BASEBALL AND FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES. I posted here about the theory that what seems to be a table is “mostly emptiness together with sparsely interspersed particles rapidly rushing about; hence tables and other such common-sense objects do not exist….there are no baseballs, only ‘fundamental particles arranged baseballwise.’â€.
Nick has sent me this post from the “What If” physics blog, which answers question submitted by readers. The question, submitted by Ellen McManis is: “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?” I don’t fully understand the answer, but a lot of things would happen. Some of them are that the air molecules in front of the ball would fuse with the atoms in the ball’s surface, releasing a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles, which would start start to tear apart the molecules in the air, ripping the electrons from the nuclei and turning the air in the stadium into an expanding bubble of incandescent plasma. The ball would become a bullet-shaped cloud of expanding plasma (mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen), triggering more fusion as it went. Everything within a mile of the park would be leveled.
The answer concludes: “A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered “hit by pitch”, and would be eligible to advance to first base.”