Nolan Ryan’s fastball once peaked at 100.9 mph. What if he was inside an open airplane that was going 600 mph, and he throws his 100mph fastball to his catcher in the exact same direction as the plane? Wouldn’t the ball go 700mph at the time? Will everyone on board have to wear earplugs, becaue the baseball broke the sound barrier while in the air inside the plane?
There are two extreme scenarios here:
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Despite the window being open, he’s in a section of the plane that’s shielded from the the 600 mph slipstream. The air in that section will be still air relative to him, the observers and the plane, and except for the air pressure reduction, the situation isn’t different from an enclosed plane. So he would have to throw at the speed of sound for that altitude to create a sonic boom.
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He’s directly in the onslaught of a 600 mph wind coming in the window. Assuming he can actually throw under these conditions (unlikely), the ball will go backwards at 500 mph.
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what happens if the conditions are between these two extremes.
Nolan Ryan is recovering from bypass surgery that he had around Easter. That combined with his age of 54 years, makes it unlikely for him to cranking any pitches up to 100 mph.
I would suggest asking if someone like Billy Koch or Armando Benitez can do it.
Yes the same way passenger’s voices in a jetliner traveling at around 600 miles per hour all break the sound barrier because off the additive speed af the airplane and the speed of sound of their voices. This voice “boom” phenomenom is the bane of air travelers and is the reason flight attendants are required to wear resonant “muffler muzzles” strapped to thier faces to slow down the speed of their voices so they can be understood while addressing the passengers in flight.
Someday technology will remedy this… God willing!
Let’s do it this way. If you want to interpolate it to an airplane, no problem.
We are on Earth (why it is not called ‘Ocean’ is beyond my understanding). Earth rotates about a thousand miles an hour…enough to go all the way around once every 24 hours. So, if we do it your way and Nolan Ryan pitched a ball toward the West, it will be going 1,100 miles an hour. But if he pitches it Eastward, it will be traveling at -900 miles an hour.
That doesn’t match what we observe. Same idea within an airplane.
ALL RIGHT! I DID IT BACKWARDS! JUST SHOOT ME!
The ball would be going 700 mph relative to the ground, but there would be no sonic boom because it’s still only going 100 mph through the air around it. (nit pic…the speed of sound is more like 760 mph at sea level).
Now, if he could stand outside on the nose of the airplane… 
That’s the reason flight attendants on the Concorde always seem to be passing gas, they’re actually creating tiny sonic booms in their wake as they trucge up the aisle.
capacitor wonders:
Certainly, if you dropped him from a high enough altitude.
Give Nolan a whip. If he can make it crack, he breaks the sound barrier with the tip.
But, then again, he’d reach a terminal velocity of around 120 mph. Damn that air resistance.
No, no, puly, 'taint so and US Army Capt. Joe Kittinger proved it. We had this discussion on this board some time ago. Here’s the thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=5651
Here’s an excerpt:
and here’s the cite: http://www2.tsixroads.com/Corinth_MLSANDY/jk004.html
Now go in peace and dis my jokes no more.
One more cite for Doctor J:
The Longest Leap
If he threw it out the window, there would be a brief moment in which it would travel faster than the speed of sound. Of course, 100 mph below the speed of sound not a very good cruising speed for an airplane.
Dr. J–
Shit! You learn something new every day! (especially on this board.) I just couldn’t believe it when I read it!
Thanks for wiping out your share of ignorance in the world.
I don’t know if that’s really the best cite, because of the lack of atmosphere at altitude like that. True? Sure. Most applicable? I don’t agree.
Terminal velocity should be, in my uneducated back country ignorant mind, due to the coeffieient of drag. If you drop a feather in a vaccuum, it’ll fall just as fast a a rock, you know?
Since not many folks ever get to be at 100k feet plus, It’s not the best. Following that train of thought, when there’s a spacewalk going on in low earth orbit, you’ve got people moving about outside of the vehicle at speeds of about 17,500 mph, in respect to earth.
That’s hardly fair, is it?
Then again, back to the sound barrier issue. Since space is a vaccuum, there couldn’t be any sound barrier breaking (no sound, duh). It would require the decay of orbit into a level of atmosphere where sound could be transmitted. Would the speed decay fast enough to keep an astronaut who is falling to earth from breaking the sound barrier?
(Mr. Cynical, get back in your box!)
So, if Nolan Ryan jumped out of a weather balloon at 102,800 feet, with a baseball in hand…