The stars were shining brightly as they did a million years ago and we felt very small before the universe This Eurythmics told us and it is nothing more than one of the many song lyrics that have some reference to astronomy
There are also melodies that are inspired by space even astrophysics for another day we will leave the difference between astronomy and astrophysics and we are going to mention some in this post
Obviously the selection is very skewed and is not at all complete or representative of the best music that fills the cosmic void But perhaps it helps us relax in these new tense and complicated moments that we live We invite you to discover the songs with the clues that we give before giving their names
The attraction for what we do not see and the limits of the universe and the physical laws that we know is a recurring theme
If you want to find one of the most famous black holes the first recognized as such and even learn and discuss astrophysics with phrases like the star that will never die despite Hawkins radiation or Xrays are her siren song forgive the translators for our interference you can accompany Rush in his Rocinante ship to Cygnus X1 1977 in A Farewell to kings
Less astrophysics maybe more poetry but bigger black holes can be found in MUSEs Supermassive black hole 2006 Black Hole and revelations which swallows superstars as it doesthis bug not so massive but just as destructive
If you want to learn astrophysics the truth is that there are especially informative songs even more so than Rushs
Our entire universe was in a hot and dense state in a fraction of a second the elements were created or it will collapse forever are phrases that although not entirely correct according to the most established theories are not not bad to start a discussion of astrophysics and other branches of science and we can find them in the Barenaked Ladies song The Big Bang theory song 2008
Closer it would be nice to know that it is orbiting at 19 miles per second we are moving at a million miles a day in an outer spiral arm and we are 30000 lightyears from the Central Point of the Galaxy
Everything and more tell us the Monty Python in Galaxy song 1983 Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life and indeed our orbital speed around the Sun is 30 km s one hundred times faster than a bullet three times faster than the speed needed to escape Earths gravity
We are moving at 230 km s laugh at the AVE it would take a little over 2 seconds to reach Seville at that speed Around the center of our spiral Galaxy the Milky Way where there is a supermassive black hole little we affects him which is eight kiloparsecs away from usin astrophysical units because whatever Han Solo says bragging about what he did in the Kessel Corridor with the Millennium Falcon or reinterpreting what he meant in terms of General Relativity a parsec is a unit of distance equivalent to 30 billion kilometres
Astronomy opens new horizons to musicians teaches us all things that no one has ever seen wonders that we will never reach and that can teach us how life appeared
Not as massive as previous black holes the brightest star they say is an eye looking at you from the sky although in reality it ripped us off without knowing it for millennia something weve known since 1862 when it was discovered that they are actually two eyes looking at us as Alvan Graham Clark and also the famous astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel told us who is almost better known to mathematicians than astrophysicists thanks to his computational developments which he applied to astronomy
The Alan Parsons Project song Sirius 1982 Eye on the Sky is not the only oneabout this binary star formed by a normalite star with a main sequence we say twice as hot as the Sun and a white dwarf which in reality should not be called a star because it does not have fusion reactions
Astronomy opens new horizons to musicians it teaches us all things that no one has ever seen wonders that we will never achieve and that can teach us how life appeared Some astrophysicists are better known for their musical achievements that is the case of a student of zodiacal light which is the diffuse light reflected by the dust between the planets orbiting the Sun visible to the naked eye in areas with skies free from light pollution
The guitarist of the Queen group Brian May who published his thesis in 2007 and has put it up for sale Has made several songs inspired by the cosmos one of them dedicated to New Horizons 2018 in his passage near the transNeptunian object Kuiper beltUltima Thule a comet in the shape of a snowman for a reason it is 230 ° C that is so far away 6500 million kilometers New Horizons passed only 3500 km That the light that comes out of the Sun takes 6 hours to reach him
Zodiacal light is the diffuse light reflected by the dust between the planets orbiting the Sun visible to the naked eye in areas with skies free of light pollution
We cannot finish the post without talking about classical music
It begins in an intriguing disturbing and grandiose plan as if Mars were going to destroy you or rather it was going to war with some political leaders it continues calmer with the peace of Venus and elusive and fast with Mercury others who must forgive us for intrusion the musicologists imperial with King Jupiter touches all the planets except ours
Many also complained about the absence of Pluto for years until it was descended to a dwarf planet In summary Holsts Planets 191416 is one of the most famous works related to astronomy and in general to space which is why it served as inspiration for the Imperial March of Star Wars
More terrestrial but for many it evokes astrobiological themes and the concept of panspermia another post Thanks to the fact that Stanley Kubrick used it in 2001 a space odyssey to show us the sunrise of life in Thus spoke Zarathustra by R Strauss 1896
One can imagine not a monolith but a shower of meteorites and comets with the seeds of life reaching Earth
There are many more examples another day we continue with the theme music always relaxes and inspires and surely readers and friends give us many ideas
Pablo G Pérez González is a researcher at the Astrobiology Center dependent on the Higher Council for Scientific Research and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology CAB CSICINTA
Patricia Sánchez Blázquez is a tenured professor at the Complutense University of Madrid UCM
Cosmic Void is a section in which our knowledge about the universe is presented in a qualitative and quantitative way
It is intended to explain the importance of understanding the cosmos not only from a scientific point of view but also from a philosophical social and economic point of view
The name cosmic vacuum refers to the fact that the universe is and is for the most part empty with less than 1 atom per cubic meter despite the fact that in our environment paradoxically there are quintillion atoms per meter cubic which invites us to reflect on our existence and the presence of life in the universe
