My Photo

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

More...

Recently Updated Weblogs

« Roger Ebert on the Higgs boson | Main | Hypno SF »

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

xkcd's insanely ingenious new "What If" site has been designed to answer questions like this one, with a new post every Tuesday.

An excerpt from this week's illustrated answer:

... When it reaches the batter, the center of the cloud is still moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. 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. The shell of x-rays and superheated plasma expands outward and upward, swallowing the backstop, both teams, the stands, and the surrounding neighborhood—all in the first microsecond. ...

04

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 10:12 PM |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451ede369e20177433b6a82970d

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?:

Comments

i could hit that shit.

Posted by: dale hotep | Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 01:31 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Recent Arrivals at my house


  • Rain and Spotified chamber music

  • Almost perfectly square, thin, homogeneously chewy slices of enriched white bread, extruded from a place called "Butter Farm." This was a purchase from Uwajimaya that I couldn't resist—I think mostly because this bread makes me feel like I'm saying, "Computer... two slices of bread, toasted."

  • Deer Hunting with Jesus. It's a little dated (2007) and written a little too much to "entertain," but I learned a lot, especially in the section on guns. Thanks for the recommendation, CBell. Definitely worthwhile.

Humans

  • Douglas Paul Barrett
    Yet another Paul, but also a good one
  • Ben
    My personal economist
  • Boy Jill
    Child star, misanthrope
  • Dalton
    No longer a.k.a. "Words"
  • Hunts
    Big giant soft-spoken death-cheater
  • Jill
    Muffin baker, dream taker (and don't miss her food blog either)
  • Jim
    Funny, in Booklyn
  • Jot
    Rock 'n' roll Dungeon Master
Add me to your TypePad People list
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Blog powered by TypePad