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Relativistic Relatives

from Science Songs 2 by Jonny Berliner

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lyrics

Albert Einstein born in Ulm in 1879,
Turned the world of physics upside down, by the age of 25,
Just a humble patent clerk he made professors nervous,
By pointing out the speed of light's the same to all observers.
Now I know that sounds a very very very simple thing to say,
But then you have to throw all your ideas of time and space away,
Cos time can shrink and space can grow, depending on how fast you go,
That's ok, that's alright but you're never ever gonna break the speed of light.

Einstein named his special theory special relativity,
And showed that energy's the mass times the square of light's velocity,
Then he made the theory general, by redefining gravity,
As the curvature of space time in four dimensional geometry,
So as a beam of light is speeding right across the galaxy,
It thinks it's going straight but that's actually a fallacy,
Cos light will bend round nearby stars, depending on how big they are,
That's ok, that's alright but you're never ever gonna break the speed of light.

Now my twin brother Billy Bob he always was a bragger,
Saying he would be the first to take the speed of light and shatter it,
Nobody believed, they thought he was a gasser,
Until the day they signed him up to join the boys at NASA,
Then he got himself a rocket ship and flew away,
Put his foot down on the pedal, kept accelerating,
Getting faster, getting faster getting quicker everyday,
Til the Earth was just a dot a thousand million miles away,
I was following his rocket ship in my telescope,
And the faster that he went the thinner he would grow,
Getting faster, getting thinner, I hope he'll be alright,
But he's never gonna break the speed of light.

Now there's a helluva problem getting up to light speed.
And that's the closer that you get, the more fuel you need,
You'll be gaining mass and energy exponentially,
until you're going fast enough that you weigh infinity.

So Billy Bob was heavy as he's ever gonna be,
Pulling rocks and planet gravitationally,
And relative to me he was nearly at his goal,
But seemingly to Billy Bob, he wasn't any closer.
So back he came with his tail between his legs and eating on a humble pie,
Thinking the only thing he'd lost was a little dignity and pride,
But he'd lost 80 years of my life, whilst he'd been gone a night.
Now my twin's my younger brother and he never ever broke the speed of light.

credits

from Science Songs 2, released August 21, 2012
Produced by Jay Enticknap
Sound Engineered by Linden Jay Berelowitz

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Jonny Berliner London, UK

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