Physics in the songs of metal
Metal bands fearlessly touch upon serious topics in the lyrics of their songs. Here we explore songs using concepts from theoretical physics and cosmology.
I listened to the Event Horizon composition by Stratovarius for quite a long time, and suddenly I realized that it says about the horizon of the black hole. The song itself is a bit silly - in it someone approaches the horizon of a black hole in a spaceship with a computer, speaking with a light Russian accent - but the lyrics contain statements that have a scientific basis.
')
Stratovarius is one of many metal bands dealing with topics such as black holes, relativity, and string theory. I decided that it would be interesting to look at the examples and try to understand the scientific basis mentioned.
I want to note that I have no physical education, and my explanations will be quite amateurish. Physicists I ask to make amendments (through me or through a request to GitHub ).
Let's start with these lines:
Nothing escapes
And the boundary's been breached
All matter and shape
Destination's reached
Nothing runs away
Border passed
All forms and matter
Reached the place
The "border" is an event horizon beyond which neither matter nor radiation can overcome the monstrous gravity of a black hole and are sucked back. In other words, "nothing escapes." Therefore, the black hole is black; particles of light beyond the horizon of events are not visible to an outside observer.
“Reached the place” is an interesting fragment. Suppose that “place” is an event horizon, and not a singularity with infinite gravity in the center of a black hole, which most likely will be your destination if you fall into it. But it depends on the observer.
If you watch something fall into a black hole, you will not see how it reaches the event horizon due to a slowing down of time (their time will be slowed towards you); to the destination will not be reach. But if you are sucked (oops! ..), you can either reach your destination (and annihilate in the process), and survive (in the form of information, not a person) somewhere near the event horizon. At least according to the holographic principle put forward by Gerard 't Hooft and Leonard Susskind. Also this principle assumes that we all live in a kind of hologram .
Let's go back to the song:
A star dies, collapsing in its core
End of the journey, it won't be seen anymore
The star dies, collapses in the core
Expensive, you will not see it already
This is, in fact, a description of the birth of black holes. A massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, it cannot produce enough energy to restrain its own gravity, and literally collapses in the core. This is the “end of the road” for the star and “you will not see it anymore” because the light does not go beyond the event horizon (some black holes create an accretion disk, which can be visible and bright, like Gargantua from Interstellar. But let's say there is no hole).
Finally, chorus:
I can see the point of no return
The light is slowly turning to red
I see the point of no return
And when the light turns red gradually
The “point of no return” is often used to describe the event horizon, and it can be seen as the border on which the black hole begins. But why does the light "gradually turn red"? Because electromagnetic radiation (such as light), sucked into a black hole, is subject to red shift; the wavelength increases and it shifts to the red part of the spectrum. Therefore, the visible light will blush, and then quickly move to the invisible part of the spectrum.
Hello to the Stratovarius group for writing an almost scientifically accurate song about black holes. What about explanations about the spacecraft and computer with a Russian accent?
I respect Bruce Dickinson almost as much as Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan. His songs are often thoughtful, contemplative and introspective. The composition of Navigate the Seas of the Sun is especially poetic and contains a sense of wonder, a desire to know and understand what is so important for science. And Einstein is mentioned in it.
For example, this couplet:
Purple gold and blue
Living colors every hue
Flowers in the garden of the gods
No one can ever know
If you never saw them grow
This darkness is really full of light
Purple and Blue Gold
All shades of color come to life
Flowers in the garden of the gods
No one will ever know
If you have never seen them grow
This darkness is actually full of light.
Looking at the images of distant galaxies and nebulae , made with a telescope. Hubble, you will find out what Bruce sings about. Our Universe, even a small part of it, which we see, is an explosion of color. She is beautiful and thrilling.
How beautiful the Universe is in the visible range that our eyes perceive, just as beautiful in infrared, X-ray or ultraviolet light. With the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, most of the radiation experienced a redshift and was no longer visible, so space looks dark and cold. But there is a lot going on. We would not know about it without special tools, but the darkness is indeed “really full of light,” not only visible.
Go to Einstein:
If God is throwing dice
And Einstein doesn't mind the chance
We'll navigate the Seas of the Sun
If god plays dice
And Einstein doesn't mind chances
We will pass the Seas of the Sun
I love this piece. He mentions Einstein’s stubborn refusal to recognize the probabilistic nature described by quantum mechanics. His saying “God does not play dice with the Universe” is known. He even described quantum entanglement as “frightening long-range action” (in German it would be spukhafte Fernwirkung), because of absurdity.
Why? Because entangled particles violate the principle of locality, which is very important in classical physics. The quantum state of entangled particles works independently of the distance. Turning back here in Paris will instantly turn back his cousin, let's say on Mars. Information moves faster than the speed of light. Stupidity! But in this case, Einstein was mistaken, and confusion has not yet been refuted. It was even demonstrated shortly before writing the article in 2015 at Delft Technical University.
In the old work, Stephen Hawking wrote:
Einstein did not live to see the development of quantum mechanics, but it seems to me that he would accept its results. I don’t think he would “mind the odds.”
Finally, move on to the Ayreon group. Where to start? The whole album ( ŦĦΣ ŦĦΣΦɌ ¥ ΦƑ ΣVΣɌΨŦĦIΠG ) is the recognition of Arjen Anthony Lyukassen in the love of physics in the form of a metal opera and the scientific search for a sense of reality.
The album The Theory of Everything contains a kind of child prodigy (“Prodigy”), who has a talent for handling numbers, at the same time being the son of a physicist obsessed with finding the theory of everything . The story develops in connection with his attempts to deal with the physical world, which, in his opinion, is very different from the mathematical one. And in history there are many physical concepts.
The album consists of four twenty-minute songs divided into 42 chapters ( guess why ). In the song 'Singularity', the Father sings:
One single master equation
Unification of the great and small
But the arrangement is wrong
I am so near
One single main equation
The union of the small and the great
I hear the notes, but the arrangement is lame
And I begin to doubt, but I can not give up, because I'm already so close
These words describe the current state of physics: the impossibility of making friends with Einstein’s relativity, describing the “great” (gravity, orbits, black holes) and quantum mechanics, describing the “small” (atoms, quarks, electromagnetic and nuclear forces, the Higgs boson). Now we have two different tools that describe these concepts well on their respective scales, while being incompatible with each other! This is due to gravity . We have been struggling with this for a long time, and although some progress has been made, we are still too far from the derivation of this elusive “one single main equation”.
One of the promising but controversial options is the superstring theory , a tool that reduces everything to tiny, vibrating one-dimensional supersymmetric strings. The Father sings of this:
I'm so close to the answer
A dazzling symphony of cosmic strings
I feel the pulse vibrating just out of reach
The music of space
I'm so close to the answer
Blinding symphony of cosmic strings
I feel the pulse vibrating out of reach
Space Music
She started string theory quite elegantly, but grew into something complicated and confusing, growing into five different options. Since the Father claims to hear notes (the strings vibrate at different frequencies, like strings of a guitar), but he cannot find the right arrangement, I think he is a string theory expert, upset that the approach seems to be correct, but how its use is not entirely clear.
The child prodigy is later recognized by a psychologist:
I see
In this four-dimensional world
There is so much more beyond
More to unveil, more to reveal
I see things not from here
In this four-dimensional world
There, beyond the horizon so much
So many discoveries, so many revelations
Mathematics of string theory describes the universe, extending beyond our four (three spatial, one time) dimensions, but for the time being we cannot see it. The unified theory of superstrings generally speaks of eleven dimensions ! But all this is just a theory.
The final is an amazing duet of the Father and the Son, stuffed with physics. It even includes a list of tasks that need to be done so that you can take on the Theory of Everything:
Isolate the graviton
Verify the Higgs-Boson âś“
Photons, hadrons
Gluons, fermions
Demonstrate the tachyon
Find the missing baryons
Neutrons, protons
Nucleons, electrons
Ride a wave of gravity
Unravel super symmetry
Position x, sparticles
Momentum p, dark energy
Einstein's relativity
Meets heisenberg's uncertainty
Causality, eternity
Singularity, infinity!
Isolate the graviton
Higgs confirm boson âś“
Photons, hadrons
Gluons, fermions
Show tachyon
Find the remnants of baryons
Neutrons, Protons
Nucleons, electrons
Ride on a wave of gravity âś“
Cut supersymmetry
Position x, superpartners
Impulse p dark energy
Einstein's relativity
Meets with Heisenberg Uncertainty
Causality, eternity
Singularity, infinity!
Fortunately, it is almost possible to cross out point 2 - scientists from the Large Hadron Collider found particles corresponding to the Higgs boson, before that, only a mathematically predicted particle included in the Standard Model. [The point about gravitational waves was also fulfilled after writing the article. ] Our understanding of the situation will improve when, in 15 years, a circular electron-positron collider (Circular Electron Positron Collider) is launched in China.
By the way, tachyons are an interesting theory. These are supposed particles traveling faster than the speed of light. This should be impossible in our real universe, since they will violate the principle of causality. But under conditions that I don’t understand, they can exist (but do not allow information to spread faster than the speed of light).
Therefore, "to demonstrate the tachyon" will be difficult - but do not let that stop you.
While we are discussing physics in metal music, it turns out that there is metal in physics. Physicist Piotr Traczyk [ Piotr Traczyk ] works in the less well-known CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) particle detector at CERN, which observes new particles created in the LHC. And besides that, he is metalist and guitarist.
Peter wrote a metal song based on audio processing of data graphics from CMS.
I decided to take two schedules from the Higgs boson search seminar of July 4, 2012 — massive graphics from the gamma-gamma and 4-lepton channels. There are about 20 columns in their histograms, so I took the first 16 columns and assigned them each on the sixteenth note, resulting in one beat of music per schedule.
Hope you enjoyed it. I have no physical education, but only an interest in cosmology (and metal). Please inform me about any inaccuracies by mail or via GitHub .
Also report new metal-related songs related to physics. I know about the latest Nightwish album, “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” (the title is a quote from Darwin), in which there is a song about the formation of the Earth, and in the single Élan there is even a song about Karl Sagan. But I don’t have an album yet, so maybe this is the material for the next post.
I listened to the Event Horizon composition by Stratovarius for quite a long time, and suddenly I realized that it says about the horizon of the black hole. The song itself is a bit silly - in it someone approaches the horizon of a black hole in a spaceship with a computer, speaking with a light Russian accent - but the lyrics contain statements that have a scientific basis.
')
Stratovarius is one of many metal bands dealing with topics such as black holes, relativity, and string theory. I decided that it would be interesting to look at the examples and try to understand the scientific basis mentioned.
I want to note that I have no physical education, and my explanations will be quite amateurish. Physicists I ask to make amendments (through me or through a request to GitHub ).
Event Horizon - Stratovarius
Let's start with these lines:
Nothing escapes
And the boundary's been breached
All matter and shape
Destination's reached
Nothing runs away
Border passed
All forms and matter
Reached the place
The "border" is an event horizon beyond which neither matter nor radiation can overcome the monstrous gravity of a black hole and are sucked back. In other words, "nothing escapes." Therefore, the black hole is black; particles of light beyond the horizon of events are not visible to an outside observer.
“Reached the place” is an interesting fragment. Suppose that “place” is an event horizon, and not a singularity with infinite gravity in the center of a black hole, which most likely will be your destination if you fall into it. But it depends on the observer.
If you watch something fall into a black hole, you will not see how it reaches the event horizon due to a slowing down of time (their time will be slowed towards you); to the destination will not be reach. But if you are sucked (oops! ..), you can either reach your destination (and annihilate in the process), and survive (in the form of information, not a person) somewhere near the event horizon. At least according to the holographic principle put forward by Gerard 't Hooft and Leonard Susskind. Also this principle assumes that we all live in a kind of hologram .
Let's go back to the song:
A star dies, collapsing in its core
End of the journey, it won't be seen anymore
The star dies, collapses in the core
Expensive, you will not see it already
This is, in fact, a description of the birth of black holes. A massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, it cannot produce enough energy to restrain its own gravity, and literally collapses in the core. This is the “end of the road” for the star and “you will not see it anymore” because the light does not go beyond the event horizon (some black holes create an accretion disk, which can be visible and bright, like Gargantua from Interstellar. But let's say there is no hole).
Finally, chorus:
I can see the point of no return
The light is slowly turning to red
I see the point of no return
And when the light turns red gradually
The “point of no return” is often used to describe the event horizon, and it can be seen as the border on which the black hole begins. But why does the light "gradually turn red"? Because electromagnetic radiation (such as light), sucked into a black hole, is subject to red shift; the wavelength increases and it shifts to the red part of the spectrum. Therefore, the visible light will blush, and then quickly move to the invisible part of the spectrum.
Hello to the Stratovarius group for writing an almost scientifically accurate song about black holes. What about explanations about the spacecraft and computer with a Russian accent?
Bruce Dickinson - Navigate the Seas of the Sun
I respect Bruce Dickinson almost as much as Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan. His songs are often thoughtful, contemplative and introspective. The composition of Navigate the Seas of the Sun is especially poetic and contains a sense of wonder, a desire to know and understand what is so important for science. And Einstein is mentioned in it.
For example, this couplet:
Purple gold and blue
Living colors every hue
Flowers in the garden of the gods
No one can ever know
If you never saw them grow
This darkness is really full of light
Purple and Blue Gold
All shades of color come to life
Flowers in the garden of the gods
No one will ever know
If you have never seen them grow
This darkness is actually full of light.
Looking at the images of distant galaxies and nebulae , made with a telescope. Hubble, you will find out what Bruce sings about. Our Universe, even a small part of it, which we see, is an explosion of color. She is beautiful and thrilling.
How beautiful the Universe is in the visible range that our eyes perceive, just as beautiful in infrared, X-ray or ultraviolet light. With the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, most of the radiation experienced a redshift and was no longer visible, so space looks dark and cold. But there is a lot going on. We would not know about it without special tools, but the darkness is indeed “really full of light,” not only visible.
Go to Einstein:
If God is throwing dice
And Einstein doesn't mind the chance
We'll navigate the Seas of the Sun
If god plays dice
And Einstein doesn't mind chances
We will pass the Seas of the Sun
I love this piece. He mentions Einstein’s stubborn refusal to recognize the probabilistic nature described by quantum mechanics. His saying “God does not play dice with the Universe” is known. He even described quantum entanglement as “frightening long-range action” (in German it would be spukhafte Fernwirkung), because of absurdity.
Why? Because entangled particles violate the principle of locality, which is very important in classical physics. The quantum state of entangled particles works independently of the distance. Turning back here in Paris will instantly turn back his cousin, let's say on Mars. Information moves faster than the speed of light. Stupidity! But in this case, Einstein was mistaken, and confusion has not yet been refuted. It was even demonstrated shortly before writing the article in 2015 at Delft Technical University.
In the old work, Stephen Hawking wrote:
Apparently, even God obeys the principle of uncertainty, and cannot simultaneously know the position and velocity of a particle. So God plays dice with the universe.
Einstein did not live to see the development of quantum mechanics, but it seems to me that he would accept its results. I don’t think he would “mind the odds.”
Ayreon - The Theory of Everything
Finally, move on to the Ayreon group. Where to start? The whole album ( ŦĦΣ ŦĦΣΦɌ ¥ ΦƑ ΣVΣɌΨŦĦIΠG ) is the recognition of Arjen Anthony Lyukassen in the love of physics in the form of a metal opera and the scientific search for a sense of reality.
The album The Theory of Everything contains a kind of child prodigy (“Prodigy”), who has a talent for handling numbers, at the same time being the son of a physicist obsessed with finding the theory of everything . The story develops in connection with his attempts to deal with the physical world, which, in his opinion, is very different from the mathematical one. And in history there are many physical concepts.
The album consists of four twenty-minute songs divided into 42 chapters ( guess why ). In the song 'Singularity', the Father sings:
One single master equation
Unification of the great and small
But the arrangement is wrong
I am so near
One single main equation
The union of the small and the great
I hear the notes, but the arrangement is lame
And I begin to doubt, but I can not give up, because I'm already so close
These words describe the current state of physics: the impossibility of making friends with Einstein’s relativity, describing the “great” (gravity, orbits, black holes) and quantum mechanics, describing the “small” (atoms, quarks, electromagnetic and nuclear forces, the Higgs boson). Now we have two different tools that describe these concepts well on their respective scales, while being incompatible with each other! This is due to gravity . We have been struggling with this for a long time, and although some progress has been made, we are still too far from the derivation of this elusive “one single main equation”.
One of the promising but controversial options is the superstring theory , a tool that reduces everything to tiny, vibrating one-dimensional supersymmetric strings. The Father sings of this:
I'm so close to the answer
A dazzling symphony of cosmic strings
I feel the pulse vibrating just out of reach
The music of space
I'm so close to the answer
Blinding symphony of cosmic strings
I feel the pulse vibrating out of reach
Space Music
She started string theory quite elegantly, but grew into something complicated and confusing, growing into five different options. Since the Father claims to hear notes (the strings vibrate at different frequencies, like strings of a guitar), but he cannot find the right arrangement, I think he is a string theory expert, upset that the approach seems to be correct, but how its use is not entirely clear.
The child prodigy is later recognized by a psychologist:
I see
In this four-dimensional world
There is so much more beyond
More to unveil, more to reveal
I see things not from here
In this four-dimensional world
There, beyond the horizon so much
So many discoveries, so many revelations
Mathematics of string theory describes the universe, extending beyond our four (three spatial, one time) dimensions, but for the time being we cannot see it. The unified theory of superstrings generally speaks of eleven dimensions ! But all this is just a theory.
The final is an amazing duet of the Father and the Son, stuffed with physics. It even includes a list of tasks that need to be done so that you can take on the Theory of Everything:
Isolate the graviton
Verify the Higgs-Boson âś“
Photons, hadrons
Gluons, fermions
Demonstrate the tachyon
Find the missing baryons
Neutrons, protons
Nucleons, electrons
Ride a wave of gravity
Unravel super symmetry
Position x, sparticles
Momentum p, dark energy
Einstein's relativity
Meets heisenberg's uncertainty
Causality, eternity
Singularity, infinity!
Isolate the graviton
Higgs confirm boson âś“
Photons, hadrons
Gluons, fermions
Show tachyon
Find the remnants of baryons
Neutrons, Protons
Nucleons, electrons
Ride on a wave of gravity âś“
Cut supersymmetry
Position x, superpartners
Impulse p dark energy
Einstein's relativity
Meets with Heisenberg Uncertainty
Causality, eternity
Singularity, infinity!
Fortunately, it is almost possible to cross out point 2 - scientists from the Large Hadron Collider found particles corresponding to the Higgs boson, before that, only a mathematically predicted particle included in the Standard Model. [The point about gravitational waves was also fulfilled after writing the article. ] Our understanding of the situation will improve when, in 15 years, a circular electron-positron collider (Circular Electron Positron Collider) is launched in China.
By the way, tachyons are an interesting theory. These are supposed particles traveling faster than the speed of light. This should be impossible in our real universe, since they will violate the principle of causality. But under conditions that I don’t understand, they can exist (but do not allow information to spread faster than the speed of light).
Therefore, "to demonstrate the tachyon" will be difficult - but do not let that stop you.
Metal in physics
While we are discussing physics in metal music, it turns out that there is metal in physics. Physicist Piotr Traczyk [ Piotr Traczyk ] works in the less well-known CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) particle detector at CERN, which observes new particles created in the LHC. And besides that, he is metalist and guitarist.
Peter wrote a metal song based on audio processing of data graphics from CMS.
I decided to take two schedules from the Higgs boson search seminar of July 4, 2012 — massive graphics from the gamma-gamma and 4-lepton channels. There are about 20 columns in their histograms, so I took the first 16 columns and assigned them each on the sixteenth note, resulting in one beat of music per schedule.
Thoughts, suggestions
Hope you enjoyed it. I have no physical education, but only an interest in cosmology (and metal). Please inform me about any inaccuracies by mail or via GitHub .
Also report new metal-related songs related to physics. I know about the latest Nightwish album, “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” (the title is a quote from Darwin), in which there is a song about the formation of the Earth, and in the single Élan there is even a song about Karl Sagan. But I don’t have an album yet, so maybe this is the material for the next post.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/369569/
All Articles