What's it Like to Play Football in Space? | StarTalk

A lot of different venues in space where you can transplant sport. Often when people think in space, they think in a weightless environment, but that's not realistic. What's more realistic is playing a sport, say football, on the surface of another planet, and that would have different gravity.

We have different gravity than certain things that are familiar to us would have to be readjusted. So, you would hit a baseball farther. You could throw a football more if you're on a planet that's rotating quickly, then projectiles get deflected left or right depending on which direction they move and depending on which way the planet rotates.

It's called the Coriolis force; it's what creates the circulation of storms on Earth. Why all storms rotate counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, and that phenomenon can affect projectiles in sports if the stadiums are large and the ball is airborne long enough.

So also, if you'd play a sport on the moon, is that is the matter of like they need air to breathe, so they'd have to have oxygen tanks with them while they were running and performing. There are some planets where they would have higher gravity than Earth, for example, which means everything weighs more.

So, if you're at the bottom of a tackle pylon, then everyone will weigh more than they would on Earth, and you could just get crushed. You just get flattened at the end, so they have to limit how many people pile on to a tackle. You know, kill each person who captain's ball.

Little thought that you say [Music].