mass doesn't change — "isn't any easier."

Is this an advantage for hitters or pitchers? Well, that depends on how you spin it — the ball, that is. The rotation on a ball is a force that works in conjunction with air resistance and gravity to create a total force that determines the path of a ball. Curveballs, sliders and sinkers — which are all thrown with a degree of overspin and break downward — would be less effective on the moon because the break is not as enhanced by a lesser gravitational pull. A ball thrown with enough backspin, however, would be something no major leaguer has ever seen — a rising fastball that isn't merely an illusion.

The distance between the pitcher's mound to the plate is 60 feet 6 inches, and on earth, over that span, gravity causes a thrown ball to drop about 3 feet, Mr. Brancazio said. A backspin of, say, 1,800 rotations per minute can reduce that drop by a foot and a half.

"But on the moon the ball rises if the spin is greater than 600 r.p.m.'s," he said, "because the lift force it produces is greater than the weight of the ball."

Of course, if the batter does manage to hit the ball, a whole other set of these physical forces, pardon the expression, come into play. The ball will travel farther, and over an unfamiliar arc; one scenario outlined by Mr. Brancazio shows that a fly ball struck with enough backspin will rise and do a loop-de-loop before proceeding into the outfield. More generally, Mr. Brancazio said, consider a batted ball that rises at an angle of 40 degrees, travels 385 feet — a deep drive if not a home run — and stays aloft for five seconds on the earth. On the moon the same ball will go 890 feet and stay in the air for 21.1 seconds.

"This raises interesting questions," Mr. Brancazio said. "Where do you put the fences? And where do you position the outfielders? They can't run any faster, but the ball will stay in the air long enough for them to possibly make a play. So you'll have a situation where the batter can hit the ball, circle the bases and go into the dugout and watch to see if he's scored."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/arts/28TANK.html?searchpv=site07 (may need to sign up to access)



-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001

Answers

Firemouse,

Well, since you said you sort of like UFO stuff, here's some more. It's true we don't go to the moon anymore, and haven't been doing anything there for a long time now. Does anybody wonder why? There are some statements made by previous astronauts that we were told to stay away, or else, and we have. Also, there is speculation that the moon was actually placed where it is on purpose, by beings who had/have the technology to do such a thing, but I won't get into that right now.

Astronauts

Also, there is an interesting photo of an area on the moon that appears to have been "worked" over for some reason or other. The Cassiopaea site takes a stab at what it is/was.

Moon strip

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001


Does Brancazio's analysis help resolve the issue of whether we were ever on the moon?

And would Roger Clemens appear any less porky?

And do conditions favor the knuckleballer?

And what happens to day/night doubleheaders?

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001


Gordon, thanks for those links.

That one of the moon strip, I was wondering if you have any data on that one that supports it not being a re-touched foto?

As to the other link, the conversations and fotos are most interesting. sure wish we could have an open government that lets us know what the hell is going on out there!

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001


Barefoot,

As to the moon photo, I can't vouch for it except to say it came from the Cassiopaea site. Both Laura and Ark (at that site) are very careful about posting anything that is suspect. Ark is a physicist by profession. Of course, any photo of anything is ultimately suspect.

I too wish our government would do an honest, in depth, public hearing on all the statements and data available about UFOs. As mentioned a few days back, Dr. Steven Greer has schedule a 2 hours press conference in Washington on Wednesday, May 9th, to present a wealth of information and testimonials about this matter. As to whether it will arouse any media attention, or even large public attention, remains to be seen. My own guess is that it will be ignored by all the big media, or debunked, or both.

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001


I hear ya about the foto validity. I was just curious as to where it came from.

Also, now that I have had time to think about it, do you think there may be other fotos of that area that are more recent? Perhaps taken with the Hubble as it does whatever it does when it points at the moon? I was just wondering, ya know?

sure would be interesting to see that area with the Hubble's ability to fine tune the focus....not to mention the various wavelengths available to it.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001



Barefoot,

I haven't seen anything published from Hubble photos that contain anything related to UFO, ET, or planetary/moon "construction" sites. I don't think the government is ready to release such things at this point in time, if in fact they exist. Everything really worthwhile is coming in from older photos, or testimony from people who are now in their senior years and feel the truth should be made public. There is a wealth of photo information from the massive "dump" of NASA Mars material on the Internet a while back. The tubes photos on Mars is one of the amazing items that came out from that NASA release.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001


Some of the lunar anomaly fans I know discuss images at the Moon-lite talk bbs. You could ask them about Ark's image there, see if anyone knows anything more about it. I don't stop there that much these days, kind of lost my desire when I had to point out some fingerprint ridges they were calling anomalies that were there from a scan or from the original negs, but some folks there are more knowledgeable than others. I mostly tend to hang out at the Mars boards instead.

The Mars tubes are now being called "zippers" by some of us, since many of them display only a flat channel with the ridges. The one Hoagland shows on his site is the more impressive and most illustrative of their possible tubularity, but I've seen at least one other processing of the image where it may show that the sense of tubularity may be an imaging artifact. I don't, however, have the processing chops to argue which one was superior on methodological grounds.

I'll be interested to see how the Greer press conference goes. He's not trying the one-man-band announcement that Van Flandern tried, and certainly knows how to publicise it better. I'm not holding my breath while waiting for Full Disclosure, however. And I'm inherently suspicious of Greer's Happy Face aliens, it seems a little overly trusting, as if other reports of the seamier side of the STS crowd are denied as cognitive dissonance.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001


Firemouse,

If Greer can even get his information into the mainstream media, or start a congressional inquiry, that would be enough to validate him. As I said, I think he's being too trusting about the motives of *some* of the ETs. But that's just him, and his own perspective. When I first started looking into this stuff I was like Greer, and used many of the same arguments about why they must be benevolent. Deeper involvement over time changed my mind. Just like there are a few honest politicians that aren't always looking out for only their own interests, so it is with the ETs. But I think the majority of the ones that are involved with us are up to devious plans. Not good.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001


If aliens are in contact with any government on this planet, then it would be logical to assume that they are up to no good. Otherwise, we would all know about it.

Or, I am so out of it right now that I can't think straight, or even slightly curved.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001


Barefoot,

I think you broke the code with that last post. Reports keep leaking in that there have been meetings, that in fact Eisenhower had such a meeting while he was president. But no further information released after the meetings. The secrecy means the same to me as what you said. Up to no good, otherwise we would all have the details by now.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2001



Here's an interesting analysis of the Greer disclosure plans written by Michael Brownlee (written before the press conference), arguing that Greer is making sure that he himself is not disclosing a number of things we need to know, and that is troubling.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2001

Firemouse,

That is a good link to an article about Greer. I mostly agree with what is being said in that piece. I have been troubled by Greer's seeming to embrace the ETs as a benevolent force. Perhaps that is only his own deep inner wish/desire. We have also seen intelligent humans who embrace some government program that turns out to be a bad deal for us all. But the embrace is passionate while it's happening, right?

My own interest in Greer is primarily that he has the courage to make a loud sound about all this. He is blasting his trumpet, calling people to come and see his data. That's enough for me, all by itself. If we can see enough official interest stirred up, the details will unravel all by themself. Greer will then be remembered as the one who got things started but will be quickly bypassed as more details emerge from past witnesses and records. Sort of like the blind men and the elephant, trying to figure out what the beast is like. The important point is to just agree that there is *some* sort of beast there period, then we can all take a shot at describing it.

In that regard he is rather like someone who was challenging the orthodox views of the solar system during the Galileo era. Just getting science and society to open the door is good enough. After that the picture will emerge, be refined, redefined, etc, etc. If Greer can cause that much to happen, I will be satisfied. And I will give him credit for shining a light, even if he personally was slightly blinded by the deeper truths, as I think he is. As we know, all professionals, like Greer, have their own bias. We can deal with that easily if the wraps can be pulled off for all to see and examine.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ