The Physics of Skating, Curling and Luge with Neil deGrasse Tyson & Charles Liu – Cosmic Queries

[Music] this is star talk sports edition a cosmic queries version we're going to talk about the winter olympics oh yeah and we got gary o'reilly yeah did i play soccer in this in the snow do they play soccer in the snow yeah we will do it depends if if it's too bad no because the ball doesn't roll but uh yeah we'll play frozen and in the snow i got you gotcha and chuck you avoid cold weather at all cost uh yes i i've it's a it's an homage to my ancestors in the depths of africa yes there's no snow yes yes all of uh for all that came out of the serengeti i'm i'm representing [Laughter] so this is a very broad topic because we want to talk about uh the olympics in general the winter olympics the events the fact that it's in beijing and you know anytime we have a broad subject like this there's only one go-to person and that's our geek in chief the one and only my friend and colleague charles luke charles welcome back to star talk for the hundred and zillion thank you neil it's my pleasure thank you hello gary hello chuck or should i say lord nice [Laughter] oh my god you were on that episode yeah does yes does everybody know that it was major general deanna burt that uh anointed chuck nice with this uh title with the with the lordship she certainly did and it comes in and i always forget and people remind me uh so so charles you you are a professor of uh astronomy and physics at the city university of new york at staten island and correct you recently been uh become chair of the department is that correct yes yes and uh it's been fun i i have some great colleagues some wonderful students and if anybody watches uh the chair the tv show that's become popular lately that's like five percent of maybe my regular life but um it's a lot of fun i have a good time okay so i i smell a reality show in the making where charles who really shows right what this is about yeah we'll call it a lounge and charles i you know with hearing from the grapevine you've got a podcast in the making so we all look forward to seeing that post and thank you thank you you told me offline that it's called the it's called the universe yes i see the universe yes uh i didn't come up with it uh you know family members around the dining room table they were like why don't you call it the universe i said really yeah sure why not it should be fun really looking forward to it should be a lot of fun with talking with um fun folks we'll have a good time excellent excellent it's a cosmic queries grab bag on the 2022 olympics taking place in beijing so so the questions are open for anybody and anything and gary chuck who between you has the questions for us we i think chuckles chuck and i can share them between ourselves um let us kick it off um welcome to charles obviously great to have you back right michaela negus these are all questions from our patreon listeners sorry what you what you call me michaela oh oh okay oh all right i got nervous for a second all right just working on my pronunciation here i couldn't trip up on that one too quickly so why does the temperature of olympic ice need to be different for figure skating speed skating and hockey could an ingredient be added to the ice to make it more ideal for the athlete's example making it smoother harder softer et cetera why i didn't even know that chuck charles did you know that ice changes all the time sorry isis is basically basic fact it are all three of those ices pure water or have they added anything to it uh usually things have been added uh they are often pure water uh but if they are pure water even then there's changes because they change the temperature they freeze it at different temperatures hot or cold just because something's freezing doesn't mean that it stays at that same sort of texture and temperature the whole time this is actually used on purpose in a lot of different places uh there's a famous example in ice hockey in college hockey depending on where you go to play your hockey the ice is either really fast or really slow uh depends on their team you know wait is this like the deflate gate with with yeah tom brady where you can know that happens naturally neil so for instance the canadians have charles back me up on this if i'm if i'm right or wrong um the canadians have just historically hard ice but if you go and play hockey in la and someone's left these or the arena doors open for a while and that hot air comes in it affects the quality of the eyes it totally does and the refrigeration underneath the ice of course can be strongly uh adjusted to any situation if you have an indoor rink right so what happens with indoor activities establish here yeah right i just have to establish here because i think some people might not know this i think you were hinting at it but let me just let me just drive it home water freezes at zero degrees celsius 32 degrees fahrenheit and we call that ice but you can have ice at any temperature below that and the properties are different depending on what temperature the ice is so ice is not ice is not ice it's it depends on how cold the ice is okay is that i think i got that right yes okay now the handle that is exactly true and at what what temperature does it get down to gangsta wrap like iced tea and ice cube well nice that you should mention that on titan right the moon of saturn the temperature of the ice is hundreds of degrees below zero fahrenheit and so the water ice is as hard there as granite is here on this earth so they build mountains with it you can see all kinds of geological features that's built with water ice that you could not do here because the moment what do you mean they built the ice alien i'm just gonna let that one built that's an excellent point they built the they built [Laughter] yes gary the temperature varies and each rink does its own thing and each sport has its own regulations as to what you were allowed to do in terms of temperature in terms of additives in terms of those sorts of things yeah the hockey players don't like soft ice because the puck doesn't move soft ice think of the very large bulky folks who like the wayne gretzky's of the world would zip right by the slow guys the slow guys like the softer ice yeah and and uh there are famous or infamous examples of really good hockey teams with fast skaters going into a visiting rink where the players are slower and suddenly it's like they're on molasses and you see like water that's right they're letting the air out of the ball yeah that's time very kind of like that yeah so is there is it possible to get ice so hard that like a speed skater's blade wouldn't even allow it to turn like you would literally skid across the ice instead of skate across it on earth's surface probably not okay but elsewhere in the universe for sure and absolutely oh cool cool okay so it's all about what kind of speed they want so figure skating versus hockey versus speed skating that then it's it's pretty clear you just you can put that on a chart you kind of can yeah um yeah and remember what the skates look like right a hockey state is straight the blade is straight the figure skate's got a little uh dvd thing right at the tip so you can dig into the ice and jump up and do your spins and things like that and if your ice is too hard then it doesn't make it effectively right but if it's too soft then you also can't dig very much because you got this sort of layer of of soft stuff so yeah people have to adjust very very so charles one other thing why are speed skates longer in their blade than hockey skates i presume that has something to do with the ability for you to push off and get higher velocities going in a straight direction right i mean gary you're probably more expert about in terms of the relationship between how long you can push say off the ground or something and thus how much stride you can get or how much speed you can pick up the kind of acceleration explosiveness is there a relationship to the amount of time the skate stays on the ice and you're able to impart energy through that so therefore a longer skate allows you that fraction more contact with the ice and therefore pushing energy in to push to get push out yeah i bet you that's true and if you want to stop too a longer blade gives you more when you're at at a 45 or a 90 degree angle you're able to break faster right because you have more of a surface with which to push friction against the ice all right so okay we have a very curious audience neil all right dylan or d leon if chuck prefers me to pronounce it like that hello dr tyson dr lou and our great comedic co-host yes of course i love to ski and i've always wondered something this is from dylan of course snow and ice aren't exactly the same things and we know ice has a thin layer of water less than a width of a bacteria he believes which makes ice sports possible such as skating does skiing also have to do with pressure melting or is there something else going on with snow wow the answer is both are true the snow isn't right first explain pressure melting yeah well there is a relationship where if you have more pressure on water or ice it is more likely to melt this is untrue for most substances but the more you push on something more or you push on ice the more likely it is to to be able to liquefy this is a particular property of ice which is rare amongst substances here on earth and that allows us to be able to do these things like skate across ice with that tiny film of water that bacteria with filled water that we talk about but it's a very complicated system wait what's the what is the molecular transaction that's happening happening where pushing pressure causes melting because that's how they make the big ice balls for my scotch which is how they do it right i never make a snowball you take the snow you smoosh it whoa there's your ice ball right i never i never questioned it because i'm about to drink some scotch so i don't care but what is what is the molecular transaction that the pushing makes the melting well uh we should we shouldn't get too deeply into the specific chemistry right now because it takes a long time to sort of make the descriptions but basically a water molecule is a v shape right it's it's got the oxygen in the middle and it's got two hydrogens off to the side making kind of a v it's a polar molecule like this and when ice freezes it has a tendency just to touch on the hydrogen bonds it doesn't want to just squish in but it wants to form a hydrogen bond lattice or a crystal and as a result it winds up with extra space between the molecules space that would not have existed in its ordinary liquid form okay and so that basically allows all kinds of strange things to happen and so snow is ice ee water right it's solid water but it's in small crystals as opposed to one big slab of solid material so when you pack a whole lot of little things together and you create a surface it's a different surface altogether from if you have a single slab of the same object everything's stuck together the difference between say a sandstone walkway and a sandy beach so snow gives you even more variation on say going across its surface than the sliding across a slab of ice so the answer to the question here is indeed that snow variations changes temperature pressure weather wind will make all the difference in the world when it comes to a snow sport but in fact if you if you ski a lot on a fluffy snow slope it eventually becomes sort of you've melted many of the surface layers of crystals of of snowflakes and eventually just becomes icy it's no longer fun to ski you will start packing it down more and more then again if you're in competition neil you want to go faster so i see quicker fluffy powdery snow slower yep but but there's a a very delicate uh equilibrium that you have to find because if it's too icy you can't turn so in the giant slalom you want a kind of nice balance between that powdery and that icy so you can grip with the edges of your ski but yet at the same time you can achieve uh the the turning so you have the fast and the turning at the same time chuck you know the deal if it's too high so you find the nearest tree because you just started right there but wait chuck we established in a previous episode that we're not taking skiing advice really yes we are right now who's sitting by the fire in the lodge i'm sitting by the fire with some brandy just like you do realize the reason you weren't able to turn was because before we take a break i want to add something to what charles said so because water expands when it freezes it can only exist in that expanded state as ice if you successfully squeeze it it cannot be squosen as ice the only way you can squeeze it is for it to change state and then become smaller in its volume wow and so so so that's why so you're skating on the ice the pressure forces it to turn back into water even at the lower temperature wow that is exactly right and and then the if you're doing going down a ski slope or a toboggan slope or you know like a bobsled or something remember a lot of that stuff is outdoors so what if it starts to snow then you have even more stuff on there it gets even more complicated the weather makes all the difference in the world i remember uh 1984 i think it was the sarajevo winter olympics billy johnson the american was the first person down the mountain and then the weather got worse and worse and worse and all the rest of the competitors could not keep up with that first time because that first time was the ideal condition regardless of what anything else happened with the surface because the atmospheric conditions had changed cool dude all right we're going to take a quick break when we come back more cosmic queries grab bag on the winter olympics with our geek in chief charles liu we're back star talk sports edition cosmic queries grab bag got charles liu who's out who's our go-to person anytime we're all just confused about everything it's always a pleasure to be here always fun to chat with everybody so so uh we're just pulling questions out of this grab bag and uh that chuck or or gary who's got the next one okay i'll jump in um right eric varga says hello dr tyson dr lou but he's downgraded you chuck you're now sur chuck you've lost you you've lost your lordship apparently yeah yeah i don't know that sir is less than lord oh god yes yeah he does now or maybe he's very well aware all right can you explain how newton's three laws apply to the sport of curling are there any other laws of physics involved that play a vital role in advance he says thanks did the word sport and the word curling show up in the same phrase absolutely be such a snob curling is a distinguish curling is one of the oldest team sports in existence look this show is going to come with a history lesson whether you like it or not right okay okay first first invented in scotland and the first documented documented match was between a monk and an abbot in paisley abbey in scotland in 1541 so the moral the moral of this history is when you lock people up in a monastery for a long time during winter they come up with curling just so about newton's three laws of physics and anything else you can throw at curling yes well uh newton's three laws as most of us know is that first law right an object in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force so the guy pushing the stone forward it's just going to keep going and going and going and that's why you notice that it keeps going and going going unless acted upon by an outside force okay now the second law of motion uh forces just to be clear it keeps going because the friction is very low otherwise the friction would stop it right well so you are front running me on that point you you're absolutely right no no no it's good it's good see because because you're doing exactly what scientists should be doing right which is jumping in and saying ah but right and the butt is newton's second law which as you know is forces mass times acceleration it's also sir mix-a-lot's first law i like big okay never mind [Laughter] what is creating the mass times acceleration right that's the second thing that's what neil is bringing up and friction as it turns out will cause mass times acceleration to be exerted on the stone that's moving forward and so the second law requires that you wind up making sure that the friction is just right so the amount of force and acceleration that you get the change in direction and the change in speed is what you want so those guys in the broom up front they are quickly changing the coefficient of friction of the ice on the whole time the the brushing uh i i i've never known if exactly before every run the curling people uh put like a whole bunch of snow or shaved ice on the track no charles back in the 16th century when curling was invented it was taken place on lock frozen locks and frozen ponds so what you have to have now with indoor curling ice is pebbly it's not a smooth silk finish it's pebbly so what the guys with the brooms are doing they are taking away those pebbles as much as they can in a certain way and the big clue about what this sport's all about is in the title curling right because a stone will curl may be three times on its way to the target or it might curl 10. but the deviation is there and therein lies the third law newton's third law of motion when it reaches its destination in the curled direction it wants it hits other stones and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction that's newton's third law so the stone hits the other stones that are in the scoring area either knocks them out or pushes them a little bit so newton's laws of motion are involved in all stages of this exciting thrilling super fast energy sport yeah let me just let me just say this as a former janitor curling is the best sport ever wait so so charles something i never thought about yeah so as they're brooming material into the path of the of the i keep thinking curly iron curling stones they're they can they can slow it down but they can't speed it up because it only has the speed it has at that moment but they can also change its direction yeah absolutely they're putting more friction on one side of it than the other right yeah right so so the the physics of the brooming people is extremely significant the the push once the the pusher pushes the stone off his work is done and all the rest of the team has to figure out where to push it forward based on the pebbliness or the shaviness of the ice so here's something to add to this conversation as i think you'll understand i don't get the chance to do this very often but the curling stone is not flat on the base it's actually concave so it has a rim around it so when it's traveling forward the likelihood and please disprove me is that there's a little tilt on the front edge which causes a little bit more friction and then you've got an added rotation to the stone so is that making sense to you charles as i well it does in a in an important generalized way we talk very glibly about ice melting and pushing and things like that but actually the surface physics the connections between surfaces of ice and curling or skis or anything like that is still rather poorly understood a lot of it is still under experimentation today at the highest levels what happens when one surface touches another and that physics right at the edge there remains mysterious in a lot of different ways so many hypotheses have to be put forward and then they're either confirmed or debunked depending on the circumstances of the time but it's a very complex question so what you bring up is definitely an area for future study and research i would add that if you if you've ever gotten your brakes changed on your car generally the front brakes wear out sooner than the rear brakes because when you stop the car the momentum of the car is carried more in the front wheels than in the back wheels so the so gary i that that's that's my conduit to what you said where if it's going forward and there's any friction slowing it down at all that front edge is going to respond to it more significantly than the rear edge uh then again you'll have to go from front engined vehicles to mid-engine vehicles where there's weight distribution but that's another conversation for another time but i think charles you you've given us an idea what do you know about that in a rear-wheel car isn't it still the front brakes that get most of the it varies a lot again um if you're driving just just move the engine to the back right well it depends on if you're moving on a flat surface or whether you're climbing hills are you stopping a lot while you're going upward or downward you are pushing more of your your mass and first forward to the front because a a car even though it feels like a rigid body actually has a great deal of give to it right a lot of springs a lot of flexible parts to it so it's not a dead set thing with with our typical driving in suburbia for example i think neil you're right on but uh the complexity of driving gives us all plenty of uh fodder or area to be right what what about the flintstone cars well you should check out fred's heels yeah now those brake pads are some serious calories all right let's let's jump to another question um on all these questions from our patreon listeners so we're grateful for that artist formerly known as james smith hellos doctors and lords chuck congrats on your land in scotland so there you go quick question bobsledding is an awesome sport to watch how many g's are the bobsledders experiencing at top speed and also are there zambonis for their eyes like in skating that's cool good question cool um yes the is let's see the zamboni question first there actually is a lot of grooming of bobsled runs ooh i do not know exactly whether they drive a vehicle down can you imagine like a little crawler i do not know if that's the answer but they pour water down them they sculpt them there are things that are made and change the channels are changed the temperature is controlled so there is a lot going on that's zamboni like on a bobsled run that's a hundred percent true and during the competition there are like track grooves that are created by the former runs and you have to actually compensate for the track grooves that are already there the person who is actually pulling the the two chords drivers the driver yeah yeah so yeah you're absolutely right at the fireplace sipping scotch once again i'm i'm down to the lodge up just like you do realize that you didn't account for the track grooves this is your problem sir also i want to add one thing before we take a quick break the g-forces you feel have nothing to do with how fast you're moving oh they have to do with how fast your velocity is changing so um their biggest g force is charles they're going to be like on when they bank the term right right a g right a g is the acceleration rate of 9.8 meters per second squared the amount of acceleration you feel when you're in free fall near the surface of the earth i did a quick calculation just now in the past 30 seconds in my head so i'm not sure if it's exactly right you can't quote me on this but based on what i think how fast they're going down the hill the angles of the turns and the velocities and and the banks and so forth you're probably hitting at least three and sometimes four times of gravity so 30 to 40 meters per second squared of acceleration so three or four g's is my top of the head answer uh how to go back and do more calculation to make sure cool all right let's take a quick break when we come back more with charles lew our geek in chief who's breaking down the physics of the winter olympics when star talk returns we're back star talk cosmic queries sports edition the winter olympics all kinds of questions we're good here so who's got the latest one all right here we go next up kevin the sommelier ah hello chuck cube and gary this is yo you're going to love the ending on this one now this is not so much a science question but a scientific seinfeldian observation does the luge and the skeleton well we'll see does the luge and the skeleton events just seem like a drunk friend's dare keep drinking up there yeah i thought you'd like that kevin the similarity i am certain the luge is for crazy people you can imagine someone up up the top of a mountain sat next to chuck with an empty bottle of scotch says it says that that tray over there i could beat you to the bottom of the mountain okay yeah i feel like luge is like safer right but how many of you have you all going down a hill in in in a sledding how many of you have you uh three of you gone sledding before i mean we have all been children charles yes we've not done it on an ice track right on an ice track as an adult no you know or no the closest i came to that once i was on an icy hill all right it was maybe 40 foot tall it was fantastic you know how i learned from chuck yesterday there's common sense and there's black people accents okay there's and so as an adult if you're going to say sit on this tray and go down this icy tube at 199 miles an hour we're going to just say no okay my answer is you tell me to go down a tube head first at 100 plus miles an hour my answer is why don't you just shoot me i'm here why am i going to do the work for you why am i doing the work for you you want to kiss me [Laughter] i don't have the sense i'm sorry but i'm really glad in that instance i didn't because going down that hill basically ice on basically a sheet of plastic at a gazillion miles an hour was one of the most fun and exhilarating and awesome things going on and there are other people many of them kids but also some adults going by me some up fast or some of them slower we're kind of some of them piled up at the end of the hill it was so much fun charles you know who gets to say that the people who didn't die yeah there is a survivor bias just to tap the brakes just to tap the brakes pun intended on this uh for illusion the skeleton they don't have any yeah there's no brakes on the luge or the skeleton so there's there's the chance of an impact which is like my best thought well you know we we shouldn't understate the danger every year professional losers are killed professional skeletoners and bobsledders are you know they die from making much money i'm so glad you said that charles because it's the only sport where they don't show you when it goes wrong nascar formula one things go wrong you see the car disintegrate break apart and then you see the guy crawl out of the cage even for years abcy world of sports had a guy coming off a st you will never see anybody like promote what happens when the luge goes wrong yeah cause it would be ugly yeah because the guy shoots out of the two very very ugly yeah no they don't even care they don't even follow it with the camera the guy shoots out of the tube and then the cameraman goes some things there are some things all right let's move on and uh launched okay yeah okay this wouldn't be the same with a sports edition grab bag if we didn't have video letter and mum izzy asking a question she has now dubbed herself as astro fizzy kid oh yeah okay she's like 18 by now and she's been asking questions like 13 and one half neil okay 13 and a half okay fine yeah all right the question is we're not being catfished and one day we find out that via letter is like a 43 year old dude hello neil hello charles gary yes my name is view letter and i have a question what are some of the craziest sports past or present ever to be included in the winter olympics um i can't imagine there was throwing the axe while skating on ice but that sounds like it should have been back in the day i i will enter one in one one one sport in here the 90 meters ski jump i am going up a really really high tower i am icing down a skew slope and jumping and trying to fly now if that isn't crazy then i don't know what it is no isn't she talking about events that are no longer there or just are we picking crazy events that they have pastor present pastor president right so so charles are there defunct sports in the winter olympics as there are in the summer olympics like they don't have the tugging or the rope climb after you know we did this kind of question for the summer olympics in the previous episode after that i went and took a look at the previous sports because i just found it so fascinating and here is the one that i found for winter olympics which i think is the wildest and most interesting one it's called mountain military patrol really in 1924 winter olympic games there was a sport called military patrol where four military officers one officer one non-commissioned and two privates carrying backpacks totaling at least 50 pounds and carrying rifles except for the officer who cares uh the officer carries a pistol and no backpack yeah right and he's got a snowmobile the four of them together had to climb at least 3 000 feet in elevation on cross-country skis going at least 15 miles and then once they got there shoot then do target practice okay that sounds to me just like a way that america found to invade another country but this is french this is swiss oh these are the swiss this is european oh so this this would have been so this will have involved the officers sitting at a table while the privates practiced their shooting and he drank cognac and while eating brie i couldn't tell you but apparently this was a sport it showed up again as a demonstration sport several times later but it has been discontinued since about 19 if i remember 48 was the last time was a demonstration but imagine that a sport where you have a team of military officers skiing and then climbing and then shooting at various times we're all carrying heavy backpacks that's a sport so that became the the cross-country pentathlon i guess what's the one where they they they it's biathlon today evolved to a biathlon where you ski shoot ski shoot ski shoot but nowadays those those rifles are very light caliber they're they're they're heavy yes but much less heavy than a true machine gun or or a weapon that that actually a military person used to use and now that it's really a streamlined sport that combines the uh skill of shooting target shooting to not actually military shooting the charge you sound like you know swimming the grandpa on the porch back in my day the rifles were heavier and we had to climb up hill both ways and then shoot now [Laughter] i have been very fortunate in my life never have to fire any kind of weapon in anger and so i cannot speak for what is easier or more difficult all right what a qualifier charles what a qualifier i know right in anger i shot the guy after i calmed down [Laughter] let that one go all right do we have time for another one hopefully uh yeah yeah stewart hello's dr tyson and lou um what impact chuck and i we're not here uh what impacts will climate change have on winter olympics throughout the rest of the century of course some sports are already played indoors like skating and curling but might we see an end to sports that require outdoor cold temperatures you'll see an end to them in different parts of the world where they traditionally exist uh remember with global warming like 100 million atomic bombs worth of extra energy floating around in the atmosphere at any given time right for every degree change in celsius there's going to be a lot of motion so some parts that were traditionally cold will get warm and some parts that are traditionally warm will get colder right so in switzerland for example or in parts of france the famous uh ski areas chamonix you know places like that they're already having real trouble getting enough snow to have a decent recreational ski season so their sports seasons have been severely curtailed already and that's true other places where currently nobody goes to though maybe certain areas of mountaintop certain places where polar vortices coming out from different parts of the arctic will create new flows of cold those areas might get much more snow and much more ice than they do today yeah but but nobody's got a ski slope up there yet so that this might change the business landscape the entire landscape will change you're going to have a world where the sports will still continue but they'll be in completely different places places where there are no ski slopes or winter resorts today there will be there and in other places where there were for decades maybe even centuries those places will struggle welcome to the 2050 olympics of winter here in fiji [Laughter] uh it's gonna be weird it's gonna be strange we all have to adapt by this time the show goes out we'll have done our ice and snow show and we have a uh a great guest dr peter veals who makes artificial snow so maybe he is on the he is the vanguard of a boom industry making powder snow we shall see uh right one more question slip in one more gary see if we can get it all right anna c hickman hello all i have a question about paralympic athletes and a future time somewhere when i'm probably already dead as a wheelchair user i am an avid follower and participant in participant in adaptive sports and i know sometimes there is chatter about how an adaptive athlete has some advantage because they use specialized equipment when compared to regular athletes if we as a human race got to the point where we had outposts in space and there was interplanetary olympics what an athlete who already knows how to navigate in a compromised body when compared to able-bodied athletes have an advantage in competition would the roles potentially be reversed and the power athlete be the one with the perceived advantage i would totally see that as a real possibility interesting yeah i mean yeah i think what we what we declare to be an advantage or not um it's according to some norm that someone establishes but uh you can imagine constructing sports where whoever was previously advantaged now becomes disadvantaged i mean you could you can come up i mean look at how random sports are anyway take this ball and put it in a in a hole or in a hoop or jump or or crawl or kind of like this okay so my so i i welcome your your your follow-up on this charles but it seems to me that we've created a world where para para athletes are trying to do what non-para athletes what what has been invented and styled for power athletes imagine a whole set of competitions designed specifically for power athletes and then then they have the advantage right so so so a new world like you say if you go into space you go into zero g or low g all all the dynamics changes about who's good and who's not good at some sport so that's a that's a that's a fascinating new world i think it's under explored in people's creative ways yeah i have very little to add to that neil i think you're 100 right and just our understanding of what is able bodied and what is a compromised body varies with every environment that we go into new sports are invented all the time a lot of times we forget right we were just talking about military patrol which is no longer being done anymore but that was a real sport in the 1920s right or an advertisement for officers training school you don't have to carry the rifle right the the we should always be adapting to new places and always looking at human beings as whole individuals and when we see what an environment provides for sport and recreation we should leap on it and find it and use it and make it our own regardless of who's out there and turn into fun that's what the olympics should be in the end right fine and the only difference is going back to what neil said about the fact that paralympics i mean para athletes have to do what uh you know able-bodied athletes do if it were the other way around take the able-bodied athlete and make them compete in the same paralympics they lose every event like the gentleman that we had on that shoots uh uh uh who is the archer who does it with his feet let any archer try to do that and they lose right right yeah matt stutzman was the guy right that's it that's well remembered neil yes one of my favorite episodes all right charles lew fellow astrophysicist geek in chief and wherever i am on the geek spectrum he is beyond that [Laughter] you are too kind sir all right only on this show is that a compliment all right chuck all right gary all right thank you this has been star talk sports edition cosmic queries grab bag all about winter sports neil degrasse tyson here keep looking up [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

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Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, hockey, winter, olympics, winter olympics, snow sports, snow

Id: q_nMVxq40fA

Length: 43min 21sec (2601 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022