Top Three Songs Inspired By Scientific Equations

"The Drake Equation" Helion Prime In third place: Helion Prime are a metal band who use science and sci-fi imagery the way other bands use Satanism. So this is a song about the Drake Equation. While I love the song, it only gets the bronze for two reasons: there's no video yet, and they don't actually sing the equation. With thanks to Big D of the Assorted Thoughts blog who first introduced me to Helion Prime.

"Mandelbrot Set" Jonathan Coulton In second place: Lyrics sadly became outdated as Benoit Mandelbrot passed away in 2010, but still... Here's a chalk-based animation that illustrates the song nicely, although it's a shortened version. Or if you prefer, there are about a million YouTube videos of fractal animations set to the song. Bonus points for spelling out the equation. Bonus points subsequently deducted as, obviously, the equation used in the song actually describes the Julia Set. D'oh...

"The First and Second Laws Of Thermodynamics" Flanders and Swann And the winner is: Flanders and Swann, those rapscallion 50s and 60s music hall entertainers. Michael and Donald were no strangers to science - songs about the mating habits of hippopotami made them the Discovery Channel of their day, while their revelations about the spiral growth of the honeysuckle (right-handed) and the bindweed (left-handed) were worthy of a PhD. Bonus points for spelling out and actually understanding the Laws, and for squeezing in the Third Law as well. There's no actual video of Flanders and Swann performing this so here's a version accompanied by random pictures and some bad jokes from teachers. Polar! Lol.

Reach For The Stars

An unusual star system containing five stars has been found by the WASP astronomy project, as reported on the BBC News website here. Multiple star systems occur in two classic science-fiction works. Isaac Asimov's novella Nightfall is set on a world with six suns - as a result night falls only once every few thousand years. Liu Cixin's novel The Three Body Problem, translated from the original Chinese, features a virtual world with three suns in irregular and unpredictable orbits.

Both stories explore the impact of these star systems on the civilizations below - in Nightfall, the inhabitants cannot detect stars beyond their system so cannot grasp the size or nature of the Universe, and they have a deep-rooted fear of the dark. The aliens on Liu Cixin's world also struggle to make sense of the Universe, and are striving to find a way to predict their suns' movements so they can prepare for the deadly hot or cold spells that occur when the suns get too close or too far away.

On our own world, we had it easy. All the clues were within easy reach - a single, stable sun, a clear view of the other stars, our own Moon and other planet/moon systems visible through simple optical devices, and it still took us centuries to work it all out, burning heretics along the way.

Lovecraft, science and the supernatural

Some thoughts on reading H.P. Lovecraft's short stories: initially I was reminded of H.G. Wells, who both preceded and outlived Lovecraft. Both writers took the traditions of fantastic fiction and completely transformed it into something new, and of course both have had a huge impact on twentieth century fiction.

There are similarities in the writing style but also the frequent presence of scientific characters and themes. Both writers seem to have a high regard for scientists and scientific method. However science plays a different role in each. For H.G. Wells it's all about the scientific ideal - there can't be anything in Nature, or the Universe that isn't understandable.

For Lovecraft science has kind of the opposite meaning. The role of the scientist in his fiction seems to be firstly to prove by scientific method that the protagonist is not simply mad, at least at the beginning - being driven mad by exposure to horror is a common theme; and secondly to prove by failure that the phenomenon is not explicable in scientific terms, usually as it originates from another planet or dimension where our physics does not necessarily apply. So, while for Wells there is no supernatural, for Lovecraft the supernatural must be proven.

Whether they are actually scientists or not Lovecraftian protagonists tend to be sceptical until faced with insurmountable evidence of the awful reality. A typical Lovecraftian plot is basically the gradual realisation that the horror is actually real, with the gradual revelation of the complex vision - for example the pivot that changes The Call Of Cthulhu from a good old yarn into something more powerful is the moment where the protagonist connects all the simultaneous events around the world.

Lovecraft's horrors vary from the intangible creeping liquid or gas (The Colour Out Of Space) through creatures never quite seen but hinted at by mysterious footprints, through complex conspiracy scenarios and alien encounters (The Call of Cthulhu). Creatures tend to combine elements of different known Earth species, although scaly wings capable of traversing the ether are a frequent adaptation. The creature (or intangible) is only the start - the horrors extend heavily into locations which are utterly overgrown by evil auras, lead to subtle or not so subtle mutations in the landscape, plants, animals and people around them (The Colour Out Of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth), cause psychological mayhem through dreams, hallucinations and unexplained dread; and supernatural horrors are surrounded and augmented by horrific human cults.

At time of writing you can find out more about Lovecraft here; also many of the stories are available as free e-books here, or on any number of other websites. If you have a preference for the white stuff, all stories I refer to here can be found in The Call Of Cthulhu: And Other Weird Stories (Penguin).

(The Sandcastles of Cthulhu)