Relativity rap

It’s great how some people communicate science ideas. A few months ago we heard about the science writer at the Large Hadron Collider who filmed a rap video about the LHC and posted it on YouTube.

So what does this have to do with Astronomy? Well, Rob Wheeldon, a reader and fellow astronomy enthusiast from the U.K., recently sent us a letter that included his own rap. This one, however, doesn’t concern the LHC, but instead a very complex subject: relativity. Wheeldon told me that his inspiration to write about relativity and Albert Einstein is because he, like Einstein, is dyslexic. I hope you enjoy his relativity rap as much as we did!

Mass and energy is the same thing
E=mc squared is da bling

E equals energy, M equals mass
And the mc sparks the time to pass

The square root of two holds the whole thing together
And the workings of this process are both elegant and clever

The equation describes the speed of light’s accretion
And properties of mass to energy conversion

From the well of gravity springs space/time
The structure of which creates the world line

A prism’s curved light
gave Newton insight
Into the structure and laws of thermodynamics

The Sun is a changeable force with a moving boundary
which gives heat and light to you and me

Spectral light emissions are part of the effect
that curves space/time to a constant effect

With energy the world resounds
there's always motion where light is found

E and mc squared gets it together
and creates all kinds of cosmic weather

Photons and electrons perform the trick
that lets the clockwork universe tick
It is not clockwork

Newton's bucket is wrong
but try making that into a song

I understood Newtonian physics at school
for every action an opposite, I was no fool

Well, Dense energy equals mass
they didn't teach me that in class

Compressed energy is released in a dance
a physical activity not left to chance

All the sums must balance out
and that's what stars are all about

Nuclear fusion will cause no confusion
If you get over the simple delusion

That everything is in a fixed state
That's not how particles interrelate

A black hole it has no mass, progress and motion, towards its devotion
No light escapes this non-Euclidian potion

Into what dimension does the energy emerge
The whole darn thing is truly absurd

Now please don’t see this as a retraction
Let me illustrate this action

One, two, three, all states emerge, mass and light and energy
Extend from a singularity

Unleashed potential all around
and that was how the light was found

The Lambda principle lets there be light
Who’s to say it’s not cosmologically right?

A balanced creation of energy
that creates everything mysteriously

Electrons and photons like to dance
and will interact given half a chance

With its strange polarity that exists on every scale
The perfect geometry off this tale

The golden ratio that makes every thing go
It’s the strangest thing that we all know

To all of us it’s quite clear
the Earth’s a sphere

You can not see the curve of the Earth
for its mighty girth

The curve of the line resting on the equator
Is the truth of the now in the past and the later?

Now it all seems quite neat these marvels of science
The globe traveling in relative motion and geodesic compliance

But the point of an arrow that curves on a dime
This is the essence of circular time

Gravity curves nature to a constant degree
and even time is a singularity

Come on now, and don't be morons
just innovate your interneurons

The Wheeler-DeWitt equation freezes time, but is quantum gravity
the key to undoing this mystery?

The Tachyon may be faster than the speed of light
and into history it sets flight

I hope this rhyme found the time
to show you that physics is so sublime