Why don't astronomers ever study ping pong balls?

Question

and what the effect would be if you dumped ping pong balls on Saturn, Mars, or the Sun? Seems to me its an unexplored avenue of study.

Answer 1

Because they are astronomers and not pingpongballomers.

Answer 2

In A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann he looks at how close an approximation of Pi is to theh actual ratio that is Pi. So when you say Pi is 3.14 its close but not quite. 3.141592 its close but you can get closer. Since Pi is not a number but a ratio it's decemal expansion extends infinitely. But how accurate is 3.14? or 3.141592 or Pi to a million decimal places



So, Petr uses the example, if you filled a sphere the size of Earth's orbit with ping pong balls, then spread all those balls so they were each One Astronomical Unit apart, the used that line as the radius of a circle. Pretty big circle right? Really big circimference.



Pi would be still be accurate on even a circle that size to nearly a million decimal places to what the true circle would be.

Answer 3

The reason astronomers don't ever study ping pong balls is astronomers don't study it is that for one thing, it isn't astronomy, and for another, it's pointless.

Answer 4

But they have!



"The Effect of Tropospheric Turbulence in the Jovial Environment on Ping Pong Balls; the effect of Martian Atmospheric Winds and Pressure on Ping Pong Balls; Saturnian Storms and Ping Pong Balls, and lastly, Probabilistic Analysis of the Physical Survival of Ping Pong Balls in the Solar Chromosphere,"



By Marvin J. Stephens, Ph. D., F.R.A.S. LL.D. H.M.S, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Sec. R. S. Lond. F. R. S. Edin. Corresp. Memb. of the R. S. of Gottingen, of the R. A. of Naples, the helvetic Society, and the Acad, dei Lincei at Rome; Assoc. ex intim. Acad. Dijon; For. Sec. Astronom. Soc. Lond.; Member of the Phil. Soc. of Cambridge, Corresp. Philomath. Soc. Paris; honorary Memb. of the Soc. for promoting useful Arts in Scotland; &c.



The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 817, N 2, February 2016, pp. 867-910

Answer 5

Saturn - they'd fall through the thick atmosphere, never to be seen again.

Mars - they'd fall to the ground.

The Sun - they'd be vaporised long before they made it to the surface.



And the reason astronomers don't study it is that for one thing, it isn't astronomy, and for another, it's pointless.

Answer 6

Because it would be very easy to predict what they'd do without spending billions of dollars on something that has no practical use to us anyway.

Answer 7

Because they are astronomers, not trolls like you.

Answer 8

We are quite sure they would burn up in the atmosphere. Possibly they would break when they hit the surface, of Mars.

Answer 9

Budgetary concerns.

Answer 10

It would be very hard to calculate how much spin you could get.

Answer 11

Because they already have a pair.

Answer 12

They do. How else could they visualize the surface of the moon....

Answer 13

Because they are not trolls, like you.