NASA's AstrOlympics: The Physical Connections Between Sports And Space

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory communications group developed a new project comparing the Olympic athletes to the objects from space. It is called the "AstrOlympics" project, which is just in time for the Rio Olympics this August 2016.

NASA Museum alliance folks! I'm speaking now about #AstrOlympics w/@PeterDEdmonds & @megwatzke. Join us on the call! pic.twitter.com/tfLf9k05g4

— Kim Kowal Arcand (@kimberlykowal) August 2, 2016

In AstrOlympics project, you will know both the impressive feats of the Olympics athletes and the cosmic bodies. There are physical connections between sports and space. These involve the distance, speed, time, rotation, pressure, mass and more.

The Chandra team members stated that AstrOlympics delivers brief explanations of the physical concepts and then compares examples from common everyday experiences. These also include the Olympic events and discoveries from space with Chandra and other telescopes. They gave the example as in when the speed section compares the world's fastest sprinter to a typical speed limit on a highway to how fast the debris of an exploded star moves, according to Space.

So, what do Olympic athletes and space objects have in common? They are both the same in the matter in motion whether be a human body moving at the fastest speeds possible or the debris from an exploded star blasting through space. Rotation is described as the number of turns around an axis at a given time. An Olympic example of this is a gymnast performing a back flip in mid-air at around 90RPM (1.5 Hertz). Meanwhile, the cosmic example of rotation is the Crab Nebula that spins at about 1800 RPM (30 Hertz).

In regards to speed, which is a distance traveled over a period of time. Its Olympic example is the record of the fastest sprint, which is about 27.8 mph (44.6 kph). The cosmic example shows a Cassiopeia a shockwave moving into interstellar medium at 10 million mph (16 million kph). Distance is part of science that is fundamental in reaching objects and places. An Olympic example of this is the distance between the archer and the target, which is about 70 meters (230 feet). Meanwhile, the cosmic example of this is the distance to the bullet cluster, which is about 3.4 billion light years.

In science, time is defined as the accurate measurement of repeating patterns such as a pendulum swinging back and forth or the spinning of the Earth on its axis. An Olympic record shows that time for 50-kilometer race walk is 12,939 seconds. The cosmic example shows the age of globular cluster 47 Tucanae, which is about 13 billion years. NASA will release AstrOlympics poster and other materials at some locations in Brazil, United Sates, Uruguay and other places in the world. Meanwhile, the 2016 Olympic Games are held in Brazil on August 5 to August 21.