You think you’re a geek because you know all the words to "The Galaxy Song" by Eric Idle (as seen in "The Meaning of Life")?
Then why weren’t you geeky enough to make a flash animation to go with it? Hmmm?
Hat tip to Harlequin on the Bad Astronomy & Universe Today bulletin board.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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September 18th, 2006 at 7:50 am
That was great! Love that song!
September 18th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Very very cool.
September 18th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Wow that is geeky. But fun!
September 18th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Wow…just wow. o0
September 18th, 2006 at 9:13 am
I think Styx wrote the theme song for that guy: Link
September 18th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Yeah, I reckon he did it in a idle moment. However, I’m glad it happened.
Ivan.
September 18th, 2006 at 9:45 am
As flash animations go that one was pretty dissapointing.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Well yeah, it was relatively disappointing. Kind of nice, but I preferred the original depiction of the song (in the Meaning of Life).
September 18th, 2006 at 10:54 am
One of the nice things is that the science in the song is relatively accurate, IIRC.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Well, it’s over an hour since I ran the animation. How’s a fellow supposed to get to sleep now with the tune rattling around in my head? I mean I don’t mind it really, but it can be annoying. And seeing it is almost 4am, I have to get some sleep.
Ivan.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Some of the images don’t quite match the lyrics. Why is there an image of Saturn when the lyrics are talking about the galaxy? Also when talking about millions of galaxies, the image is a nebula rather than one of the Hubble Deep Field.
Other than that, it’s fun and I plan to show it to my kids this spring when I teach Astronomy.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Don´t know why, but I feel sad when I hear that song. Don´t take me wrong, I love it, but it´s still sad.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Pfft, who need falsh when you can have YouTube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDqkHNqrUNw
Love that song, btw.
September 18th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Ah, but work lets me watch .swf files, unlike being able to access YouTube…
September 18th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
I still have fond memories of Yakko Warner’s version…
September 18th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I actually show the movie clip of that song in my astronomy class. It’s a handy way to remember basic dimensions of the Milky Way.
September 19th, 2006 at 1:01 am
IIRC Did someone on the forum deconstruct that song to see how accurate it really was?
September 19th, 2006 at 5:19 am
It was this thread
September 19th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
The Earth is approximately 25000 miles in circumference at the equator. Thus, a point on the equator revolves around the Earth’s axis at about 1000 mph. At the latitude of London (51 degrees), the circle traced out by London is about 16000 miles, so London revolves at just shy of 700 mph, so the song’s interpretation is probably a reasonable, rounded figure.
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
According to here the Earth moves at about 30 km/s in its orbit, or about 19 miles a second.
(skipping a bit)
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
Being pressed for time, I’m not going to look those up, but the numbers seem accurate enough for the purposes of the song.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
According to here the cosmic year is about 230 million years. The song is close enough for government work.
back to the skipped bit…
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.
Hard to say what it’s referring to here. In our trip around the galaxy, I get a number of around 600k mph, or about 250 km/s. That number seems consistent with some references I found, so I’d say that if that’s what the song is on about, the song is wrong.
According to here the galaxy is zipping through space at around 600 km/s (1.3 million mph). So I will conjecture that the numbers in the song were chosen by onageristic guessing.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Sent the link to all my friends. Now they can stay awake too,,,
GAry 7