Presumably (at least for the purposes of this thread), at some point we’ll have colonies on Mars, the Moon, and other scattered bodies in the solar system. The vast majority (and probably all) of the moons and planets in our solar system that we might ever want to inhabit have lower gravity then Earth, and in most cases, significantly lower gravity (about a third on Mars, and about a fifth on the Moon, for example).
We can foresee the following obvious effects:
*Athletes can jump higher – probably a lot higher
*Any balls that travel in the air will travel higher and farther
*People can probably run farther and faster, since they will be carrying so much less weight
*Impact injuries to the ground will be less severe (I think)
*Athletes can lift and carry much more weight (including, for contact sports, greater weights of opposing players)
What other effects might be significant? How would this change existing sports on those worlds? What kinds of sports might become popular on low gravity worlds?
Something you have to decide, for the purpose of this thread, is if the planet you’re working with will have an atmosphere in addition to it’s microgravity. Microgravity will make a ball go further, no atmosphere (and therefore no air friction) will make a ball go a lot further. If a batter hits a ball a hundred yards on Earth, on Mars it might be something like a mile before gravity can bring it back down (WAG).
Do you spread out the bases? Do you bring in more outfielders? Is it even worth playing?
I’d guess that games get changed and adjusted and mutated in to new games to make them worth playing.
I’m not so sure about the ‘run faster’ part. Think about the astronauts on the moon; they sort of ‘bounced’ around due to the low gravity. I think running in such gravity would be pretty much impossible because there isn’t enough downward force (gravity) to overcome the upward force imparted by the runner’s feet pushing off the ground. One hard step and you’re airborne. Perhaps you’d still be able to get up a pretty good head of steam after a number of ‘steps’, but it wouldn’t look anything like what we call running today.
I think that most of the popular team sports today (baseball, cricket, football (either kind), basketball, hockey) and even a lot of individual sports (tennis, golf, etc) wouldn’t be possible, because they all count on the forces that we experience on Earth in order for the game mechanics to function. Water sports might be interesting; I’d assume that gravity along with surface tension would keep swimmers in the pool,and diving contests could be held from really high dives.
I think that something like team handball could thrive; put some boards around the playing area (like in hockey) and I think the three-dimensional aspect could really work.