October 18, 2005

Horse 419 - Scientifically Accurate

When pop singer Katie Melua claimed in her hit song, Nine Million Bicycles, that the universe was 12 billion years old, physicist and well-known author Simon Singh protested. Scientists had worked out that the universe was 13.7 billion years old, Singh pointed out. This sparked off a huge fuss, with some sticking up for Singh and others metaphorically putting the boot into him.

I've just heard the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of a new scientifically accurate version, the lyrics of
the original offending chorus are as follows:

We are 12 billion light-years from the edge,
That's a guess,
No one can ever say it’s true,
But I know that I will always be with you.

and the new scientifically accurate version:
We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe,
That’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars,
Scientists say it’s true, but acknowledge that it may be refined,
And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.

It got me thinking about other songs. Old Blue Eyes would have been shocked if he'd been told off about:

Fly me to the moon,
And let me play amongs the stars,
Let me see what spring is like,
On Jupiter and Mars.

At best guess there will only be another spaceflight to the moon by 2019 at best guesses and as for playing among the stars? Pioneer 10 has only just left out solar system and left earth more than 30 years ago.
Jupiter and Mars don't have seasons persay, and from what we've seen from the Gallileo probes, Jupiter might not have a solid surface to speak of. As a swirling gas giant it appears to just get denser and denser.

Do you remember the song of the late 60's by Judy Stone?

Four million, Three thousand, Two Hundred Twenty-one tears from now
Maybe I'll forget, that we ever met
Four million, Three thousand, Two Hundred Twenty-one tears from now
Maybe then I will have cried you out of my heart

A friend of mine who's an auditor said that they checked this song with all available estimates and found that if you could sucessfully cry Four million, Three thousand, Two Hundred Twenty-one tears it's likely you'd be roughly 135 years old and very very forgetful indeed.

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