The Scientist

Current mood: Pedantic
Current music: Coldplay - true Rainy Day Music

I've been listening to the Coldplay song, 'Speed of Sound', and being of a scientific turn of mind I have naturally started to ponder on the speed of sound and the speed of light (which is a phrase that also pops up in the song). I think Coldplay might have exaggerated slightly when they claim that "birds go flying at the speed of sound" and that "planets are moving at the speed of light". First things first. The fastest flying (i.e. flying horizontally) bird is the swift, recorded flying at 47 m/s, while the fastest diving bird is the peregrine falcon, a bird of prey that can swoop through the air at around 80-100 m/s. This is pretty darn impressive. However, the speed of sound is 340.29 m/s, so until birds feel the need to fly that fast, only planes like Concorde can break the sound barrier. Then there's the speed at which the planets are whizzing around the Sun. The Earth moves around the Sun at an average speed of 29,780 m/s; Mercury, which is the planet closest to the Sun, moves the fastest at 47,900 m/s. This isn't a patch on the speed of light, which is a smug 299,792,458 m/s in space. So - no points for accuracy, guys, though I guess it's artistic license...

Incidentally, the line "birds came flying from the underground" always makes me think of pigeons hanging around in the London Underground, so out of curiosity I looked up the top pigeon speeds to see how they compared. According to the BBC, the Royal Air Force experimented with pigeons during World War II and the fastest pigeon travelled at an average of 26.2 m/s. This is the same as 94.5 km/h or 58.7 mph, which means that you could well be overtaken by this grey-feathered rocket whilst driving along in your car. Unfortunately, the London pigeons that do wander around tube stations are probably not of the same calibre as these trained and speedy birds. One time on the tube, I saw a pigeon fly into the underground train by mistake. It fluttered around in a panic for a bit, then it finally settled down and simply got off calmly at the next stop. Perhaps I could suggest to Chris Martin that "birds were riding on the Underground" might be a suitable (if bizarre) alternative line.

I was talking about the speed of light earlier, and I would like to ask any physicists out there if they can explain to me, using very simple English wherever possible, just why the speed of light is the "speed limit" of the universe. It seems a bit arbitrary to say that nothing can go faster than the speed of, hmm, what shall we choose, how about light? Yeah, speed of light, that's the ticket...

...And while you're at it, I've another question for you. Did the Big Bang that started off the universe actually make a big bang, or in fact any sound at all? Space is a vacuum, so sound doesn't really propagate through it. Besides which, there probably wasn't any space, because the whole point (as far as my meagre understanding goes) is that the Big Bang made space, and time. Was there any time for a loud explosion to exist in?

Aaagh, thinking about all this can really do one's head in. Physics can be very interesting indeed, right up to the point when my head starts to hurt...

Speaking of physicists, here's a piece of bovine guano (based on REAL FACT) which I wrote a little while ago. My apologies if you’ve already seen this before, but if you haven’t, you might find it mildly amusing if you know anything about physicists. Please be aware that this is merely a play on the stereotype of the physicist's working process and should not be interpreted as being offensive to physicists, as I know several and they are all Wonderful People - and yes, they deserve the capital letters!

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I saw on a poster at work that there was a talk entitled 'Finding Needles in Haystacks: The Physicist's Way' (that was the REAL FACT, folks). Being a humble chemist by trade (though I often wonder why), I suppose the Chemist's Way might not be sufficiently 'advanced' to be worth giving a talk on, as it would merely be to set the haystack on fire by first dousing it with flammable solvents, lighting it with a thrown box of lit matches, eventually putting the fire out with a CO2 extinguisher, and sifting through the remains for slivers that react with acid.

I imagine that the Physicist's Way would be to first formulate a theory that you cannot simultaneously know where and how many needles exist within the boundary of the haystack universe. This leads to the conclusion that the haystack must cease to exist in order for the needles to be found, so the theory of relativity is discovered and, after a lot of mathematical wrangling and quite a bit of elbow grease, an atomic bomb is subsequently invented. This bomb is dropped directly on the haystack, plus or minus several kilometres on either side. The haystack instantly vanishes, so the number and location of the needles must necessarily become known.

However, to the Physicist's surprise, this does not appear to be the case as not only has the haystack disappeared, but so have all the needles and about 99.9999% of the surrounding scenery. This leads to yet another conclusion that there has been a trans-dimensional shift caused by the force of the atomic bomb explosion, and the needles now exist in a hitherto undiscovered dimension, leaving behind a few sub-atomic particles called 'needelons' as an indicator of their former existence. The number of needelons produced is thought to be directly proportional to the number of needles there once were in the haystack. The truth of all this cannot unfortunately be shown by experimental results, as there is no longer anything to measure apart from the deadly level of radiation. Happily, the presence of needelons are absolutely and undoubtedly proven by the complex and imaginary mathematical equations which the Physicist came up with after his 17th pint of lager at the local pub.

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Are you smiling yet? I don't know about you, but I think that's cured my headache!