What if you threw a baseball at nearly light speed?
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2024
- Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: xkcd.com/books
More serious answers to absurd questions at: what-if.xkcd.com/
What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd (xkcd.com). A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time.
Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios (the parent company for all three youtube channels).
Credits
Narrated by and based on "What If?" by Randall Munroe
Written & Directed by Henry Reich
Illustration and Video Editing by Lizah van der Aart
Illustration and Animation by Ever Salazar
Music & Sound Effects by Know Art Studios
What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC.
©2023 xkcd, inc. 
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I think the official rulebook needs getting extended that vaporizing the batter by gamma rays gets your team banned from the league.
Reasonable
If we can identify what's left of the team, I'll make sure to let them know.
Can't ban the team if there is no team, officials, neighborhood or any other witnesses to elaborate on that freak of nature event.
That's a 2 game suspension by NFL rules.
The pitcher has either much greater concerns or no concerns at all, depending on your preferred metaphysics.
Quoting the official baseball rules was a beautiful touch
Propelled the video from an 8.0 to a 10.0. Bravo 🧑🍳👌
Just don't look at the next page
"If the ball causes a nu-"
First base is first base
IDK, according to part (B) it seems like the batter made no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball
@@mattb7517 That is not considered if there is no reasonable opportunity to attempt to avoid it.
The bigger issue is that a portion of the ball is in the strike zone, which would preclude a hit by pitch so presumably it is just a called strike.
Q: What if you threw a baseball at nearly light speed?
A: Nuke.
On reddit this is such a common question. And this what if gets referenced every time. It makes me laugh every time people are curious but the reality is always just everything nearby is dead.
That can be said for anything bigger than a single particle reaching light speed
@@matthewsaari6577
''What if we-...''
''Dead.''
so theoretically, it is possible for every playground to contain a nuclear bomb
@@triketylereven better, from my understanding of the idea of Boltzmann brains, it's theoretically possible for a nuclear bomb to spontaneously appear and detonate.
"JIMMY, WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THROWING LIGHT SPEED BASEBALLS?"
"Sorry, Coach."
"Sweep the leg, Johnny?" No.
"Vaporize the stadium?"
Absolutley
It Wasn't light speed this time though Coach. It was only 0.9C!
Child Homelander moment, if he had a mom
@@I-did-September-11th what if he threw it at 1.0C
He just goes to the gym a lot
If you're wondering, a baseball at 0.9 c has 1.6E16 J of kinetic energy. That's about 1/6 of the yield of Castle Bravo, the most powerful nuclear weapon tested by the United States.
Indeed. Remember E=mc^2? Well, kinetic energy is 0.5mv^2, so with v=0.9c, that's 0.4*mc^2.
Thank you. Upthread, I asked about the yield. I guessed 20 KT. I believe I recall our largest atomic weapon was 20-30 MT. What was Castle Bravo's yield?
16 Petajoules is about 3.8 megatons of TNT
@@JohnDoe-bq9tq Gotta account for relativity with the Lorentz factor.
Thank you, that is in fact exactly what I was wondering.
I'd argue about your careful reading of the hit by pitch rule. It states in condition B that the batter has to make an attempt to get out of the way of the ball, as the batter literally could not react he was unable to make any attempt to avoid the pitched ball and therefore would only be awarded a ball.
and what makes you assume that it was outside the strike zone? hbp can occur over the plate as well, if the batter is crowding it but also attempting to move away from it
True, yet for fastballs, this is rarely enforced. If the ump judges the batter had no opportunity to avoid the ball, they get first base. Also, it was physically impossible to avoid the ball, since it was a baseball diamond-sized ball of plasma.
To be fair, they do technically avoid the 'baseball', just not the 'plasma ball', which I am fairly certain is not mentioned in the rulebook.
You guys are forgetting that the pitch could've also been a strike, in which case the batter is definitely not awarded first base but instead has to face at least one more pitch.
It says or though. As long as the ball wasn’t in the strike zone, which it was. So it is not a walk, but not for the reason you said
I'm so unbelievably angry I discovered this channel today and not in 6 months when there's a gigantic backlog of videos to binge. Can't wait to see more!
you can binge the many articles on the what if website if you havent already, at least!
At least there are thousands of xkcd strips to read...
this is in his book "what if?" so you can read it there!
"Gigantic"? 6 videos? We need to talk about the concept of 'hyperbole'.
yo phantom????
I love how the answer to most of these seemingly-innocuous questions is "everybody dies".
Haha N I C E
What would happen if everyone breathed at the same time?
everyone dies D:
Turns out physics really doesn’t like being messed with.
It's the "unsuspecting" prefix to so many participants that really makes it.
-unsuspecting- disintegrating
Clueless batter
they know nothing (John Snow?)
hmm today i will pitch a baseball at 90% the speed of light
🙂 ⬅️ clueless
Hmm today I will play a normal match of baseball
This is arguably the most famous What-If... the What-If equivalent of the "sudo make me a sandwich" comic.
My Electrodynamics professor has this xkcd in his slides! :D
But probably not even in the top ten most cited xkcds.
You don't get any programming related degree unless you saw at least 3 times the Bobby Tables in any professor's slides
It was also the first one published on the blog.
@@red__guy 1597 is also a good one "Git"
"You don't 'die of' anything in particular, you just stop being biology and become physics."
I think of this quote every time I get sick because it reminds me that I'm made of biology and that It's not fun
Note: if you do some physics you'll find that the ball has about the same energy as a 5 megaton Nuke
Equations: E=pc, p=γ m_0 v, γ=(1+v^2/c^2)^(-1/2). You can take E=pc in this case cuz the rest energy is extremely insignificant.
only 5 megatons?
@@dibbidydoo4318what do you mean "only"? Ignoring the fact nukes are exploded miles above the ground, the explosions would be directional for the most part, so its destructive potential would be extreme in the linear direction the ball is thrown at. More than enough to wipe out a quarter of a large city and cut a giant gash through 10km.
@@Quasar-fv8to but it's light speed. The fastest thing in the universe is something that's already reachable to us with nukes with the mass of a few dozen baseballs.
@@dibbidydoo4318 Because of relativity, light speed doesn't quite work that way.
Basically, the closer you get to the universal speed limit, the more difficult it becomes to close the gap. Accelerating something at 99% c takes a lot more energy than doing so to 90% c, reaching 99.9% is a lot harder than reaching 99%, and so on.
This continues boundlessly, so there's no limit to how much energy you can store into an object by accelerating it.
@@dibbidydoo4318
No it isn't the closer it gets to light speed the more energy it has this has no limit.
Nothing good ever follows the phrase "expanding bubble of incandescent plasma".
Only good things ever follow that phrase
Yes, But change bubble to miasma ...
The Sun, being an expanding bubble of incandescent plasma, allows life to exist on Earth.
I'd say it depends on your proximity to said bubble.
Or any time that Randall needs to use scientific notation.
This has always been my favorite What If, and not because it was one of the first, and not because of how wildly dramatic the scenario ends up in comparison to the innocence of the question, but what always sends me rolling is that technically the batter can move to first base, which for my money is an equally important part of the answer
Also those sound effects
Honestly, the relativistic baseball question was one of the first I thoroughly read when getting the book. I thought it was going to be boring and that was one of the most incorrect assumptions I’ve ever made.
The relativistic baseball was the very first What If? on the website, I believe.
@@gordontaylor2815 That's my recollection too, so I've decided to just go and confirm, and it is. But also that SAT Guessing was released the same day.
I could hide behind pedantry and claim this is why I said one of and not the, but the truth was that I just wasn't sure and didn't want to be wrong lmao
Sure; the pitcher effectively set off a tactical H-bomb, but the batter still gets to take his base!
we do a little trolling
*proceeds to throw baseball at 90% the speed of light*
@@theorb519 huh???
@@theorb519 ok
I remember reading this one years ago. Still chuckle at the "hit by pitch and can advance to first base" Please keep doing these. :-)
I love every single solitary second of this, but the apparently mouth-made foley swishing wind noises is the hidden gem here, and it's awesome and hilarious in its own right.
@@BrowncoatFairy That's a shame, because the content is great regardless.
I for one, find it charming, but I feel your pain. Sometimes the wrong sound will ruin a video like that for me too.
@@BrowncoatFairy So sorry to hear that, I've got misophonia but lucky for me those particular noises weren't bad.
Have you tried calmer ear plugs? They kind of reshape sounds and help take the edge off.
@@BrowncoatFairy I find it endearing and hilarious. To each their own I guess.
I'd say it's a tad too much. A bit of it is good and proper, but as it is it just distracts.
I did admire the sincere effort put into the verisimilitude.
A classic.
I still remember how my friend (who has since moved away) introduced What If? to me more than a decade ago: he read this out loud, in full, from the blog, and ended up needing to pause several times because he was laughing so hard. It was one of the greatest things I'd ever heard.
Good times. I'm going to send this to him.
Tell him Randall himself is the narrator
I remember it with "If Superman threw a ball at the speed of light..." - or was that something else?
Sounds like a good friend
I had a similar experience with a dramatic reading of this article with friends. We were all losing our minds laughing.
@@expansivegymnast1020 He absolutely is!
I was today years old when I first heard Randall's voice. It was... as expected!
Congratulations! You're one of today's lucky 10,000 ☺
I love how everything in the ball's way changes from 'unsuspecting' to 'disintegrated'.. :-)
I suspect Rule 5.05 would not apply, as the wizard accelerating the ball would be Spectator Interference according to 6.01e and the ball would be considered dead from the moment it was accelerated.
What if the wizard was first-baseman?
But if the pitcher were Superman?
@@rose_allenI cast Magic Missle
Even if Rule 5.05 applies, I do not believe the batter would be entitled to first base. If the batter his hit while the ball is in the strike zone, it is a strike and a ball is considered to be within the strike zone if any part of the ball is in the strike zone. In this case a portion of the ball would be in the strike zone.
The counterargument would be that the ball bounces off the ground and into the strike zone (which some of it presumably did) which would mean it is not a strike and is a HBP, but I think the strike argument is far stronger in the spirit of the rules where there is ambiguity.
I am ignoring the comment that the ball first hit the bat since that makes no sense as the bat would almost certainly be on the far side of the batter as the pitcher releases and the batter wouldn't even register the release before disintegrating.
Conveniently but boringly, the ball is declared dead in the microsecond before the entire city center surrounding it is also declared dead.
This is the classic kurzgesagt answer of "short answer, you die. Long answer, it depends."
xkcd >> kurzgesagt
Here it only depends on your distance from the pitch.
pretty sure the long answer is still you die
Yes, but you die with cool stuff happening
Kurzgesagt
“Unsuspecting Backstop” would be a great name for a band.
i think the part that i like the most is the mouth-made background noises, great channel.
2:11 Can we just talk about how, since it hit the bat first, that means the batter _still managed to hit the ball?_
Rest well, stick figure batter; you were probably the most skilled batter of all time.
It’d also mean the batter would need to swing at close to the speed of light, so that’s two nuclear explosions colliding at each other.
If the batter knew that the baseball would be thrown at that speed, they would need to swing so that the bat is in front of them at the release of the ball. It would be a matter of timing the swing by the movement of the pitcher rater than the ball.
The batter was in the bunt position 😂
Which would technically make it a foul ball and not a hit by pitch. Poor batter just ended up with a strike.
The personal touch on the sound effects is easily my favorite part. Just hearing him make the noises with his mouth in the background lmao
omg same! I was going through the comments to see if anyone else appreciated them just as much!! so funny
If there ever was a "Well, that escalated quickly", this is the one!
If Angel Hernandez was behind the dish when that 609M mph fastball was thrown. It will be a gift for the whole baseball community 😂
I do miss Wil Wheaton asking "But what if we add more power?"
That was awesome!
To which James Doohan replies, "The engines canna take much more o' this!"
Shut up, Wesley?
I love that the book is getting remastered in video form, it's pretty satisfying to watch
It's great for me because I've never had the opportunity to get my hands on a copy!
This is the most epic and hilarious What If ever. I love how you explained the physics and the consequences of such a crazy scenario. The animations and the narration were superb. But the best part was the disclaimer at the end: “Do not try this at home.” 😂
Haha, just finished watching this with the fam and it was 🔥! We've been waiting forever for this and it totally lived up to the hype. First, we were all gathered around the computer, about to click on the video, when BAM! Power outage! Uncle Bob strikes again, accidentally unplugging everything while vacuuming. Classic Uncle Bob move 😂.
But hey, we got the power back and it was smooth sailing, right? Nope! Little Timmy decided it was the perfect time to test his karate skills and ended up kicking a hole in the wall! Mom wasn't too thrilled, but we patched it up quick.
When we reached the part about the baseball rules, Grandma couldn't stop laughing! She was cracking up so hard she dropped her false teeth in her whisky 😂. And to top it off, when we all cheered at the end, our dog Max joined in with some epic howling. What a video! Can't wait for the next one! 🙌🎉
The voiced sound effects are absolutely cracking me up! 😂
I was looking for this comment! 😂
The sound effects! Bzzzzzzt. Psssssssssshhhhhuuuuu!
I like the statement that "it hits the bat first" assuming that the batter managed to actually hit the ball that he, as previously mentioned, would physically impossible to see.
Edit: at everyone trying to tell me "it's not physically impossible, it's biologically impossible", I was literally quoting the video that said the shockwave would reach the batter before the batter could even see the pitch because the light would be traveling at about the same speed as the shockwave.. I am literally pointing out the fact that he just said the batter wouldnt' have been able to see the pitch and then, in the very next sentence, stated that the bat would be struck first.
It hitting the bat first also means it can't be a hit-by-pitch! It would be a bunt turned foul ball
It isn't physically impossible, since matter can't move at the speed of light the light would still be in front of the ball, hence the light will arrive at the person's eyeball but probably won't get processed, so it isn't possible to see it, but if we ignore our biological limits then we will be able to see it, making it "biologically impossible" instead of "physically impossible".
I guess the bat just happened to be in position when the pitch was made?
@stargazingbeginner when talking about what is physically possible for a human tot do, biology tends to play a role ;)
Like you implied, vision is a thing that only makes sense to talk about in the context of human (or other) biology
@@MattFyrm that is true, however the person who made the original reply just stated "physically" and not "physically possible for a human", hence i assumed that they were talking about it being physically impossible, which it isn't, it just conflicts biological limits, but if he were to say that it is physically impossible for a human to observe it, then that is partially true, since there probably are some EXTREME scenarios regarding some sort of disorders that allow it, but from a standpoint of a normal human, it is probably impossible, but i am not educated in the biological field. either way, you make an excellent point that sometimes we simply take a random "creature" that observes something and think it's a human.
This topic fills me with a strange sense of nostalgia. I found this video and memories just came flooding back.
I remember when i was a 4th grader, during our morning assembly at school, a select group of kids (chosen the day before) from a random class would get to present researched facts to the entire school block. One of the 11th graders at our school presented this exact topic to us all and talked about it with so much detail and enthusiasm in his voice that i was unable to think of anything else for the next few days. As a child, this question alone was the reason for my fascination with physics to begin.
Bro why did you flinch
What bro threw at me:
Ah, the question that started it all.
The "Hit by Pitch" rules you quoted in the end was a hilarious addition, but I don't think they'd apply here.
2:11 "It hits the bat first"
This would be a foul ball, by your timeline. 😉
I'm not sure the rules cover what happens if it goes _through_ the bat, and then strikes the batter...
@@simongeard4824it didn't go through the bat tho, mr xkcd said that the ball touched the bat
It may not matter either way. Even if the batter is considered hit, the batter or a pinch runner needs to trot over to first base. There will be no pinch runner because the coach and all the umpires have disintegrated. Perhaps new rules can be drafted to allow the next of kin to take over that duty?
@@ZlothZloth good point! You could use next of kin, or maybe a player on their team that didn't come to play the game or was drafted but hasn't played yet (if that makes sense)
@@simongeard4824 going through the bat is the same as hitting the bat, counts as a foul ball
This is way more exhaustive than I anticipated and I loved every second of it!
"A careful reading of Major League Baseball rule 5.05 (b)..." 🤣🤣
boy oh boy do i love xkcd
“xkcd” rearranged is “dxck”. Make of that what you will…
@@eggalicious8853 The sum of the letters is 42. I think that makes up for it.
I wonder what psychologists would say about people making anagrams of questionable nature using words not even containing all letters required...
I have this book. Read it in like 3 days cause it's so good
@@eggalicious8853duck 🙂
The very first "What if?" and one of the best.
It would be more accurate to say the fused atoms that were once the batter would be gathered up and placed on the fused atoms of what was once first base.
I remember reading this the day you put it out in written form. I love that your final observation is the same as the written one.
I am so grateful that this channel popped up on my feed
The little "gulp" sound at the blinding flash 🤣
3:03 Ah, damn. If only the batter and first base continued to exist at this point.
Pitcher: Ah shit, here we go again
Clone all the players and continue the game with a runner on first
xkcd your book is literally one of the best books I've read - loved the video!
I love the ending joke. This was my first xkcd article I read and I’m glad it has become a video.
I hate when this happens. You never even see it coming.
going over what baseball rules this uses at the end was the best part.
I saw this exact comic in highschool over a decade ago. Interesting to see xkcd popping on youtube
I have bought and read all of your books, I am glad to see you have started this channel.
This is my all-time favourite What If!! It’s the concluding “hit by pitch” bit that truly makes it art.
Imagine this pitch followed up by a 80 mph changeup
Your diagrammatic animation looks as if I am having school science class again. This form of explaination is simple enough to grasp the main ideas easily
oh my goodness how did i not find this sooner??? im a massive fan of the what if and how to books, its great to see them in video format!
Highashkata shlopske.
Look, at a long-suffering Pirates fan, I have to ask... can that pitcher throw a curveball?
probably not, since that relies on aerodynamics, which doesn't apply to the ball
Not anymore. He can only throw that pitch once.
If you throw the ball even faster space will curve around the ball. 😋
i remember this from when it was posted on the what if blog, and when it was a ted talk
Like 12 years ago.
This is the extremely classic what if that I met 10 years ago. Bring me back to the lovely time.
I love this channel!! My son bough the "What If" book from a few years ago, but it's fun to watch and listen too.
the sound effects are my favourite part HAHAHAH
Is certainly something we normally don't get with XKCD comics 😁
I find them annoying and distracting. It's harder to hear the words with those other mouth-noises going on in the background.
@@Jesin00 Same for me, I dislike them
I still remember receiving the first what-if book for Christmas and laughing my head off at this one, especially that ending. It’s nice to hear it said out loud officially, instead of by me or one of my family members while laughing way too hard 😂
I love how he makes the explosion sound effects on his own
I'm really glad "what if" is getting some kind of animated series. I hope this series continues for a long time.
The custom SFX are incredible 😂
This is reminiscent of his TED talk. I love that!
In the end, all that effort to hit a baseball would give the batter the most well known meme:
SINGLE!
Reading this question in What If? is what got me into the XKCD world. Love you, Randall.
I just finished reading "What If? 2" all the way thru, couldn't put it down. I love when my library gets titles like these.
I love how this is damn near taken word for word from the book. Makes it so much more interactive.
I LOVE the sound effects! Especially the "chkchkchkch..." :D
That was the funniest part for me, the constant "waaaaoooaaoaoaaawaaaaoooa" throughout the whole thing 😅
MVP sound effects.
The very first What-If ! Never got bored reading it.
Oh this is one of the best what ifs. Glad to see this as a video
I am so happy my favorite comic is now in video form. These bring such simple, pure joy to my life.
I love how you just vocally add sound effects
Love your content, loved your books
Awesome, this one was a classic from the blog.
This question has remained my favorite ever since it was posted on the website...never expected it transformed into an animation video today 👍
Alternative title: how to make a nuclear bomb using baseballs and magic
That's one of my favourite question from the "What If" - I've read this countless times and every time my mind is blown :D
My favourites are "boating on non-water liquids", "flying a plane on other planets", and the two-part "draining the ocean through the Mariana Trench"
I liked the added sound effects, well done :)
Seen it in your book years ago, love to see it has video version now
I love the little explodey noises you do. Adds to the charm!
YEEEESSSSS. 'Relativistic Baseball' has always been my absolute favorite xkcd post. Love that it's a video now.
Happy to have discovered this channel when it's still relatively new, cuz it's gonna be huge in the future 🔥👍🦅
This is hilarious - especially when accompanied by your deadpan narration. Hit by pitch!?!
Bro really used his ultimate attack 😂
So basically throw the ball at 89% the speed of light instead
how is this top comment
a friend got me your how to book a few years ago, now im getting reccomended your videos
IT KNOWSSS
have a good day
One of my favourite bits in the book, for the ending alone 🤣
Great Christmas present 👍
Follow-up question: what's the fastest a pitcher could theoretically magically throw a baseball without killing himself or the batter?
i remember when i was 14, my uncle gave me the first what if book. this was my favourite what if in the entire thing. i still have the "earth but if a portal to mars opened at the bottom of the mariana trench" map slip case on my wall
I'm rewatching this for the second time and I only just noticed the, shall we say, homemade SFX in the background. Incredible.
In summary, everyone dies
BUT the batter gets first base.
@@TheSequelWasBetterCorrection: His molecules get to the first base.
Everyone dies in general
A+ mouth foley work.
i knew what would happened but this was still hilarious, first day watching your channel and i know this will be amazing
This was always my favorite segment from the book
This raises the question, what is the minimum speed of an object relative to the air required to ignite it with nothing but friction?
That very much depends on the object - the size/shape, conductivity, thermal mass, and composition. Larger, draggier objects are going to shed more energy through drag, and thus generate more heat. If the object is not conducting heat away from the surface, and has a low thermal mass, the surface temperature will rise more quickly. (Of course, you also have to consider that some of the heat will be carried away by the air.) And, finally, there are certain materials that have extremely low ignition temperatures. White phosphorous, for example, will ignite at just over 90°F at sea level. Triethylborane will ignite at -4°F. So, on a summer day in Florida, or on a winter day in Chicago, the answer is, conceivably, zero.
2:30 : wouldn't after seeing a *blinding* flash you wouldn't see anything else?
This is one of my favourite What-If’s in the book
I have watched this 17 thousand times and it never stops being funny
but it’s pretty hard to reach 1 base when 1 base is sent to hell