Questions You Never Thought To Ask

. . . but once you hear them you think "yeah, I'd like to know the answer to that, in fact, I now need to know the answer to that".

In that spirit we'll follow up our science post from earlier today with another pressing scientific matter:

From What If?

What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?

Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics.:
The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out.


To find out how it all turns out and how to apply the results using Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) you'll need to go to the full article.

If there are any physicists in our audience please let us know how well the author did his homework