Яндекс.Метрика

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Speaking of Science: The baffling science of baseball

Speaking of Science
Talk nerdy to us

New York Mets' Michael Conforto bats during the first inning of an exhibition spring training baseball game against the Houston Astros on Monday in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

It's been a couple of years since I last attended a spring training game, but I can still feel the pressure of Florida's February sun and hear the "pfft-thwak!" of a baseball zooming into a catcher's mitt. The Mets' tiny stadium in Port St. Lucie doesn't have a bullpen, so pitchers warm up along the first base line — right in front of where my best friend, Victoria, and I were sitting. The pitched ball moved so fast I could barely see it, but there was that sound — that whiz of tiny leather sphere disturbing the molecules of muggy air, so sharp and swift I wanted to flinch even from 10 feet away.

Whatever fragments of a dream I may have harbored about becoming a professional baseball player were swept away right then and there. All I could think was, "How on Earth does a human being hit that thing?"

It's not just me. Professional scientists ask themselves the same question. Around the same time that I was getting an early season sunburn in Port St. Lucie, Stevenson University Psychologist D. Ryan Shurtz, analyzed the impressive cognitive feat of hitting a baseball in the Baltimore Sun.

For one thing, he said, by the time a ball gets within 5.5 feet of home plate it is moving faster than a person can move his or her eyes, meaning that batters can't even see what they are swinging at. In fact, the average pitched ball spends so little time in the air that a batter must begin his or her swing almost at the moment the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.

Popular Mechanics reported that a 90-mph fastball reaches home plate in about four-tenths of a second, giving the batter 100 milliseconds to see the ball, 75 milliseconds to home in on its spin, speed and location, and another 50 milliseconds to decide whether to swing. The swing itself takes 150 milliseconds. All of that thinking must go on in roughly the amount of time it takes you to click your mouse twice.

So was Yogi Berra right? Maybe you really "can't hit and think at the same time?" Or maybe not. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience found that people's brains can make split-second distinctions between the trajectories of fastballs, curveballs and sliders.

Either way, I'm grateful to be able to observe this feat safely from the stands.

Happy spring training to everyone!

— Sarah

The bizarre and brilliant rules for naming new stuff in space
Craters on Mars can be named for towns with 100,000 people or fewer. Everything on Venus is named for a woman. There are asteroids for every member of the Beatles -- but don't try to name one after your pet.
 
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
Scientists shot a bullet into an asteroid to learn about the origins of the solar system
The Hayabusa2 mission is studying an asteroid for clues to the origin of life.
 
Scientists discover the origin of Stonehenge stones – quarries 180 miles away
Archaeological evidence suggests a strong connection between Stonehenge and distant parts of Great Britain.
 
Sunlight makes this waterfall look like lava — and the photos are mesmerizing
The Yosemite Firefall is a naturally occurring phenomenon that draws hundreds to the park's Horsetail Falls at sunset during the final weeks of February, when a combination of factors can align to make the cascading waters look like glowing lava.
 
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
Tiny new moon discovered around Neptune
What else lurks around the solar system's outermost planet?
 
Climate change officially claims its first mammal: The Bramble Cay melomys is declared extinct
In 1978, researchers estimated several hundred rodents lived on the island, but the numbers dropped to the double digits by 1998. Just 12 were caught in November 2004.
 
 
Recommended for you
Get The Switch newsletter
The top stories on the tech industry, tech policy and tech in our lives, delivered every weekday.

Friday, February 22, 2019

🚀 Touchdown for Hayabusa2! Landing Heavy Payloads on Mars, SpaceX Starship Challenges, Dust Devils on Mars, and More...



Hayabusa2

Touchdown! Hayabusa2 Successfully Touched Down on Asteroid Ryugu

The Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft reported on Thursday night that it had successfully made contact with Asteroid Ryugu, and fired a bullet into the surface to try and collect a sample. The spacecraft had been orbiting the asteroid for around 6 months, and had already delivered other smaller landers to the surface.

Mission operators said that the whole operation actually went more quickly than they were expecting, and went without a hitch. With the first bullet fired, the spacecraft backed up, and now it will do this two more times before returning back to Earth in 2020, delivering the asteroid samples to scientists here on Earth.

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

As always, if you have comments or questions, or suggestions on how I can improve this newsletter, please don't hesitate to reply this email or email me at info@universetoday.com.

Join our Patreon campaign

Patrons, don't forget to login to Universe Today. That'll remove all the ads for you. Join the 811 Patrons who get our videos early, see behind the scenes, and get no ads on Universe Today.
 

Farewell Opportunity
 

Farewell Opportunity. A History Of The Mars Exploration Rovers

On February 13, 2019, NASA tweeted out a sad message:

To the robot who turned 90 days into 15 years of exploration: You were, and are, the Opportunity of a lifetime. Rest well, rover. Your mission is complete.

It's strange to get choked up a little saying these words. To feel sad about a robot on another planet. 

But I'm guessing you feel the same way. And today I wanted to look back at the history of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. To take you through their creation, launch to Mars, the amazing discoveries they made, and of course, how they finally died.


Subscribe to our podcasts:
Universe Today Guide to Space Audio: iTunes - RSS
Astronomy Cast: iTunes - RSS
Weekly Space Hangout: iTunes - RSS

 


Mars capsule
 

Land Heavier Payloads on Mars. Aim for the Ground and Then Pull up at the Last Moment


Landing heavy payloads on Mars is surprisingly difficult to do. The atmosphere is too thin for aerodynamic entry, but too thick for a propulsive landing. NASA has been trying to figure out new strategies to land on the Red Planet. Well, here's an idea. Aim for the ground and then pull up at the last minute where the atmosphere is most dense. What could go wrong?


Space junk harpoon
 

British Satellite Tests its Space Junk Harpoon


The problem of space junk is big and it's getting bigger with every new launch. A British Satellite recently did its part to help clean up space by deploying a harpoon to snag a chunk of space junk. This was actually the third test of different techniques to try and grab space junk. Engineers will now study how all the different systems performed for future missions that could actually get to work cleaning up space.
 


SpaceX Starship
 

SpaceX's Fuel Bleeding Starship Will Be Incredibly Difficult to Pull Off


Elon Musk called the new design for the SpaceX Starship "delightfully counterintuitive", but according to NASA engineer Walk Engelund, it's going to be an incredibly difficult challenge to make it successfully to the surface of Mars in one piece. The innovative stainless steel hull that bleeds droplets of fuel to keep it cool during re-entry has never been tried before. Read this fascinating piece from Dave Mosher.
 


Nova
 

This Star Has Been Going Nova Every Year, for Millions of Years


Novae occur when a white dwarf steals material from a companion star, and then this material ignites in a blast of energy. They typically explode every 10 years or so, but astronomers have found one object that's been detonating every year or so and it's been doing this for millions of years. Every time it explodes, it increases in brightness by a factor of a million times, and releases a huge amount of material into a vast cloud around it.
 

Weather on Mars
 

What's the Weather Like on Mars? Ask the InSight Lander


Thinking of spending a few days at Elysium Planitia on Mars? You might want to check the weather first. Apparently there's a light wind and bone chilling cold according to NASA's Mars InSight Lander. The spacecraft is equipped with an air pressure sensor, thermometers and a wind sensor, so it's the perfect weather station on Mars.
 


51 Pegasi B
 

Why We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space


Preserving humanity might be one of the best reasons to colonize space, or would it? According to Phil Torres, a scientist who thinks about existential risks, it might actually increase the likelihood of the annihilation of the human race. When we migrate to space, we'll take our problems with us, including our ability to wipe ourselves out.
 

Dust devil on Mars
 

This is a Dust Devil… on Mars


Mars is an alien world, but every now and then it does something that makes it feel a little more like home. You're looking at a photograph of a dust devil (a tiny tornado), zipping across the surface of Mars, seen from the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In fact, these kinds of weather phenomena show up more often than you'd think.
 

Gateway Foundation
 

Gateway Foundation Shows off Their Plans for an Enormous Rotating Space Station


2001 told us that some day we'd be living in enormous rotation space stations. Well, where are they? Apparently somebody's trying to get them built. The Gateway Foundation recently showed off a trailer video teasing us about what a giant rotating space station might actually look like. Of course, the scale and scope of this thing boggles the imagination. 
 

Earth's atmosphere
 

Did You Know the Earth's Atmosphere Extends Beyond the Orbit of the Moon?


You might be surprised to know that the Earth's atmosphere actually extends out to a distance of more than 630,000 km into space; more than twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon. A new study from Russia's Space Research Institute studied the Earth's geocorona, a vast cloud of hydrogen atoms that extends out from the Earth. Of course, it's incredibly sparse, so don't try to breathe it.
 


Iceberg
 

Antarctica is About to Unleash an Iceberg Twice the Size of New York City


A huge ice shelf in Antarctica is about to give birth... to an iceberg. There are huge cracks running through the Brunt Ice Shelf, and the way they're intersecting shows that they're about unleash an enormous iceberg, twice the size of New York City. It'll be 1700 square kilometers, which sounds huge, but that's medium-sized for Antarctica. The bad news is that it's coming from a region that we've never seen produce an iceberg this big.
 


Martian river
 

Signs that Ancient Rivers Flowed Across the Surface of Mars, Billions of Years Ago


Mars is cold and dead today, but billions of years ago, it was probably warmer and wetter, with rivers and streams. And some of the evidence of this is carved into the Martian landscape. In a recent photograph taken by the European Space Agency, you can see rivers that once flowed on Mars, with smaller tributaries that feed into the larger rivers. It must have looked amazingly different back then.
 

Falcon 9 launch
 

A Private Lunar Lander is On Its Way to the Moon


A thrice-used SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off on Thursday night carrying an Indonesian telecommunications satellite into orbit. On board the spacecraft was the smaller SpaceIL Beresheet lunar lander, which is now on its way to the Moon. If all goes well, it'll touch down on the surface of the Moon in 40 days, completing the challenge set out by the Google Lunar X Prize (although, the prize has since been cancelled).
 

Other Interesting Space Stuff

Amazing Astrophotography on @universetoday


Tadpole

Just look at the stunning details in this photograph of the Tadpole Nebula captured by @redstickastro. Most impressive is how this image was shot in fairly light-polluted skies and bad seeing in Louisiana. 

We have featured nearly 1,000 astrophotographers on our Instagram page, which has more than 158,000 followers. Want to do a takeover? Use the hashtag #universetoday and I'll check out your photos.

 


Our book!

Find your way across the night sky. Choose a variety of astronomy gear. Follow the Moon and the planets. Find deep sky objects across the seasons in both hemispheres. Observe comets, asteroids, satellites and space stations. Learn to do astrophotography.

Get it on Amazon for only $18.89. Here are some other options.


 






This email was sent to znamenski.generalastronomy@blogger.com
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences
Universe Today · 1505 Osprey Place · Courtenay, BC V9N 7Y1 · Canada