Earthsky Interviews
Bang! An astronomy book by Brian May of Queen
10-01-2007 - Space
That’s guitarist Brian May of the band Queen.
May is returning to his Ph.D. studies in astronomy. And he’s helped write a book called Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. It traces the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to a future long past when our sun becomes a red giant and consumes the Earth.
Brian May told us how our universe can be something that is finite, but also not have any boundaries.
Brian May: We have a neat little analogy in the book, which is an ant crawling on the surface of a football, I don’t know if you’ve come across this. It’s a fairly crude analogy, but it gives you some idea. This ant, assuming it can’t jump off, it’ll crawl over the surface of the football as long as it likes, and it will never come to a boundary. But the surface that it’s crawling on is nevertheless finite. And that’s kind of the view, translated into three dimensions of space, and one of time. That’s more or less the view that most cosmologists have of the universe at the moment.
May added that the story of the universe’s origin and ultimate destiny should be fun and accessible to all.
Our thanks today to Research Corporation.
Our thanks to:
Brian May
CBE, ARCS, FRAS
is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer, and performer. Brian was forced to abandon his PhD studies on interplanetary dust at Imperial College, London when Queen’s popularity first exploded, but has always retained his keen interest in astronomy, and is a regular contributor to The Sky at Night.
The questions with regard to the visible Universe:
[a] How..?
[b] Why..?
and
[c] When. did this Universe begin..?
Humans will never have the capacity or the experience to answer
accurately these puzzling questions.
Be you an emeritus professor of Astronomy, or a person who hardly knows what Astronomy means, each can have a guess, and each guess is valid,……but NEVER accurate.
B.S.
Hurray for Brian May! Thank you for being so cool.
Ruby
“We Will, We Will Rock You” – Now if Brian could just somehow get that song removed from all of the sports arenas in the world that would also be an amazing accomplishment.
Sorry Brian nothing personal (LOL)
Brian May amazed me as I watched his performance with Queen in Philadelphia in 1976. And he still amazes me today. He avoided the normal pitfalls of Star-dom for 30 years and completed his PhD. Speaking from experience, this is no easy feat.
The field of astronomy will gain from this in a small part – as all PhD’s do. Congratulations!
Brian’s love of music and the stars is wonderfully combined in the song named “‘39″ that he wrote, sang, and played with Queen.
Imagine, if you will, an English music-hall sea-chantey atop a ringing, chime-y 12-string guitar riff overlaid with echoing Queen harmonies. Oh, and with time-travel thrown in.
Brilliant stuff, believe me.
Thanks Wallace! Makes me think I should check that out …