Cosmic Queries: Space Balls?

Quidditch in Space? Badminton on Mars? On this episode, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice answer a grab bag of patron questions about all things athletics with our geek-in-chief astrophysicist Charles Liu.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. This is gonna be Cosmic Query's grab bag. But a particular kind of grab bag because we're gonna think about sports not only on Earth but off-world. And of course, I've got with me my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, what's happening?

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, our professional stand-up comedian? Who's actually in pretty good physical shape even though you never really did any sports in your life, is that correct?

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I have played sports in my life, I just don't talk about the disaster that it was. That's all.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is, okay, that's honest.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've got Gary O'Reilly, former soccer pro from the UK, Gary. Hi Neil. My co-hosts, alright dudes. Well, so this kind of subject is fun because it involves sort of the physics of sports as played in different sort of gravitational atmospheric environments. And while I can take you some of the way there, when you really wanna do it right, we gotta go for our geek in chief. And there's only one person with that title in this sector of the universe, perhaps the entire universe, perhaps the multiverse itself. Charles Liu, Charles, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:34Charles Liu?

  I'm not worthy, thank you.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh no!

• 1:36Charles Liu?

  It's such a pleasure to be back, thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, you know, we have to bring you back with enough frequency so that I don't get big-headed about my own geek expertise, right? Cause after a while I say, "Yeah, I got this, I got this." And then you put you in the same room with me? And it's like, "No, I don't got this."

• 1:56Charles Liu?

  We're in this, we are all in this together, Neil. You have your expertise, I have mine.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the continuum, you, you come in from beyond the horizon of the continuum that I occupy. Let me just say it that way.

• 2:10Charles Liu?

  I, I do not know if I agree, but thank you for your kind words. It's always a pleasure to be here and talking about science and sports and literally everything else with you.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, every, everything. And Charles is a friend and colleague and he's a, a professor of physics and astronomy at City University of New York on Staten Island. And some people don't know that he was with me 20 years ago when we were building and finishing the new Hayden Planetarium in Rose Center.

• 2:39Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I was six at that time, so.

• 2:44Charles Liu?

  I was, I was being squeezed into the corners to make sure that children couldn't get stuck in the various spaces.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Charles Liu, the young Sheldon of the Hayden Planetarium.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The young Sheldon, exactly.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we got you, Charles, here. And so, but just, what, could you just, you know, we've got questions from Patreon, which has been our, our sole source. So if you want to get questions on cosmic queries, you can join Patreon for a very low entry level. I mean, we want you to, you know, go a little higher, but entry level gets you, gets you at least this far on it. And so, Charles, you have just sort of overarching thoughts about sports on Earth versus what might be necessary on other planets, if we were a multi-planet species, for example.

• 3:27Charles Liu?

  Oh, yeah. The basic point is that all human motion is fundamentally pushing against gravity. Everything we do, whether we're walking, or we're standing, or we're jumping, or anything like that, trying to hit a baseball, trying to keep it off the ground, everything is based on gravity. When it comes right back down to it. So in the end, if you're in an environment where there is no gravity or microgravity, then your own personal forces take over those activities. Suddenly, your physiology matters way more. Suddenly, the environment in which you are playing, the size, the shape, the speed, all the different things matter. It's going to change sports fundamentally, no matter where we go in the universe as

• 4:10Charles Liu?

  long as it's not 9.8 meters per second squared acceleration.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so finally, we can play Quidditch in outer space.

• 4:20Charles Liu?

  Except that, you know, if you get hit by a bludger, you don't fall. Where are you gonna go?

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's right, because, yeah. I forgot about that, because even though they're flying around, they're still magically, if they fall off, they fall to the ground, and that hurts.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  Gravity still dominates the playfield. Right. However, if you were playing Jetpack Quidditch,

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  and your broom has its own propulsion, so, as in rockets, right? When you do get hit, you'll be knocked off course. You have to correct in order to come back, so...

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you won't fall to the ground. That's right. There you go.

• 5:04Gary O'Reilly?

  What's the fun in it if you don't hit the ground? As a spectator, I haven't come to see you do quite nicely. I've come to see you go splat.

• 5:13Chuck Nice?

  Gary, did you just say, "What is the fun of Quidditch in outer space"?

• 5:19Gary O'Reilly?

  No, yes, without, without the floor to land to smash into.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without falling. Wait, wait, so Charles, the, so maybe, we're thinking, we're too narrow in our thinking. Maybe the sports that we have honed on Earth were conceived in a sort of a 1G environment. Maybe if we go to the moon at 1/6th gravity, or Mars at 38% gravity, maybe we should say, what sports would, can we invent sports that would be best served by those gravitational fields and not try to port something from Earth to these other locations?

• 5:59Charles Liu?

  I agree with you completely. Whole new kinds of sports.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I have an argument. You're just agreeing with me, Charles? You're just agreeing?

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, on Mars, I know it will be mutant badminton, where your little mutant like Quado is the only one actually allowed to hold the racket.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  So the little mutant growing out of your

• 6:24Charles Liu?

  I got you. There it is. I thought the mutant comes out and does a slow, soft shoe.

• 6:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, but he'd have to use your feet.

• 6:34Charles Liu?

  Oh, no, not again.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a good way to think about it. Now, so who's got the questions, Chuck? Do you have the questions from Patreon?

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  Both Gary and I have questions.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so who goes first?

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 6:45Gary O'Reilly?

  I'll jump in. I'll jump in. William, one of our Patreon patrons. What elements or considerations would be important for an outer space sport? So we're going to drill a bit deeper into what we just discussed. He says, I'm guessing it's a he, William. I would love to see an Ender's Game-style arena, but what would really be entertaining to watch people compete at in space? So we've got, again, the entertainment. I need someone to hit the floor.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when he says space, he means, he implies zero G, I think, when he's saying in space, right? And so without the net to save you, or no net to not save you, where is the, where is the risk factor that we all are going to watch someone defy the risk because, due to their expertise?

• 7:28Charles Liu?

  For those people who aren't familiar with Ender's Game, that was a novel written by Orson Scott Card a number of decades ago, where to fight an alien menace, a number of children were put into a place called the Battle School. And they were out in space and trying to figure out all kinds of new strategies and methods that the adults put them in. And it was a little creepy of a book, actually.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I knew that. I knew everything you just said. I knew that.

• 7:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah, and so.

• 8:02Charles Liu?

  No, of course you do. But, but the, it was very interesting. Orson Scott Card did a good job trying to imagine what fighting and combat would be like in Zero G in a number of those cases. It was later made into a movie with various CGI effects and things like that. I don't know that they did as well as, as we would have liked them to.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what would be fun, in a boxing match, if I hit you, we both recoil from that contact.

• 8:29Charles Liu?

  You go backwards. Yeah, that's right. So, so what we're probably going to be talking about, my guess is that you're, you're going to be thinking much more about evade and capture type games as opposed to retrieving an object type games. So football, soccer, baseball, those kinds of things. You hit a ball, it's going to go everywhere. It's going to, you know, you just have to go get it and then there's no air messing with it, the spin will be hard to work with. Rather, it'll be like, can you grab that person that's going from point A to point B before the person gets there? There's probably going to be issues of musculature. Are you going to bounce off a corner? You know, how big is the space going to be?

• 9:13Charles Liu?

  Can you change your position? And then the equipment will matter so much too, just as Chuck was saying earlier about jetpacks, right? If you can't, if, as soon as you launch yourself up, in the same way that a basketball player leaving the floor knows where you're coming down, you're going to have to launch yourself and know where you're going to be headed unless you put some sort of energy or force behind where you're working and what you're doing.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's not only that, Charles. I mean, on Earth, we can move forward or in any direction we choose because there's friction between us and some other surface that enables that. But in space, any time you want to change direction, you have to give up some mass in order to do that, right? You can't just choose to change direction. Something has to, has to, has to come out of you so that you recoil in the opposite way with your momentum and that's the only way you can change direction.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought you meant you had to pray in order to change direction.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, mass.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Just give up some mass. Dominus is bitter.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That could still happen. That could still be.

• 10:20Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so gymnastics, Charles, gymnastics.

• 10:24Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, what's the point? If I do a triple somersault, I can do thirty somersaults.

• 10:29Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 10:29Gary O'Reilly?

  And I'll just keep going.

• 10:30Charles Liu?

  Until you.

• 10:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Gymnastics will no longer exist in zero gravity.

• 10:33Charles Liu?

  Right. Well, here's what you would do then, right? You create a circumstance where you have to leave one surface. Maybe you're pushed off of one surface. And before you reach the other surface, then you have to do all your things.

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  The other thing which you could do, though, is you could have magnetized gravity boots. So from surface to surface, you know, the magnet is turned off on one. You push off and then as you go, then it's turned on the other. And that's when it pulls you and sticks, so.

• 11:04Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  That becomes like space praters.

• 11:08Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so if it's a magnetic stick, then you always stick the landing because you will connect to the magnet. If it's electromagnets that they just turn on.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. But that could be called too for wrestling. So Neil, think of it like this. Well, I'm asking, I shouldn't say think of it this way because I've never wrestled anybody except my own demon.

• 11:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Stand strong, Chuck.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  But, okay, let's say you're wrestling, right? So you're on the platform and you have certain points of your body that have magnetized, like kneepads, elbow pads and your shoes, okay? So while you're wrestling, these are turned on, okay? The floor is magnetized, you guys are actually wrestling. But at any point, they can turn it off. Maybe it's on a cycle, so it'd be very fair to everybody.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which random.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  It's a random.

• 12:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Random, you've got to do it random.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Or random, right? So now, how does that change you as a wrestler? Because isn't leverage everything, right? And at some points, you're going to be floating. And then what move do you have to think of while you're floating? So that when the cycle starts again, you're in a better position.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  To dominate your opponent.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Magnetic strategies is what that is all about. Very cool. I like that. I like that. Damn. All right, well, this whole segment is just about sports in space. So let's keep going. Who's got the next question?

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Cool. All right. I guess I'll bring up the next one. This is from Fitz Fritz Menzel. Hey Neil, if there were a zero-gravity sport that involved athletes launching or jumping from one wall of a huge arena to the other, what speed could they reach? What would happen when they hit the other wall?

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, tell me about the symmetries of jumping and landing in that context.

• 13:13Charles Liu?

  Uh, let's, let's do the quick calculation, okay? D equals one-half A T squared. A typical athlete can probably jump about, what? Two, two meters in the air, five, six feet? If they're really, really accomplished. Uh, so if you get the center of mass six feet in the air, that's, that's pretty good.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but they're working against gravity. If we're just gonna put yourself into motion, you don't have, that's not the right calculation, I don't think.

• 13:35Charles Liu?

  Right. No, no. What I'm trying to do is to figure out how much force and acceleration a typical athlete can create by pushing off.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then you got a direct measurement. Okay, there you go.

• 13:46Charles Liu?

  Yes, direct measurement. So, uh, two equals one-half G T squared. So that's five, two-fifths, point four. What's the square root of point four?

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Point four is point, uh...

• 13:55Charles Liu?

  Yeah, it's about point six, right? A little bit between point six and point seven. So you're going for, uh, point six seconds deceleration at 10 meters per second. That means you're, you're able to launch yourself at approximately six tenths uh, of, of gravity, right? Six tenths of a meter per second, something like that. Uh, six meters per second. So you're going six meters per second, and let's say you weigh about 100 kilograms, 220 pounds, something like that. So that's...

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but the thing is, if I can jump, if I can, if I can propel myself at that speed, I will arrive at the far wall at that very same speed.

• 14:32Charles Liu?

  That's right. So I'm trying to figure out how much damage you would do to your face.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  That's what, yeah.

• 14:38Charles Liu?

  Uh, the, the answer is, well, I mean, we can do the math specifically, but let's, let's just do it intuitively. If I jump at full speed into a wall, right? Or if I, I'll say I jump as hard as I can and I'm in a room that's only, uh, three inches higher than my head. Think about the, the impact that I would feel on my head.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, especially if you're, if you're face up when that happens. Yeah, you'll, basically, that's the end of your face. Right.

• 15:03Charles Liu?

  That's right. So it's a lot. I mean, you can really cause yourself serious damage.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So what you'd have to do is while you were floating from one surface that you just jumped from to the other, you'd have to somehow turn around so that you landed on your feet and then you use your entire musculoskeletal system to absorb the landing.

• 15:21Charles Liu?

  Absorb.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, as a shock absorber, exactly.

• 15:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So basically, our sports in zero G will be performed by cats.

• 15:31Charles Liu?

  Or highly padded humans.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me another one. What else you got?

• 15:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. All right, um, okay. Matthew Ritter, I've heard that due to Titan's thick atmosphere and low gravity, that human powered flight would be possible.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 15:50Gary O'Reilly?

  We'd also be super man.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, Charles, I had not heard of that. Is it, is the, what's the thickness of Titan's atmosphere? Do you remember?

• 15:58Charles Liu?

  Uh, it's a little bit more than Earth's.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if it's only a little bit more?

• 16:02Charles Liu?

  Uh, yeah, one point something or two point something.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not like Venus where it's a hundred times our atmosphere?

• 16:07Charles Liu?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do you gain most going to Venus, holding aside the fact that you'll get vaporized on Venus, ignoring that complication, is the atmosphere thick enough for you to gain lift just by your own, uh, strength, or do you have to go to the lower gra, because Venus has earth gravity, or do you have to go to the lower gravity of Titan and take advantage of that fact against the slightly higher, uh, density atmosphere?

• 16:34Charles Liu?

  Um, I would go with, I would go to Titan. Uh, the, the, the advan, because you realize that Venus's atmosphere is so thick that it's like being down half a mile in Earth's oceans to be at the surface of Venus, right? So even our best nuclear submarines have a hard time surviving at that level. So even if you can build an airplane, you could be crushed like an egg anyway, right? You're much better off in a moderate atmospheric period, uh, area where you can actually survive.

• 17:08Chuck Nice?

  To fly, let's just say for instance, uh, we're somehow adapted to the pressure, right? If you have an atmosphere that thick, do you still need the same aerodynamic, uh, lift and everything to fly? Or would you be just resting on the actual, like, uh?

• 17:30Chuck Nice?

  The actual atmosphere is no.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To your point Chuck, it is possible for the atmosphere to be so thick that you don't have to fly because you're just floating in it. That's what your point is.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  It's just floating. Yeah, that's my point. It's like, it would be like being in the middle of the ocean. It's like, yeah, I don't have to fly in the ocean. I just float in the ocean.

• 17:47Charles Liu?

  Well, there's a difference between density and pressure in that kind of environment, right? So if something can have high pressure but relatively low density, although there is a relationship, as we all know, the so-called ideal gas law, right? PV equals NRT. So there is a direct relationship between, well, it's a relationship, I don't want to say direct necessarily because that's mathematically specific. But all these different factors come into account. It is possible for something like a balloon to float in Venus or on Venus in its atmosphere, right? In that case, if you were floating on the atmosphere, you would rather be above the cloud tops of Venus than above the cloud tops of Titan because

• 18:29Charles Liu?

  then you would have more buoyancy because of the pressure.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but how about just my own strength to fly just by, you know, put on some wing looking appendages, right?

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  Like, like all those old 1918 films where they show guys trying to jump off a cliff.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All those guys, right? If they were on a different planet with a thicker atmosphere, I bet some of them would have flown away.

• 18:53Charles Liu?

  They probably would have. Some of them might have been successful. But again, the only problem is that everything else has to be adapted accordingly, right? If your wings get crushed and shredded because of the pressure before you even get down there, that's going to be a very Icarus-like situation, but in the opposite direction.

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  I just, I'm just picturing a guy falling from a cliff, flapping his arms going, "If I'm here, I'm on Venus!"

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You really think those were his last words, Chuck?

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's probably, "Oh, shit!" All right, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries, kind of a grab bag, but it's about, it's about, it's about athletics in space. And, but when we come back, let's talk about sort of more exotic things here on Earth.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, McCreary's Sports Edition. And we're just talking about sports in space and on Earth and all the ways that the laws of physics dictate what you can and cannot accomplish. And I've got with me Chuck, Chuck Nice, and Gary O'Reilly.

• 20:21Charles Liu?

  I know.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got my resident geek in chief, Charles Liu, who's got his own sort of fan base within the StarTalk fanbase. I mean, there are people who are all into Chuck, Chuck Liu, Charles Liu. Charles, I'm sorry, if I say Chuck, I really probably mean Chuck Nice, but occasionally a Chuck slips out when I'm talking to you, Charles, so just...

• 20:45Charles Liu?

  Yes, I know, I know. I mean, my Twitter handle is @ChuckLiu.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it is? Okay, all right, yeah, yeah. So, so let's keep going. We've got, these are Patreon members, sort of exclusive questions that they get to ask. So, who's up next?

• 20:59Gary O'Reilly?

  This is Violetta, your number one fan. She's an astrophysics fan and she's a sports fan. She's, she's asking about the two main types of muscles, fast twitch, slow twitch. Fast twitch are good for quick bursts of energy like sprinting and slow twitch are good for endurance. Supposedly, people genetically have one or the other, so which one would be better for space travel? Also, and this is the kicker, P.S. I'm the fast twitch type. I can sprint from home to first base like you wouldn't believe.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 21:28Gary O'Reilly?

  I love it. That's fantastic.

• 21:30Charles Liu?

  Yeah, actually, most, most baseball players are primarily fast twitch types because you, you have to be ready to move at any given time and then move explosively when the opportunity happens. So, if I remember correctly, Violetta is indeed an excellent baseball player, so I'm not at all surprised.

• 21:47Gary O'Reilly?

  And I think, Charles, there's, you do get a combination, but then, then the majority is one or the other, and that allows you to...

• 21:53Charles Liu?

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

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does all that mean?

• 22:20Charles Liu?

  The mixture.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so does that mean I can run? Do you tell me the fast twitch fibers have slow twitch fibers in them?

• 22:26Charles Liu?

  Uh, no, each muscle has a number of fibers.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 22:30Charles Liu?

  And the combination.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mixture of those two, got it.

• 22:34Charles Liu?

  Uh, that's right, is, is where you wind up with your particular brand of fast twitch.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  And for people who have an equal amount, they just sit around and do nothing.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause they.

• 22:45Chuck Nice?

  They're like, I can't go fast, I can't go slow, I'm just on the counter. So now I have to eat potato chips.

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the perfect mixture is good for the thumb on the remote control, right? It's just.

• 23:00Charles Liu?

  Oh, no, no, no. You, what the, actually, uh, the folks like who do triathlons, right? Um, they are, of course, are, are slow twitch supposedly because everything is an endurance sport. But I could imagine a sport in space someday where you combine slow and fast, where you have to do both kinds of things, like run the equivalent of some sort of marathon and then quickly sprint.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and then shoot a gun and then throw a discus.

• 23:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah. Oh, well, that's, that's a, that's a biathlon.

• 23:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, that's to Catherine. But I mean, we have, we have those sort of sports right now. And if you think about basketball, if you think about soccer, they're explosive.

• 23:38Charles Liu?

  Oh, that's true.

• 23:39Gary O'Reilly?

  But they're over extended lengths of time and you, you don't get breaks. So we kind of have a combination of that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's, uh, lucky for Violetta.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:10Charles Liu?

  The, the, again, because we don't have to push against gravity, we don't have to sustain any muscular activity, right? You produce a burst of impulse.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then everything flows out of that.

• 24:21Charles Liu?

  And then you don't do anything. Right? So you feel like you're not doing anything. So the answer to Violetta's question specifically is, and Violetta, one of these days, please tell us how, whether we should pronounce it Violetta or Violetta, because, you know, it matters.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point.

• 24:36Charles Liu?

  We want to get it right. The answer to your question, Violetta, is that because everything matters as far as fast twitch and the impulse, and then what you do with that impulse after you stop the impulse, fast twitch people are definitely better at space sports than slow twitch people. That would be my.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, just to highlight what Charles just said, all right? And Gary, here's just something interesting to know. In soccer, you can explosively go from like zero to sort of high speed. In space, you just have to do that once at the beginning and you just float the rest of the way at that same speed. Whereas you're always overcoming the fact that you're slowing down because you're, there's friction between you and the road. And you need to change your direction and all the other things. Change direction is another sort of point of acceleration. Charles, tell us about acceleration going from zero to some speed that you didn't have before, and acceleration changing direction. Just put that on the, on a table here for us.

• 25:32Charles Liu?

  Well, when you are speeding up, right? Acceleration or slowing down deceleration, physicists normally just call deceleration negative acceleration. So you're just moving back and forth depending on that. Now, when you are going from no speed to a new speed, right? That is actually a quick burst of energy. What you're doing is you're changing your net momentum. So you're exerting a certain amount of acceleration over a certain amount of time. And, and force times time, right, is what we call impulse. It's a version of momentum. And so when you're trying to accelerate from zero to something, it's how fast you can

• 26:13Charles Liu?

  exert the force and for, you know, how long a period of time that determines how fast you get to when you get to the zero to the.

• 26:21Chuck Nice?

  And I'm fast. Mmm, I tell you I'm fast. I turn out the, I turn out the lights and I'm in the bed before the room gets dark.

• 26:30Charles Liu?

  You float like a butterfly and sting like a bee to each other.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Rumble, young man, rumble.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Charles, I wanted you to talk about what it means for acceleration to also refer to a change in your direction.

• 26:43Charles Liu?

  Oh, that's true. When you're going around in a circle, for example, you could be going at the same speed, but because you're changing direction every moment, you are experiencing an acceleration. We physicists, as you know, Neil, think of acceleration as a change both in how fast you're going and what direction you're going. And so as a result, you have to take both of these things into account. If you're out in space, you kick off, you're in one direction. And unless you can push yourself or kick off in some other direction, you're going to stay in the same direction. Moving in that straight line, yeah, until you are acted upon by some force. And that's where you have to lose the mass.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Or, or get help from something bigger that has mass, like, right? Isn't that, isn't that what you guys call a slingshot?

• 27:33Charles Liu?

  Gravitational flybys, for example. Exactly, right. You'd have to come really close to a planet or something and come at just the right velocity. And, you know, you have to move the speed and direction such that you don't get captured by the object, but then.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like planetary billiards. Do a three cushion.

• 27:50Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of a new sport.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity assist.

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 27:56Gary O'Reilly?

  See, what size, what size would you, how small could you make objects like that and, and then have that sport? Would it have to be planets?

• 28:05Charles Liu?

  Whoa. Well, you, you kind of need really large amounts of mass, right? So you might need like white dwarf star or neutron star material.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's, yeah.

• 28:15Charles Liu?

  That are encapsulated and that would allow you to produce enough gravitational effect within, say, the space of a typical football.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well, how about this then? Back to magnets. How about you have like a game like billiards where the idea is to transfer energy by colliding the balls so that they actually end up hitting a magnetic pole? And that's how you sink it into the pocket. Instead of a pocket, it's the pole and you have to, would that work? Or would it be something like if you hit it on the wrong angle? Like it would just go off forever and you'd be like, look at that, I lost another ball.

• 28:57Charles Liu?

  Electromagnetic force follows the inverse square law, just like gravity does. So it is mathematically appropriate if you use magnetism or some sort of electrostatic repulsion or something like that to mimic the behavior of what gravity would do to us here on Earth. That would be perfectly acceptable. The challenge is that here on Earth, because we're all on the surface of the planet, we all experience the same gravitational acceleration to very, very nearly identical amounts. So whether I'm at the end zone or whether I'm at midfield, I'm still experiencing 9.8 meters per second squared acceleration.

• 29:41Charles Liu?

  If you're using electromagnetic stuff, as soon as you move some distance, you're going to wind up feeling a difference in the amount of force because your source is so concentrated compared with the Earth, which is so broad compared to our football or our sports arenas.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Interesting.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well, give me some more questions.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  All right, this one is from Roman Pruckup. And Roman says, hey Gary, do you think it's possible to improve the shooting speed by engineering materials on football shoes similar to how we have improved shooting strength with hockey sticks? Are you sad you didn't experience these impacts of science in your active career?

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  In other words, bro, are you sad you're old?

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your old fart.

• 30:29Chuck Nice?

  Bro, you're like too old to have technology in your sports, so.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we had leather helmets, you know.

• 30:37Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't think we can get a kick point in a boot like you have in a hockey stick, in an ice hockey stick. But although that just increases the speed and the power immensely. What I could imagine is something that we've discussed from time to time. And why Major League Baseball doesn't have aluminum bats. And I said it for you. Uh, because the exit velocity is so, so fast. But if you put something that's lightweight and strong, maybe like aluminium. Hmm. Or a ceramic plate in, in the, in a kicking position on the foot. Maybe you could improve the exit velocity of.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Charles, Charles. Maybe you break your inseam. Break, break someone's shins if you miss the ball.

• 31:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Exactly.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Charles, let me ask you, if, is, is Gary right here? Do you want your shoe to be more rigid? Or do you want it to have some kind of a springy textured skin? So that there's like a double sort of springiness to when your foot makes contact with the ball? Which of those would be better?

• 31:45Charles Liu?

  It depends on whether you want force or control. Right? Speed or control? Uh, this is true for any material. If you have a longer contact time, you can impart to it more force. Right? Cause the maximum amount of force that you can produce per given unit of time. Uh, you multiply that by more time, you wind up with more net force or impulse. We were talking about going out, right? But the problem is the longer the contact happens, the more the ball and your foot have to interact with one another. Thus creating sort of micro forces or directional changes that are beyond your control. Things that are not.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the instant your foot touches the ball is not the instant the ball leaves your foot. So you'd have to recalibrate what that, all of that would mean. Ooh.

• 32:32Charles Liu?

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

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when you're passing to your friends, you end up just screwing up. Damn it, Ronaldo, how many times are you gonna do that? Jeez, they pay you all this money to give the ball to the opponents?

• 33:12Gary O'Reilly?

  So they did some years ago Adidas brought out a, a, a range of boots, cleats called the Predator. And it had these rubberized areas on, on certain parts of the boot. But would allow for more contact, as you just described, Charles, and therefore allowed for accuracy. Now, you can't change your footwear.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds like cheating to me. No, that sounds like there's less, there's less slippage between your foot.

• 33:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's gripping the ball.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, gripping the ball. Right, right.

• 33:43Gary O'Reilly?

  So if you get grip on the ball, I can now rotate that ball better. So imagine, imagine table tennis bats with stippling. Nice. On one side.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we call them paddles here. This is America, Jack. Okay? The word bat is for base frickin' ball. Okay? Table tennis.

• 34:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Or cricket, or cricket. Someone got out of the wrong side of bed, didn't they?

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is America, Jack. We sent you back on the next boat.

• 34:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, I don't even get a plane, I get a boat. No, no, no, no, no. The Olympics are starting soon.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't do that. All right. I just have to get my Merker chops going. All right, let's get, let's get another question. We've got a couple of minutes left in this segment before we get to like the philosophy of it all in our third segment. So.

• 34:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, let's, let's find another.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's next here?

• 34:34Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Eric Barger. You've mentioned previously in a tweet a few years ago, where you said a winning overtime field goal was likely enabled by a third of an inch deflection to the right caused by the Earth's rotation. The Coriolis effect. Thank you very much. So paying attention in class. I was wondering, and this is interesting, is there an ideal directional orientation for football stadiums and could that take full advantage of this effect from Earth's rotation?

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when I, when I did that calculation, I didn't trust my answer. And I sent Charles Lu an email and I said, Charles, I want to post this. Did I do this right? All right, this is, this is the double checking that happens always in science. If you get a result that like no one had thought about before, or is it a little weird? Maybe you didn't do it right. Did you carry the two? And so Charles gave me the Charles Lu seal of approval. I went with the number. I made the assumption, it wasn't an assumption, it was true for that stadium, that the stadium was oriented precisely north-south. And so my sense was that you get maximal Coriolis deflection if you did that. But then, Charles, you told me that it doesn't have to be north-south. It could, I don't see

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  how you get a Coriolis circulation if it's east-west.

• 35:51Charles Liu?

  It depends on how far directly east-west. If you're exactly east-west, then you're not going to get a deflection from that particular, the east-west rotation of the earth.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Charles Liu?

  Right? But it's all a matter of where you are. The problem is when you kick a ball, right? You're not always kicking it directly, exactly even. There is wind.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, of course. No, no, all other things being equal. All I said was

• 36:16Charles Liu?

  Right, all other things.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the rotation of the earth influenced the path of the ball. All other things being equal. And it only matters because the ball hit the fricking upright. And you have a round ball hitting a cylindrical pole, fractions of an inch, as any baseball player knows, can make a big difference in the, in the, in the, in the resulting reflected direction.

• 36:38Charles Liu?

  That's right. That's right. So, no, you're completely correct that going due north-south, perpendicular, the closer to perpendicular you are to the rotation of your frame, the more of the

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go, okay.

• 36:52Charles Liu?

  The object

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the answer to this is

• 36:55Charles Liu?

  But you don't have to be

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put all stadiums exactly north-south.

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly north-south.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And then try not to ever kick to the right side of the center. Because then the Coriolis force takes you out of the game, rather than into the game. All right? So that's

• 37:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Does it matter which direction on the field you're kicking?

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, each direction it deflects to the right.

• 37:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It deflects, interestingly, right?

• 37:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So in the northern hemisphere.

• 37:25Charles Liu?

  You want to put all your stadiums on the equator, too?

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the northern hemisphere, it'll always deflect to the right. And the equator, there's no, you got nothing.

• 37:34Charles Liu?

  Yep. And then when you're in the southern hemisphere.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say any GM picking a kicker based on this.

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  May not, may not be too good at his job.

• 37:52Charles Liu?

  We, we got a lot of sabermetric type things going on in sports these days, right? They're trying to parse, you know, tiny.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can tell you this, if your ball bounced off the upright and went left and not score versus in and do score, and that, and, and a big game was on the line there, you're gonna be wishing you had the laws of physics in your favor from the Coriolis.

• 38:14Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And isn't sabermetrics all about the tiniest little things that can influence the probabilities of what's happening?

• 38:21Charles Liu?

  Yep. That's right. And the statistics of them trying to squeeze knowledge about the sport activity from the numbers, the data that come from.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whole other thing. We gotta take a quick break. When we come back, we'll try to think philosophically about all of the science that's going on in sport. And there's a question that I think I saw there about spitting on your hand when they want to throw the, the, the baseball. And wouldn't that give you less grip rather than more grip? I want to make sure, I want to lead off with that when we come back on StarTalk Sports Edition, Grab Bag, The Physics of Sports, on Earth and in Space. StarTalk.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

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

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. Cosmic grab bag, but it's really physics of sports on Earth and really space. I got Charles Lu. Charles, you're tweeting at Chuck Nice. I'm sorry.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, wow, no wonder. No wonder I'm having a problem with Twitter.

• 39:59Charles Liu?

  At Chuck Lu, yes, C-H-U-C-K.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  L-I-U, okay, so I hope I didn't disappoint people who asked Chuck Nice questions.

• 40:09Charles Liu?

  No, Chuck Nice can answer my questions just as well.

• 40:14Chuck Nice?

  Now that was the funniest thing you've ever said.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck Lu, L-I-U, and Chuck Nice Comic, we got you on Twitter there, yeah, yeah. And My3LeftFeet?

• 40:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it have the my in there? My3LeftFeet?

• 40:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I assume you're right-footed, so this means you're clumsy. It's like a dig on your own coordination, is that right?

• 40:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Totally.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not saying that secretly you're another species, right, of human, right?

• 40:46Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I've never been that kind.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right, let's pick this up. We got questions that are more philosophical this segment, but I want to go back. Someone had asked a question about spitballs, I think, so who carried that? Which one of you?

• 40:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, let me jump in here. Richard L. Sanders, "Why does a baseball player spitting on his hands improve his grip?"

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, his hands, not just the pitcher, okay.

• 41:10Gary O'Reilly?

  "Instead of lessening his friction." Thank you, big fan of the show. Well, you're welcome, Richard. I hope this is the answer you're looking for.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Charles, this is a mystery to me. It's always been a mystery. Plus, why would you want a hock-a-lui on your palm, right?

• 41:23Charles Liu?

  There is a difference here. We're conflating two things, I believe. One is the spitball, right? Which is where you're spitting, you're pitching, you're spitting on the ball, you're trying to get it as wet as possible. So when you throw it, then it winds up with weird aerodynamics and the person who hitting it has a hard time.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it winds up with aerodynamics that not even the pitcher can predict? So nobody knows what it's doing at that point, okay?

• 41:45Charles Liu?

  Yeah, it's like a knuckleball on steroids, right? That's the first thing. So that's now outlawed. The last person... Thought to have ever thrown a spitball in legal competition with Satchel Paige because he was grandfathered in and allowed to pitch it until he retired.

• 42:00Chuck Nice?

  And maybe nobody wanted to hit that ball because it was nasty.

• 42:03Charles Liu?

  No, they did not.

• 42:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Did he just spit on that ball? Ew.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 42:10Charles Liu?

  But the the idea of spitting on your hands is very similar.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there they are invoking the grandfather clause on black people once again. This is.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But this time it helped him out. Okay, fine.

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Satchel Paige from the Negro leagues then who made it into the majors for.

• 42:30Charles Liu?

  That's right. One of the great pitchers of all time. Um, now, uh, the the reason people spit in their hands to grip a ball is a completely different thing. That's more akin to someone getting a paper towel damp before wiping a table of crumbs. The idea of a little bit of moisture increasing the ability to connect has to do with static electricity, right? The the reason dusts clinkings to a wall, for example, is static electricity. And and if it's dry and has enough static there, then you can't get the friction necessary to grab the ball. It's a surface effect. So you're not trying to coat the ball and coat your hands with fluid so that they're

• 43:11Charles Liu?

  slippery, but instead you're adding that little extra bit of moisture that gets the dry stuff off of the ball and your hands so that you can grip it better and dust.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Now, how about was it, uh, was it Poppy? Who's the one who spit into his hands when he had hitting gloves on? That that it's like, dude, these are like soft leather gloves. Now you're spitting on that on top of that? What what what are you doing?

• 43:39Charles Liu?

  I I do not know that.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big Poppy.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Big Poppy.

• 43:43Charles Liu?

  Wow. Well, it you.

• 43:44Chuck Nice?

  In all fairness, he just hated those gloves.

• 43:49Charles Liu?

  My, my guess there is that maybe there was a, a mental process where if you, I don't know, have you ever like though the difference between wet leather and dry leather?

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they do. Actually, you know, now that you say that, wet leather grips better. Charles, it's really true. If you're trying to open a can or something and you have like a, a dish towel, it's way more effective if it's slightly damp than if it's completely dry.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 44:17Charles Liu?

  So I think maybe that's, that's what, uh, was going on there, right? Um, so even on leather, a little bit of moisture can make a difference.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  Here's the problem with Big Papi spitting into the gloves. He hits a home run and then wants to high five me around the base. No, no, no, no.

• 44:37Charles Liu?

  You, you gotta have your, you gotta have your wet moisture, right? Here you go, here you go.

• 44:42Chuck Nice?

  You get an elbow, big boy.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, uh, let's move on with some of these philosophical questions. What do we have there? Who's next?

• 44:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, right. Here we go. Uh, Sam Couch. Uh, will there ever be a point when humans reach a fastest possible time? In other words, will there ever be a point in sports where no more world records could be set because humans have reached the lowest possible time? Assuming you can finish a race in zero seconds. When that happens, how will timed sports progress? So what, will we keep diminishing time for the hundred meters to fifteen hundred meters?

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until it's done in zero seconds? Is that, is that the question? Until Usain Bolt finishes this race in the instant.

• 45:28Chuck Nice?

  The day before he started it.

• 45:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, he's there before he left. Um, I, I just think it's that point where are we capable of diminishing?

• 45:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Our world record substantially anymore.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me, I'll lead off with this, but I want to hear Charles's response. You know, do you remember the Bannaker Mile, right? This is, when, when was this, 80 years ago or so? Roger Bannister, the Bannister Mile.

• 45:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 46:18Charles Liu?

  I do believe that it's possible we are reaching some sort of asymptotic limit. Right, where there is some point beyond which we simply cannot exceed. However, I don't know what that limit is. We humans, I think the Roger Bannister example is excellent. There are other limits that supposedly humans could never get.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, when, if I remember correctly, when he finished the mile in under four minutes, didn't he bring two other people with him, under four minutes?

• 46:49Charles Liu?

  I don't know if that happened in that one race, but within a year, many other people had broken.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, because the mystique was gone. Whoa.

• 47:00Gary O'Reilly?

  That's right. We've got the same thing with the two-hour marathon now, haven't we? Is it Kojie? Surprisingly enough, Kenyan runner.

• 47:07Gary O'Reilly?

  If I'm not mistaken, they seem to own the marathon these days. Yeah, it's a great two hours for a marathon. I mean, that, that was basically the holy grail, but that seems, it's not official yet. It has not been done in a race all with sanctioned shoes, but it seems like it's doable, as it were.

• 47:25Charles Liu?

  So, so we could get to a limit someday, but I am not going to make a prediction as to what that limit is.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Gary has made sure that a lot of our programs, our Sports Edition shows, have focused on improving human athletic performance, but not just who's going to work out harder, but it's what kind of technologies are brought to bear, what kind of nutrition, what kind of maintenance of your physioskeletal system that you are maintaining. So it could be that we have to start going in these other directions. It's not just, it's not just psychological and it's not just who's working harder.

• 48:01Chuck Nice?

  And I think if we ever do reach a limit, like it's just a tap out point, then what we'll do is turn to augmentation so that we can break it and then they'll accept that, that'll be more acceptable.

• 48:14Charles Liu?

  As long as it's in the rules, as long as it's within the rules.

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, here's what, I thought about this when I saw swimming records getting broken with such frequency. And I said to myself, this can't keep happening at this rate. And then I realized how you do this. Okay. This is how you do it. So swimming used to be timed to a tenth of a second. All right. Now it's to a hundredth of a second. So maybe future world records, you need to track a thousandth of a second. And then world records beyond that, a ten thousandth of a second. And we all be celebrating, oh, you beat him by three ten thousandth of a second. Whereas that was not even measurable decades ago by the, by the stopwatches that were used. And so you can still set world records, but you'll do it asymptotically. It's you're approaching whatever that limit

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is, we don't know what it is, but each next increment is littler than the previous one. What do you think of that, Charles?

• 49:05Charles Liu?

  That may happen someday. It just hasn't yet.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we are measuring swimming and hundredths of a second.

• 49:10Charles Liu?

  We are measuring swimming, yes, but the records are still being broken by approximately the same.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, was that right? I didn't check that. Okay.

• 49:17Charles Liu?

  Yeah. We could break them asymptotically if we're actually reaching the asymptote, but we're not there yet. We just aren't.

• 49:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Going to your point, Chuck, if we had ligament replacement.

• 49:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The man who's been injured more than all of us is always talking about wanting to be the bionic man.

• 49:38Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, it's not. But you see, you're not going in there to repair damaged ligaments. You're going in there to get stronger ligaments. Therefore, you're able to put more muscle in there. You're able to generate more power, if that is what you need to do. And therefore, you may be able to enhance your performance. And this, I don't know if that is within the regulations or whether that would seem like a body doing.

• 50:02Chuck Nice?

  I said full body prosthetic. What's that arm still doing here?

• 50:08Chuck Nice?

  Gary just, Gary went Robocop.

• 50:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He totally, he went all Robocop.

• 50:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a line in Robocop, lose the arm. We thought we could keep, no, lose the arm, that was like.

• 50:20Chuck Nice?

  I said full body prosthetic, lose the arm.

• 50:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's the bad guy said that.

• 50:24Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, super cool.

• 50:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me some more. We blew a lot of time on that one, but it was an important point of philosophy there. All right, what else we have there?

• 50:35Chuck Nice?

  Here's one for Gary, Hunter Cutones says, yo, yo, keep it hot. This one is for Gary the man. In international football, how come the United States fails to produce high level male soccer players? Our women consistently prove themselves and compete to the best. How come we are having trouble creating a USA World Cup team of men that can achieve what the women have already achieved? NBA has international programs, does this have anything to do with producing great players?

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, why do American men suck at this? Okay, go on.

• 51:04Gary O'Reilly?

  That's just it.

• 51:05Charles Liu?

  And yet, that paid more than the.

• 51:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that still a case?

• 51:08Gary O'Reilly?

  But that's a conversation for another time, otherwise we will be on this podcast for the next six weeks.

• 51:15Gary O'Reilly?

  The US men's national team are producing, this country is producing a lot of talent. And it's not just average. You've got players now in not just the big leagues in Europe, but the biggest clubs. You have Weston McKinney, who's playing in one of Italy's top clubs, Juventus.

• 51:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're saying Americans are going abroad, our top Americans are competing abroad? That's what you're saying?

• 51:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why can't we gather, why can't we staple them all back together here and then have a national team?

• 51:43Gary O'Reilly?

  You do, you bring them together for the national team events. But at the moment, you've got players, you've got Reiner, young guy, so talented. He's at Dortmund in Germany. You've got Christian Pulisic, who's in Chelsea in London. You have got all sorts of US players out there, and when they bring them back. They bring back an extra level of knowledge. It it goes through the coaching staff and this is a process that's maybe a bit slower than Hunter wants. But I can tell you now, it is gaining momentum.

• 52:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gaining. So so we have singularly really good players, but we don't have the depth yet to sustain that as in with an interleague with with league play domestically.

• 52:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I mean, you've got one player, Jorginho Dest, who was playing in the first team at Barcelona alongside Lionel Messi. You're getting there. It's just maybe not as quick as some people want.

• 52:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. There you go. You stay out of America. You'll make it happen. Eventually. Guys, we got to call it quits there. Charles, give me give me some final reflection here to send us out.

• 52:44Charles Liu?

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

• 53:26Charles Liu?

  And that's the kind of philosophical idea, the the difference, I think, Gary, between the performance enhancement and Chuck, what you were talking about.

• 53:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I go to the gym, I'm performance enhancing. I swap out my Achilles tendon with with carbon nanotubes and I'm cheating.

• 53:44Charles Liu?

  And you're cheating, right? Unless the rules allow it. If the rules allow it, then fine, go for it. But if you don't, don't try to tell me, oh, it's just performance enhancement. No, tell me whether it's cheating or not cheating. That's all. That's my take.

• 53:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, Charles, you're you said it right. And I don't think I think that's unassailable. Wisdom, insight and advice to us all.

• 54:05Charles Liu?

  Oh, well, hey, uh, thank you for having me.

• 54:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always good. We got to get you more. I miss you. We got to get you more back on here. All right. All right, guys. We got to call it quits there. Chuck, nice. Goodbye to you. Thanks. Then Gary O'Reilly and as always, Charles Liu, our resident geek expertise expert. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always.