Songs of Science

Thereâs cool, and then thereâs cool: In this video, the gorgeously bethroated mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chin sings quotes about reality from various scientists and critical thinkers. Note who she starts off with!

The quote from me comes from a blog post I wrote about the launch of the European Planck mission. I was discussing the potential results of the mission, which was designed in part to discern between competing theories on the Big Bang model of the Universe:

Planck may very well have the resolution needed to see that. Do you understand the implications? We may be on the verge of determining if the origin of the Universe was a singular event, or if it was due to some other mechanism.

We're on the edge of "holy crap!" territory with this. We have progressed from last century's having no clue about how the cosmos got its start, to now possibly being able to get a handle on what happened before the Big Bang.

That's why I love science! Some people try to tell me that science will never answer the big questions we have in life. To them I say: baloney! The real problem is your questions aren't big enough.

I love what Hai-Ting did with this. She is herself a skeptic, and her website is loaded with clips of her music. Iâve written about her beforeâshe wrote a piece based on an article I wrote about the motions of the Moonâas she has a magnificent voice and is a wonderful person. She also has a podcast with musician Matt Schickele called Scopes Monkey Choir. Give it a listen!

Oh, one more thing: In the Songs of Science video, the illustrations were done by my friend Maki Naro who is Kickstarting a new web comic called Sufficiently Remarkable. It looks like itâll be really good, so you should throw some filthy lucre his way if you can.