Cosmic Queries – Geek Time! with Charles Liu

Could you play Quidditch on Jupiter? Javelin on Mars? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly answer fan questions about low-gravity physics, the weight of Thor’s hammer, aerodynamics and more with astrophysicist Charles Liu.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Charles Liu?

  I would play near the surface at some atmospheric pressure that would be similar to what we can survive. But then you'd be up in the air, there would be gravitational pull, but there wouldn't be anything to stand on. So Quidditch would indeed be an ideal thing to play there. But you'd have to have some gas masks on because it smells a lot like methane and ammonia out there. So.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Sign me up.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition, and we're gonna do a grab bag today. Love me some grab bag. And of course, I got my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck? Hey, hey, Neil, what's happening? All right, all right. And Gary, Gary, how you feeling, man?

• 0:52Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm good.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Gary O'Reilly, former soccer pro. And who do we have to help us out with Grab Bag? A returning champion. The returning champion, our go-to geek-in-chief,

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professor Dr. Charles Liu.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The crowd goes wild.

• 1:18Charles Liu?

  Hi Chuck, hi Gary, hi Neil. What a pleasure.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am a total card-carrying geek.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the same room with Charles, I am a rank amateur. And so.

• 1:30Charles Liu?

  You are too modest, sir. Too modest. It's such a pleasure to be here with you all and have a great time, as always.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a grab bag. We don't know where these are coming from or where they're going. But they are questions from our Patreon supporters, and anything and everything goes. So Gary, why don't we lead off with you? You got questions for us?

• 1:47Gary O'Reilly?

  I certainly have, and they're all sourced from our Patreon patrons. So thank you very much. Stick with us because we might well be asking your questions throughout the show. First up, Christopher Fowler. He says greetings to the good doctors, Lord Nice, and me. Interesting. Oh, we're going straight for sci-fi. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was at least one episode with a game called. Parisi Squares? Am I pronouncing it?

• 2:14Charles Liu?

  Correct.

• 2:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. Thank you, right.

• 2:15Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 2:16Gary O'Reilly?

  On, okay, on Star Trek dot com, it describes the sport as one played by opposing teams of four wearing padded uniforms and using an ion mallet.

• 2:26Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 2:26Gary O'Reilly?

  What kind of sport is this? And could it be possible to actually achieve technology, technological advancements to allow an ion mallet?

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, I'm already out geeked because I didn't see the show. I don't know anything that you just said in that question. And Charles is right all on top of it.

• 2:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there you go.

• 2:46Charles Liu?

  Parisi Squares is a fascinating game that no one knows how to play because it has never been shown on screen, actually. So it first was mentioned in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. When the Binar episode, you guys remember that one? One one zero zero one zero zero one. And they were fixing the Enterprise. And so the crew had time to take it easy. And so four members of the crew went to go play Parisi Squares with the team of the people who are working down at the space station to fix the Enterprise. They seemed to be carrying suitcases presumably containing the ion mallets. And they were kind of padded like lacrosse players, but they had like shorts on and stuff like that.

• 3:28Charles Liu?

  So since then, we really have no idea how it's been played, but it's been mentioned over and over again. And actually, it doesn't sound like the rules have stayed roughly the same. It started like a, this, in this episode, like a friendly matchup, where like maybe four guys and four other guys would come together and they would play each other and like maybe wax some sort of ball back and forth with some sort of a mallet, like croquet or something like that, right? But then it got darker, like there were riots involved. People could get hurt. Riker, I think at some point, got like so hurt in Parisi Squares that, that the doctor warned, the doctor Crusher at that point, right? Said, you know, be careful because next time you're going to break your neck and I won't be able to fix that so easily. And then.

• 4:11Charles Liu?

  In Star Trek Voyager, the doctor, the emergency medical hologram had created a temporary holographic sort of fake family. And his fake daughter, holographic daughter, played Parisi Squares and died.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 4:28Charles Liu?

  Died. And they couldn't even fix her with all of the medical technology on Voyager, supposedly, according to this holographic thing. I mean, that's pretty scary.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, the hologram died?

• 4:39Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Charles Liu?

  In the fictitious story of the Doctor Keanu family.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why can't you just fix the hologram? I don't get it.

• 4:45Charles Liu?

  That, so actually, the episode is pretty cool. You gotta watch it. It's kind of cool. The way they sort of describe the difference.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't watch seven different generations of Star Trek to piece together this story. I'm sorry.

• 4:59Charles Liu?

  It's all on streaming.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have the geek credentials.

• 5:01Charles Liu?

  It's all streaming. You can get to it. It's not too late.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:04Charles Liu?

  Anyway. But the reality is, I think Parisi Squares is something like hockey. Something like hockey, but I really don't know what, because unfortunately, it's never been shown on screen. I would like to think that it's kind of like the game Triad, which was played on the Battlestar Galactica, the original series, back in 1978, 79. That was a cool game. But we saw people playing Triad on that show. We never saw people playing Parisi Squares on Star Trek.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But tell me about this ion mallet.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was, yeah. And what would be, what would be the benefit of having an ion mallet?

• 5:40Charles Liu?

  Well, you know how Mjolnir Thor's hammer is like a serious mallet, right? So I imagine that the ion mallet was like an energy version of Mjolnir's hammer. And what was happening is that this big fat energy ball of some kind is zipping around the court, right? And you gotta run uphill, downhill, around, back and forth to get it. And the only way you can get is to whack it with the mallet. Kind of like the bludgers in Quidditch.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  Quidditch, right.

• 6:07Charles Liu?

  Right? Yeah, you got the big things whacking the ball back and forth, because you don't want to get hit by one of those big balls coming at you. That's my guess. And because they're played on spaceships, as well as in stadiums, they gotta make the mallets small enough that you can carry them around, not just like big, like hockey sticks or lacrosse sticks. So the ion allows you to change their size and their affect areas without having to make a very large piece of metal or wood.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. Interesting.

• 6:34Charles Liu?

  That's my guess.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you know how much Mjolnir weighs for Thor?

• 6:39Charles Liu?

  Oh, you figured this out once, didn't you, Neil?

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did, but, but I got it wrong, because I got out of heat.

• 6:45Charles Liu?

  Oh, no. Really?

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Charles Liu?

  Oh, tell us.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I, I calculated, uh, because they said, this has nothing to do with that game or the person's question, but you did mention Mjolnir of, of Thor's Hammer.

• 6:55Charles Liu?

  You gotta go with it. Take it where it goes, Neil.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did calculate it, and they, in, in the Thor film, they said it was forged, um, uh, in the heart of a dying star. And I said, well, we're astrophysicists, we, we, we deal in dying stars, so I got this. So, you can get it, you can make a mou- a, a hammer out of, out of white dwarf material, but why stop there?

• 7:18Charles Liu?

  Neutrons.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out of a neutron star.

• 7:21Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I did this, and you, and I got the volume of Mjolnir, because I have a replica of it. Uh, and so, once you get the volume and you get the density, you get the total mass. And it has the mass equivalent of a herd of 300 million elephants.

• 7:38Charles Liu?

  Oh, that's all?

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So that's why the Hulk couldn't even pick it up. Who's actually measured a herd? Wait, wait, wait, wait, just hold on. So that's why the Hulk tried to pick it up, and he couldn't. Okay, so I put this out there proudly. Yeah. And then, it was like, "You're wrong, Dr. Tyson."

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, "Mjolnir actually weighs..." This is the, this is an interesting usage of the word "actually" about a completely fictitious object. So apparently, Marvel issued a Thor trading card in 1991 that reported the precise weight of Thor's hammer as 42.3 pounds.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I think my answer is way better than that one, even though it's wrong, okay?

• 8:25Charles Liu?

  That must be a commemorative 42.3 pounds, because it's not quite the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, I, I, I had a, I had a fan, I had a fan in the audience. This fan said, "Dr. Tyson, on that card, they didn't say which planet it weighed that much on." I said yes. That was good, they were helping me out. It looked bad for me. But anyhow.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool, though.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It was kinda cool.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  That's a really cool observation.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that means it's all magical. I mean, it's magical. It's not a literal weight. It's a, he really needs the power of honesty and integrity to lift it.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:03Charles Liu?

  Worthiness.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Worthy, excuse me. Worthy is the word.

• 9:06Charles Liu?

  Right. There was actually a period of time, a show, a comic book series called The Unworthy Thor, where for a moment there, he could not pick up the hammer because he was briefly unworthy.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. I suck so bad.

• 9:21Charles Liu?

  That's how they played it, Chuck. That's exactly how they played it.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's keep going. I love that question. Let's get some more.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 9:27Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, you wanna go, Chuck?

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  No, go ahead, go ahead.

• 9:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Dale Bloomfield, right? Dale's been quite busy with the questions, but we'll start with this one. If we were able to high jump, have a high jump event on the moon, what height do you think people could get to? And also, because he's stuck in track and field, obviously, how big a field would we need if we had javelin on the moon as well? Chuck, this part's for you. Chuck Nice. Chuck, if you don't read this question out, then the Eagles won't make the playoffs this year.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, thank God for you, Gary.

• 10:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  Thank God for you helping my Eagles out.

• 10:04Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 10:07Charles Liu?

  Well, there's no atmosphere, but something can go through the air on the moon if you put enough force into it. Now, the surface of the moon has a gravitational acceleration about one-sixth that of here on Earth. So you could imagine, basically, you're gonna be up in the air six times longer. Yeah. And so whatever you can add in terms of your ability to jump. So, right now, the world record for high jump is about eight feet.

• 10:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Charles Liu?

  Right? So if you jump eight feet now, but that's all the time you have in the air, multiply that by six, and that's the minimum amount of gain you would have. So forty-eight feet.

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  Forty-eight feet. Wow.

• 10:49Charles Liu?

  Because it's, yeah, because it's an acceleration, and there is actually a quadratic term in the distance travel. So you can make a quick calculation, you know, VOT plus one-half AT squared, and you may wind up with higher, depending on how much push you get off the ground with your muscles.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Charles, I think you're wrong in one part of that calculation.

• 11:07Charles Liu?

  Uh-oh.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh. Here we go. Astrophysicist slapped down.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, I'll meet you in the octagon.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, here's why.

• 11:19Charles Liu?

  Play some Priestley squares.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Charles, you would calculate the high jump by going from this person's center of mass. And let's say the jumper is seven feet. I think they're pretty tall, but let's just get, use round numbers. So their center mass is, let's say halfway up. So they're only going four and a half feet above their center of mass to clear the bar.

• 11:39Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you take that four and a half feet, multiply that by six. And then you get twenty-four, five, six, seven, you get, so they'll jump twenty-seven, twenty-eight feet. Rather than the forty-eight. So I think that's how you need to do the calculation. I'm pretty sure.

• 11:54Charles Liu?

  That may well be true.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 11:57Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing here is, we, we've seen the Fosby flop as the go-to technique to get a world record here on Earth. Do we think that that technique, which is almost a vertical takeoff, could apply to that technique going that high on the moon with a jump?

• 12:15Charles Liu?

  Oh, that's a great question.

• 12:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Because would you then have to have a running and then try and kind of almost like fly over the bar?

• 12:21Charles Liu?

  Right. It almost becomes like a pole vault, right? The, the human body is going at such high altitudes. Because pole vault is like twenty feet-ish for a world record. But we, clearly, whether it's your thirty-ish feet or my forty-ish feet, it's still up at such a high level that the human body's reaction or position may have to be changed to be optimally good. That's a great point.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting point. So Charles, what you're saying is, I can twist my body, go backwards over the bar in the short time that I'm airborne.

• 12:52Charles Liu?

  Correct.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I'm airborne six times longer, I-

• 12:56Charles Liu?

  I might be able to optimize for something else, yeah.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, just a minute now. Here we go. Their forward, oh, oh, oh, Charles, Charles. Their forward motion is tuned so that they leave the ground such that they're at their highest point by still moving forward. Right?

• 13:17Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's pretty close to the bar, because they're not-

• 13:20Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long are they airborne? But if you're airborne six times longer, you're gonna have to leave the ground sooner.

• 13:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah. So you, so the bar is over like on one side of the room. You're on the other side of the room. And when you land, you're all the way over there as opposed to inches away.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just supposed to inches away. Exactly. So it's a much more of a parabolic arc.

• 13:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Think about, think about the floor routine in gymnastics where they do the tumbles. And then all of a sudden gymnast will just pop and produce a double somersault and then land on their feet. Right? What if you took that kind of technique towards clearing a bar for a jump on the moon? Cause you get serious vertical lift.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  They're able to do that.

• 14:02Gary O'Reilly?

  The floor is sprung. I, I agree.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  Right. It's because the floor is helping them to, is returning energy to them to do that.

• 14:08Gary O'Reilly?

  But then again, less gravity.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  You would have to do that same floor.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck talking about the physics and return energy.

• 14:12Gary O'Reilly?

  No, it's right. But you see then.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta get an honorary degree for Chuck.

• 14:15Charles Liu?

  So we get, Chuck, we, we. Chuck knows his physics, guys. Chuck knows his physics.

• 14:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Then you're balancing that sprung floor and return of energy against the reduced gravity on the moon.

• 14:24Charles Liu?

  Correct. Yeah. So it's very interesting. And of course, none of us have taken yet into account the fact that if you're actually on the moon, you're not just launching yourself up into the air, you're launching your entire spacesuit. So you've got a lot more mass to work on unless you're sealed indoors in a habitat or environment. So maybe three or four years from now, when we actually have a moon base with human beings living inside some building, we'll find out exactly the answer to this question.

• 14:49Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 14:50Charles Liu?

  Experimentally.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Cool. Guys, we gotta take a quick break.

• 14:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Aquarius Grab Bag Edition with our geek in chief, Charles Lu. We'll be right back.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Aquarius Sports Edition. I got our geek in chief, Charles Lu. Charles, you are professor of astronomy and physics at City University of Staten Island. I get that correct?

• 15:25Charles Liu?

  That is absolutely right.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So who's, who's next on the question line there?

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  All right. We got Jay Hunter. These are Patreon exclusives that we'll move into for those of you who support us through Patreon and by support, I mean, give us money. Thank you. Thank you. Jay Hunter says, what up Chuck, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Lu and Gary? What would playing soccer?

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Look like on our neighboring planets. What what sports would be possible to play on Jupiter and Saturn?

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  Well, Gary, first of all, Gary, what what what planet would you like to play soccer on?

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's ask him that.

• 16:10Gary O'Reilly?

  This one.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, I I we're we're gonna change the game completely if we take it off world because if we go to a planet where there is less gravity, do we need a heavier ball? If we have a heavier ball, can we actually kick it? Are we going to be if we use the similar ball, we can kick it forever. So the field's going to be three miles by two. Um.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if the air density is much lower, then you're not going to get your Magnus effect.

• 16:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Nope.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get to get all those fancy kicks.

• 16:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So there's a lot of things going against it. It might it it would need to be something close to the gravity and atmosphere that we have here on Earth.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  For it to say for it to to look like soccer.

• 16:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 16:52Charles Liu?

  Well, hey, you know what? If it were on a planet with lighter uh gravity, Gary, don't you think that maybe we could increase the size of the field and increase the number of players per side?

• 17:01Gary O'Reilly?

  That that would work.

• 17:02Charles Liu?

  Make it very similar.

• 17:03Gary O'Reilly?

  That would work. It's just the fact that uh at some point you're going to have to cover distance as an athlete and you're having to cover more distance. So, you know, maybe you could supplement that by having more players on the field at the same time.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Or you you actually have co-teams. So the field is big enough where one team takes one third of one half. The I mean, one half of one half, the other team takes a quarter and then they're not allowed to go into the other zones.

• 17:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, that would be what that would be perfect.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  It's almost like two games being played at the same time, but they don't get to inter intermingle. That sounds like a cacophony, but still.

• 17:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what it sounds like? It it sounds like whatever is going on on whatever the circumstances of the planet, the atmosphere, the gravity and everything. We should just invent new sports tuned for that planet.

• 17:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it sounds like to me.

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, that's a good idea. What do you think of that?

• 17:59Chuck Nice?

  Forget trying to take Earth's.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than port Earth sports there, just invent a brand new thing. Why not?

• 18:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Charles Liu?

  Hence, Parisi squares.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, you know, if we could actually fly on brooms, we'd invent Quidditch.

• 18:11Charles Liu?

  Quidditch.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 18:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you have kind of three three dimensional basketball. If you if you're able to float or leap or do sorts of things. So you've got hoops in different, you know, in a tube. And they're on different edge surfaces. So there's all sorts of things you could invent and play with. We invented basketball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, et cetera, et cetera. We can invent some new ones.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, just remind us that about, I mean Jupiter and Saturn are gashes.

• 18:38Charles Liu?

  Yeah, right.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you get around that?

• 18:40Charles Liu?

  Jupiter and Saturn are gas giant planets, which means that their atmospheres take up a huge percentage of their mass. The surface down at the bottom of, for example, Jupiter, this massive thing, it's actually liquid. It's liquid hydrogen, metallic. So it's solid, but it's also liquid metallic and it's kind of weird. So playing on Jupiter or Saturn would be really, really hard.

• 19:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Charles Liu?

  Uh, anyway, you'd all be crushed by the atmospheric pressure long before we even got down to the surface, be it solid or liquid or metallic or rocky or stone or whatever.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  It'd be like, it'd be like trying to play at the bottom of the ocean.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, interesting, right.

• 19:16Charles Liu?

  You're exactly right, Chuck.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 19:18Charles Liu?

  So I would play near the surface. I would play near the surface at some atmospheric pressure that would be similar to what we can survive. But then you'd be up in the air. There would be gravitational pull, but there wouldn't be anything to stand on. So Quidditch would indeed be an ideal thing to play there. But you'd have to have some gas masks on because it smells a lot like methane and ammonia out there. So.

• 19:42Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so we've, we've already had, we've, we've already had a sporting event off-world, haven't we? Didn't one of the?

• 19:49Charles Liu?

  You mean golf on the moon?

• 19:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. So does that, that lead us to, rather than competing against each other with atmospherics that don't work for the human body, is it not now a kind of projectile sport that we enter into like golf?

• 20:04Charles Liu?

  It might be. It might be. I'll tell you what sport I would like to play in space. Just try it a little bit, see what happens. Cornhole.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  Got you. Yeah.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:14Charles Liu?

  If you toss the thing the wrong direction, it misses by a mile and it keeps going forever. Right? So it becomes almost like archery with a beanbag.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, archery is even, is good too.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool.

• 20:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah, except that if you miss and you hit someone's spacesuit, that's not a very nice day.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm sure the spacesuit.

• 20:31Gary O'Reilly?

  How far away would you want the target to be if it were archery on a planet or on a moon with less dense atmosphere, less gravity? What would you do? Would you like, I mean, we've.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Earth.

• 20:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  I'm putting a target on Earth.

• 20:46Charles Liu?

  No, actually.

• 20:48Chuck Nice?

  Let's see how good you really are, Katniss.

• 20:53Charles Liu?

  That's Hunger Games right there. Okay, so I would say, actually, you don't move it that far. Because archery has the arrow moving so fast that gravity only affects the overall flight by a few inches or a few feet.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point.

• 21:09Charles Liu?

  So what you still want, sort of your eye.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not lobbing arrows on an arc.

• 21:14Charles Liu?

  You're just aiming straight down instead of lobbing.

• 21:16Gary O'Reilly?

  So there's no parabolic, there's no parabolic trajectory?

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is, but it's a very flat parabola, so that's what that is, right?

• 21:23Charles Liu?

  So I wouldn't change the distance that much, but maybe the target size, yeah.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, consider if you did want to change the distance, it becomes much harder to be accurate. Because the tiny angle off from the launched arrow, that that angle just gets wider and wider as you get out there, and you'll start missing targets completely, so.

• 21:43Gary O'Reilly?

  What's, what's the use if it's easy?

• 21:47Charles Liu?

  But what's the use if it's impossible?

• 21:49Gary O'Reilly?

  There's the other side.

• 21:50Charles Liu?

  You're like scoring a goal in soccer, right, Eric?

• 21:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is.

• 21:54Gary O'Reilly?

  It is, it's, it's, it's that balance, which is when sports are balanced like that, it's what makes them the great thing they are. When, you know, it's impossible to achieve or just too simple to achieve, then it doesn't hold that greatness, as we see with some of the sports.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just quickly, we dangled one of the questions, how far would a javelin go?

• 22:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're thinking that would go six times farther on the moon, is that right?

• 22:17Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I would agree with that statement.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  So take the world record times of by six and.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the javelin.

• 22:24Gary O'Reilly?

  It's about a hundred, I mean.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  And, and put an unsuspecting astronaut on the other end of the spear.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, there's a technicality here, because in our lifetime, they added an, an atmospheric drag element on the tail of the javelin, so they can keep it in the stadium.

• 22:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, they, they actually wait, because the javelins themselves are weighted. And they can maneuver the position of the weight within the shaft of the javelin. And they needed to bring it down because what they found was, um, I can't remember his name. Um, oh no, I won't. I think it was Hungarian. He was basically throwing it onto the track at the far end of the arena. Now, that's great, as long as not people running on it.

• 23:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? So they had to, they had to redesign the javelins so as they didn't fly as far. Cause they were throwing over a hundred meters.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, what I'm saying, isn't that, isn't that an aerodynamic drag that they put on it? Because if it is, then on the moon, you're not going to have the aerodynamic drag. You just simply need a bigger boat.

• 23:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 23:28Charles Liu?

  That's right. But if you increase the mass, then you reduce the velocity.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to compensate.

• 23:34Charles Liu?

  That the javelin thrower can make.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you will. Okay, just to keep it in the stadium.

• 23:38Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go. So basically it goes from javelins to, uh, small trees.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  We're throwing small trees today, people.

• 23:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Instead of, instead of saying to an athlete, keep it in the stadium, you're saying just keep it on the planet.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And to Charles's earlier point, depending on the gravity of where you are, if you did this on a comet or on an asteroid, there, there are things we throw or hit that would actually go into orbit and would never land. So you have to, you have to check your escape velocities for what, and what the sport is for what you're doing.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  So there, there's no little help when that happens, you know? When your ball, when your ball leaves the asteroid, just like, oh man, well, Kim's over, guys. Kim's over.

• 24:24Charles Liu?

  Standing on a comet, every single fastball that Jacob deGrom throws would go into orbit or possibly even escape into deep space.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Okay. That's cool.

• 24:36Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, we got time for one more?

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, who's next?

• 24:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Ryan Grentz, hi doctors, Tyson and you. I'm an avid golfer and one of my favorite things to do is golf at high altitude. So this is an earthbound.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 24:49Gary O'Reilly?

  This is here on earth.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on earth.

• 24:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep, we're back, we're back. All right, but this is a nice little twist. At high altitude in Colorado, the ball goes 10% further and is a ton of fun to hit. It is far as the pros do at sea level. I have two questions on this. One, is the ball flying further due to the lower air pressure at higher elevations and therefore less air resistance? Or is it due to the dryness of the air and lack of humidity that gives less resistance? Second part of this question, what is the relationship between ball flight and altitude as you go higher? For instance, if I hit a driver off the top of Mount Everest, could I hit a drive thousands of yards only due to the altitude and not to the fact that the ball flight would be going downhill? Thank you and can't wait to hear the answer.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 25:36Charles Liu?

  Great question. Wonderful question. It also relates to why like people in the Colorado Rockies baseball team hit more home runs on average.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  However, I will say, if I'm not mistaken, based on what I remember from a previous conversation.

• 25:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  When he asked about humidity.

• 25:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  Humidity makes air less dense.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it does.

• 25:58Chuck Nice?

  Thereby making the ball go farther.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:02Chuck Nice?

  So it wouldn't.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you want is high altitude and high humidity.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  And high humidity. So the drying, the dry air he's talking about is not an impediment, but it's not helping.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it's, it's, it's, it's an impediment, but it's compensated for by just the overall lower air density.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which you're getting at a mile high.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you agree with all that, Charles?

• 26:27Charles Liu?

  Well, for the most part, yeah. There, there are so many different variations, right? Because the atmosphere is not uniform. And so you hit a gusher or you hit a particular area of high pressure or low pressure, you can do that at any altitude. So generally speaking, you're correct. Now, the question about altitude overall is very interesting too, because like if you do hit a golf ball from Mount Everest, can it go thousands of yards? Well, it turns out that the atmospheric density on a planet is exponentially decaying. Right, so for example.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's initially reducing when you say decay.

• 27:00Charles Liu?

  Yes, yeah, it's going down. So from here up to say the top of Mauna Kea, which is a in Hawaii, right? The big island where there's a lot of telescopes. That's about 4,000 meters and the atmosphere there is about 60% of what it is here on the surface of the earth. Now, if you go up another 4,000 meters, that is to the top of Mount Everest roughly, then it goes down another 60% from there. So it's only about 35, 36% of the density of sea level. So that's why people need oxygen up on Mount Everest because the atmosphere is about 35% of that surface. But you don't get like linearly going up so that you might be able to hit the ball a thousand yards if you're a really good driver.

• 27:44Charles Liu?

  But I don't know if you can go thousands of yards because the atmosphere just doesn't quite drop that fast.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you can look at what the air resistance is on a golf ball and how much distance it takes off of your shot. You just remove that air resistance and then you get the full sort of symmetric parabolic shots. So it's not going to go up by factors, right?

• 28:07Charles Liu?

  Right. Dimples on a golf ball actually use atmosphere to allow it to float for longer periods of time. So you may hit some sort of a turning point, right? Where you keep getting longer and longer and longer, but then at some point the dimples don't do their work as well.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 28:25Charles Liu?

  And you actually start losing the effectiveness and you can't hit it quite as far because the atmosphere is too thin.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. The dimples have nothing to work on. The dimples have no, right.

• 28:34Gary O'Reilly?

  So if we had a golf tournament on the moon, the golf ball's design would be different?

• 28:40Charles Liu?

  Well, the dimples wouldn't do anything.

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Exactly.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the dimples are irrelevant.

• 28:44Charles Liu?

  Nothing. Right. And curving wouldn't matter. You wouldn't slice a ball. Slice it. You wouldn't hook a ball. The ball would just go straight from wherever you hit it and whatever direction you went. So you can't bend it around a tree. You can't give it back. Well, you could give it backspin, I guess.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, on contact with the ground, yeah.

• 29:03Charles Liu?

  Yeah, on contact with the ground, you could give it spin. That's about it.

• 29:06Gary O'Reilly?

  You'd end up playing like a crazy golf, lunar crazy golf. You'd have to hit it off a rock or a surface or use a crater.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Now, see, that's actually more.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A three cushion pool shot. That's what that would be.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  You know what? That makes sense, though, because it's only gonna go straight. So if you're shooting it at a target, then what you could do then is figure out the trajectory from the target in order to get where you want to go in the course. That's interesting.

• 29:31Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 29:32Gary O'Reilly?

  That's sick.

• 29:33Charles Liu?

  Gilliard's golf.

• 29:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So now, now.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billiard golf. We just named it here.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  It's Gilliard's.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gilliard's, okay.

• 29:42Gary O'Reilly?

  And so, so, so we are people who have time on our hands, and then we go and invent stuff like Gilliard's.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we gotta take another quick break. When we come back, more crazy sports cosmic geeky questions from our Patreon fanbase on StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Grab Bag.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries Grab Bag with my friend and colleague, Geek in Chief, Charles Liu. And of course, Gary and Chuck, we got there. Charles, how do we find you? What's your social media footprint these days?

• 30:30Charles Liu?

  I am at Chuck Liu, C-H-U-C-K-L-I-U. My channel is The Luniverse. It's a podcast, and we're doing various kinds of stuff.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there.

• 30:42Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I know. I thought it was a little bit cheesy, but everyone around me said, no, it's the obvious.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. Cheesy because the moon is made of cheese, or what?

• 30:50Charles Liu?

  Something like that, yes.

• 30:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Now I'm hungry.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so where do we find your podcast?

• 30:55Charles Liu?

  Well, it's on YouTube at the moment, and it's gonna go to different places all around eventually. But it's a lot of fun. We talk to younger scientists mostly, where they're at the cutting edge. Find out about them, not just about their science, but them as people.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beautiful. And we keep that wheel of education turning.

• 31:13Charles Liu?

  Absolutely.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From those coming up to those.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  The wheel of education keeps turning.

• 31:18Charles Liu?

  Go.

• 31:20Charles Liu?

  I do know where we'll be tomorrow, Chuck. Ah, maybe journey did, but I know it's in these wonderful young scientists. They are great. Our future is secure with these guys.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, who's next up with a question?

• 31:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Go ahead, Gary. Wouldn't be the same. Wouldn't be. Thank you, Chuck. It wouldn't be the same without Violetta. So Violetta. Oh, Violetta, Violetta.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was she like thirty years old by now? How old is Violetta?

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This child's been asking questions. I think she was prenatal or something.

• 31:49Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so Violetta Raw is now fourteen and goes under the title of Astrophysikid. Oh, okay. Yes, that's awesome.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrophysikid?

• 32:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's, that's very lovely.

• 32:02Charles Liu?

  I love it.

• 32:03Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 32:04Charles Liu?

  Wonderful.

• 32:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, will we ever reach a point in the near future of sports when it will not be physically possible for any more world records to be broken? If so, which sports do you predict might get to this point first and how far might we be from this happening? Also, would we even know? I mean, the human body can only be pushed so far? Question mark. And I need the science on this. Thank you. You're welcome. And she's a big fan of the show, as I think we all understand.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had a show on this one time about prosthetics.

• 32:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aiding sports and if you, if you reach the limits of the human body, would people still come out to see the sport? If no one is capable of beating a world record? And then we said, well, just add, add extra stuff. You do stuff. And then, for me, the best answer to that was, in the limit, then you're just seeing robots compete.

• 33:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's not the same thing as seeing humans. If the human gets all the joints replaced by robot, by robotic assistance. So, so Charles, what do you, what do you think of that question?

• 33:14Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I agree with that statement. It all depends on the rules of each game, right? The rules of each sport. Uh, for example, if you're playing a sport today, uh, you're allowed to wear certain kinds of equipment. You're allowed to use certain kinds of tools, but you are not allowed to use certain other kinds. You know, if you have a bat, for example, you're swinging a baseball with, you can use a wooden bat, but you can't use an aluminum bat, right? You can have some pine tar on it, but only a certain amount of it. Depending on the rules of the game, if the rules keep changing, then world records will be able to be set without limit.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Provided they're changing in the favor of performance.

• 33:55Charles Liu?

  Prius, that's right. Like we were just saying earlier, as javelins get heavier, there's only so far you can throw them, right? So it really depends on that. So as far as humans are concerned, I feel like weightlifting is one of the most important ways that we can measure the limits of humanity, right? What are weightlifters allowed to do? What are they allowed to use? What techniques? You know, the chalk, the grip, the gloves. The body has a limit. And then people will push the body by adding different kinds of training regimens. Perhaps if they wish not to follow the rules, they might add certain chemicals, but then those chemicals are banned or not banned. So it really depends on how much and what you're allowed to do

• 34:39Charles Liu?

  that will determine the limits. But I'm pretty sure that at some point, weightlifting is going to be limited.

• 34:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 34:45Charles Liu?

  Unless you allow robots.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is weightlifting, they're going to be the first one that we're going to see this limit?

• 34:50Charles Liu?

  In my opinion, that right off the top of my head, I think weightlifting will be.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but you know, when you think about it, speed, our physiology, there is a speed limit for us as human beings. So it's the same as in, you know, you're looking at strength. It's like our muscles can only do so much. And then, of course, if you were able to exceed it, then there is like immediate ramifications for doing so in the body. So that's another, you know. So, you know, I'm looking at something like a microchip that might be able to perhaps increase like either the response times between your twitch, but then allow you to exceed that and not actually suffer, suffer the damage. Like those type of things can also, you know,

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  make us go past our speed limit.

• 35:39Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 35:39Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the other thing is, the other thing, Charles, we had Usain Bolt come along and destroy 100 meters world record, right? Now, that caught everybody by surprise. What's to say someone with a very different body shape to the classic sprinter shape comes along and destroys Usain Bolt's records? What then?

• 35:58Charles Liu?

  Define destroy though, Gary. It's only by a few tenths of a second.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was going to get there. So just to be clear, people, I think I first saw, I first noticed this in swimming, where they have touchpads that records your arrival time at the end of the race. It might be. That the future of world records is in the next decimal place. So that we peg ourselves at some number of minutes or seconds and then tenths of a second. Then you go to a hundredth, then maybe thousands and then tenths of thousands. And the whole contest might be contested in that added decimal place that we need in order to see what the world record would be. When my father ran track, it was four people at the finish line with a manual stopwatch.

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they would click it when they saw the, sorry, it's three people for each lane. And they would throw out the high and the low and they'd use the middle score and they're reading tenths of a second. So you would know Usain Bolt would win, but you wouldn't be able to measure how much he won.

• 37:03Gary O'Reilly?

  So it's accuracy.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By these old methods.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  How you measure it.

• 37:06Gary O'Reilly?

  So the other, the other thing here is you swimming and use the hundred meter sprint. It's not the fact that you run the time. Then you now change a metric of saying, I did it with less strides, I did it with less strokes. Um, if it's a high jump, I took less steps to get to my jump and then clear the bar. That means I would, so if, if we're getting a stale part of world record and it's not being broken, do we look at other parts of the event to look to see as that as categories of judgment and then I broke the world record with only so many strides in the hundred meters? Are we looking at maneuvering in that way?

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  You know, I think what's even more interesting than what you just said, Gary, is the fact that when you have people who have a different physiology enter a sport, more people like that enter the sport. So Usain Bolt is this lanky.

• 38:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  You know, uh, long legged. He's not just lanky, he's long legged and he doesn't even look like he's trying, but you know, but if you think about the history of that sport, not a lot of guys look like Tim. A lot of sprinters were actually sore, you know?

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, right in this moment, I'm looking at a run of records of the last 12 world records for the hundred meters. And, and just to be clear, we say Bolt shattered the record, he beat it by one tenth of a second.

• 38:32Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a lot, that's a lot.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a lot compared to other increments on the world record. But in the big picture, it's still

• 38:39Chuck Nice?

  So what I'm saying, though, is imagine how many lanky Jamaican kids right now are running sprints because of Usain Bolt. Imagine how many gangly kids are swimming because of Phelps. Like, I think, I mean, when you look at basketball, think about the origins of basketball. I mean, let's be honest, you look at those old films, it's a bunch of short white guys hanging around and then going for a cigarette afterwards, you know?

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  I mean, you know, you look at the sport today, I mean, you know, a guy who's 6'2" is considered small. So I

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. There are all manner of body types out there, not all of which were imagined to excel in sports. My father is among them. We tell that story right now, where he was in his high school gym class, and they're changing units, and they say, we're now going to go to track and field unit. They pointed my father, to my father online and said, Cyril Tyson, right there, everyone, look at him. He does not have the kind of body that would make a good track and field athlete. And he said at age 15, no one is going to tell me what I can't do with my life. And he took up track and field from then on. And he became world class, had the fifth fastest time in the world for his event, which was the, it's not run anymore, but it's

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the 600 yard run. And so, but anyhow, just body types and things, maybe one body type is good for it. Maybe others don't know they could be good for it, because you have other idiots telling you no. So, yeah, I agree. I agree all around.

• 40:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Inclusive, embrace.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think we answered that question.

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, sorry, Vialletto.

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we ran away with that one.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  Testament to our great questions.

• 40:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Here we go, I got one here, and we're going to throw it into the near future.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Alejandro Reynoso from Monterrey in Mexico. With the FIFA Football World Cup coming up in Qatar in November and December of 2022.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, how do we think this will affect the abilities of the player now?

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In twenty.

• 41:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  High temperature, low humidity, what, what, what are we talking about?

• 41:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, with Qatar, we're, we're blessed because um, normally the World Cup is a summer event, which would be brutal just to watch the thing take place, let alone play.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't they move, didn't they move it just for that?

• 41:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, they moved it to November, December. So the thing is, in, in November, checking this out, they have about an average temperature of eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit and a humidity level of average sixty-six percent. Um, the heat index, you're gonna like this, ninety-one point four percent Fahrenheit, but don't forget, all of these heat indexes are measured in the shade with a light breeze. So if you're stuck in the direct sunlight, right, and there's no wind, you're gonna cook. Now, adding to that.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, just to be clear, wait, in, in midsummer, July in, in Qatar, it's over a hundred, it's like a hundred and five degrees average high temperature.

• 42:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in, in the month they're gonna be playing, what is the average?

• 42:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Eighty-five, eighty-six, right? So it's, it's across November and December. So the thing is, if you, if you're in direct sunlight and you actually happen to be exercising, which might be a surprise for a footballer in the World Cup, you can add another fifteen degrees Fahrenheit to the heat index. So the heat index is gonna be about a hundred and six for an athlete in the World Cup. Now, if you drag it into December, the temperatures go down to about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. However, the humidity levels go up to seventy-one percent average. So you've got that little kicker coming in.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You lose a little bit to that, yeah.

• 42:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so it's, either way you, you slice it, it's going to be uncomfortable. Um, now, these, these heat indexes are based on people who are in the shade, like I said, with a nice breeze. These are footballers that are out in the stadium. The surface temperature on the field will be close to a hundred degrees because it just sits and bakes. There's not much breeze to cool the surface. Now, you're in Doha, which is quite a populated urban city, so there's not much chance of a lot of breeze in there. So it's going to be a very, very challenging.

• 43:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Environment and I think the teams, the organizers FIFA are going to have to look at hydration breaks during the either half. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to look at-

• 43:32Chuck Nice?

  Allow to take a break in soccer? There's no breaks in soccer!

• 43:37Gary O'Reilly?

  There never used to be. You were lucky you got half time. And so, um, they're gonna take hydration breaks, they're gonna have to look at development of a larger squad, so they'll increase the number of substitutions that take place and-

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is, is, it's, so the stadium is open air?

• 43:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Generally, I mean, unless, unless they've built some with roofs-

• 43:58Chuck Nice?

  Let's hope to God they haven't because then, you know, the amount of energy it takes to, you know, cool a structure like that is ridiculous and part of the reason why it's, you know, untenable to play there in the first place is due to, you know, the warming planet and like, let's not make things worse by figuring out how we can cool things off to play, you know, here's a real, uh, uh, uh, suggestion. Don't play sports in the frickin' desert. How about that?

• 44:28Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the thing is, all those numbers I've just relayed are averages. Now, we've, we've had a bit of a sizzling summer in 2022 and so has the rest of the world. Um, if there is some kind of heatwave, you can bump those numbers right up. So it's, yeah, so it's just, let's be mindful of, this is a challenging environment and I'm sure what we'll do is we'll find medical teams from each countries that are participating, we'll have spotters looking at their players. You have some, they'll all have some sort of GPS biometric data, bi- biodata coming back to them.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For hydration and everything, yeah.

• 45:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  As dramatic as soccer players are, we're, uh, God help us all, just like, oh!

• 45:17Charles Liu?

  My knee, my knee, I need a drink.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  I don't believe I have the vapors. I'm in my first in case. I'm in my first.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  Oh dear, it's so tably warm, so tably, tably warm.

• 45:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Chuck, you have just, you have just made the World Cup so bloody interesting to watch.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we got, guys, we gotta end it there.

• 45:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, man.

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been, this has been fun. Charles, it's always great to get you back in the house.

• 45:52Charles Liu?

  It is great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And good to learn of your podcast. Tell me the clever name again, Loon?

• 45:58Charles Liu?

  The universe.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The luniverse.

• 46:00Charles Liu?

  L I universe.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lu, L I U.

• 46:04Charles Liu?

  The universe.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As in Charles' universe.

• 46:07Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See what you did there.

• 46:09Charles Liu?

  Well, again, I didn't do it, people around me did, but I'll, I'll accept it.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we got it.

• 46:13Charles Liu?

  It's all good.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a good choice. Chuck, always good to have you, man.

• 46:16Speaker 05

  Always a pleasure.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, love you, man.

• 46:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Love you too.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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