Cryptohedonology

A wonderful song on the 1975 Queen album Night at the Opera is ’39. This lovely jig has a context deeply rooted in physics. It was written by Dr. Brian May, guitarist for Queen (“Another One Bites the Dust”, “We Are The Champions”, etc. etc. etc.), who finished his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Imperial College, London in October 2007. Before becoming a rock star, he obtained the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in physics. He started his Ph.D. in the early 70s, but this little project called “Queen” got in the way. Over the years, he has maintained a passion for his studies and, as mentioned, he finally defended and published his dissertation entitled: A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. Dr. John posted about this July 2007 as May was wrapping up his work.

The lyrics go like this:

In the year of thirty-nine
Assembled here the volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen
And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day
Sailed across the milky seas
Ne’er looked back never feared never cried

Don’t you hear my call
Though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand
Cannot heal me like your hand
For my life, still ahead, pity me.

The lyrics describe a phenomenon in the Special Theory of Relativity known as the Twin Paradox (it isn’t really a paradox, but it is still called that). The tale is told from a very human point of view. The title ’39 is probably referring to 2039 or 2139 or XX39 where XX is greater than 19 (i.e. some futuristic date where space travel near the speed of light is commonplace). The phenomenon combines the effects of 1) time dilation (which causes clocks to run slower) and 2) changing reference frames (which causes clocks to “jump around”). The faster you go, and the more you accelerate, the more dramatic the time distortion effects become. The net result is that observers who travel away from earth and return will not age as much as those who remained at home. If you are in my Physics 211 class this coming winter, we’ll talk all about it. The effect has been observed in real clocks (albeit hyper-precise Cesium atomic ones) for systems at ordinary speeds, but the time distortion effects are very small and beyond human perception in daily life.

The lyrics are rather clever because the first ’39 describes when the ship leaves and the second ’39 refers to when the ship returns (all from the POV of the earth). At first this seems like an error, because the people returning imply they are only a year older. However, the two ’39s indicate it took some multiple of 100 years (i.e. people in 2139 and 2239 will refer to that year as ’39) for the ship to get back to earth.

Before I get emails telling me I’m nuts and that the song is all an ordinary metaphor for the human condition, I’ll just say May himself is on record confirming my description (e.g. see VH1 Classic Albums, Night at the Opera interview — although, not quite so technical). However, like any good story, it can be applied on multiple levels of the human experience, which, admittedly, is what most people get out of it. However, the song is NOT about WWII (which started in Europe in 1939).

As an interesting side note, ’39 is apparently one of pop singer George Michael’s favorite Queen songs. For me, as a physicist, it is somewhat surreal to hear George Michael singing about Special Relativity at an AIDS benefit. But he does a fine job (and I’m generally not a fan of his), but doesn’t get the to verse where the ship returns. Below are two versions, one sung by George Michael, the other by Brian May himself. Enjoy.

With George Michael:

Brian May alone: