Slightly Off-topic: Hit by pitch?
 

So, what would happen if a pitcher threw a baseball at 90% of the speed of light?

Relativistic Baseball

Jose Canseco would claim to be able to hit a homerun every time the pitcher threw it!

Obviously from reading the artcle, it would be "lights out" however, I am sure in the political and religious discussions to follow it will either end up as a super pac negative ad or the second coming.

Disagree with the application of 6.08d. I'd go with .901c (get it?)

+1 - lol

"It hits the bat first, but then the batter, plate, and catcher are all scooped up and carried backward through the backstop as they disintegrate."

Well, at least they spared the umpire.

Umpire: "Sure sounded like a strike!"

He was working from behind the mound.

I'd say within 1-1/1000th, is is close enough for this ruling.

I don't care what happens; I'm amazed someone actually thought of this question.

I think mushroom cloud behind home plate.

F=1/2MVV

Isn't that the formula for kinetic energy? Perhaps you meant Newton's formula, F = dp/dt, though Newton couldn't have guessed about mushroom clouds.

The things you can read on an umpire forum!

Yes it is KE but, didn't Newton also invent the Fig Bar?

:)

I maintain that the protective equipment did it's job.....

Well yes, but the point is still the same, a mass (baseball) traveling at near the speed of light squared, has tremendous energy. The pitch can't be seen, can't be caught, and everyone for some distance around is annihilated.

Well, not to be obtuse, but nothing can travel at the speed of light squared, and you could see it and catch it just fine if you were traveling at around the same speed. We're all moving at 17000 MPH around the sun and don't seem the worse for wear. ;)

Umpires quibbling about physics! Who knew!

17k is wrong.

Depending on how far north you are, we're moving at up to 1000 mph around the axis of the earth (less as you go north). We are also moving at 66,000 mph around the sun. We are moving at about 43,000 mph relative to the nearby stars within our galaxy. We are also moving at about 483,000 mph as we rotate about the center of the galaxy. Lastly, using CBR as the frame of reference, the Milky Way itself is moving at 1,300,000 mph (toward Leo and Virgo)

And, like the Octopus ride at the fair, these spinning motions are sometimes in harmony with each other, sometime opposing each other.

(Of course, none of this approaches the speed of light at 670,000,000 mph)

Wasn't there a pitcher named Sidd Finch a few years back that threw this fast and was featured in Sports Illustrated? :rolleyes:

JJ

Galaxy Song
 

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough!

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
The sun that is the source of all our power
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side.
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz.
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Closer to eleven. 11,176,943.8 miles per second.

Just sayin.

Before today, the only physics I had ever heard from an umpire were from Ron Luciano's Strike Two (and subsequently repeated in multiple other books)

[To paraphrase:]

Coach: "How can you call that?!? You were 200-feet away!"

Umpire: "Listen (insert coach's name), my eyesight is so good that on a clear day I can see the sun and that sucker is 93-million miles away!"

I'm guessing this would be a rising fastball. :D

I pointed out the formula for the force of a mass moving at a velocity. The velocity is whatever it is, which in this op was near the speed of light, but the force is still related to velocity squared, according to this formula, which is based on conventional physics and as we know, physics takes on another level at the speed of light.

Don't know many catchers catching a pitch at near the speed of light while traveling at near the speed of light.

You are correct, since this would be a measure of energy, not velocity.

I just want to know, will this be on the midterm?

There's no such thing as "the force of a mass moving at a velocity". Something weighing 1 lb moving at 5 mph does not have a force, much less a force of 1x5x5 or 25 lbm^2/h^2. Force does not equal mass times velocity squared. Force is MEASURED in equivalent terms, but Force equals mass times ACCELERATION, which, for a mass moving at a constant velocity, is zero.