Galaxy Song
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The Galaxy Song is an upbeat and somewhat nihilistic[citation needed] song from the movie Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, later released on the album Monty Python Sings. The song appears near the end of the movie, when Eric Idle climbs out of a refrigerator and begins singing.
The lyrics include a number of astronomical facts, and (within the limits imposed by creative licence), the figures tend to be tolerably accurate. Eric Idle sings that the Earth is "revolving at nine hundred miles an hour"; the actual figure (at the equator) is 1,038[1]. He gives the Earth's orbital speed as 19 miles (31 km) per second, compared with the real figure of 18 to 18.5[2][3][4].
He states that the Sun is "the source of all our power". In fact, geothermal power does not stem from the Sun, while tidal power derives mostly from the Moon. Ultimately, however, the overwhelming proportion of human-generated power derived from fossil fuels and thence from photosynthetic plants makes this line a very good approximation to the truth.
Idle's figures for the size of the Milky Way galaxy are roughly correct. He understates the speed at which the Sun orbits the "galactic central point", but he gives a good estimate for the total time per orbit ("two hundred million years" according to the song, compared with accepted figures of 220 to 250 million years[5][6]).
The song goes on to say that we are "thirty thousand light years from galactic central point". In fact, the Sun is more like 25 000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way[7]. It also states that the galaxy is "a hundred thousand light years side to side". This would make the galactic radius 50 000 light years, which is accurate[7].
The penultimate verse explains that the universe is expanding, and furthermore that the speed of light is the "fastest speed there is". Idle's estimate is a good one: 12 million miles per minute, versus the standard figure of about 11.16 million miles per minute[8].
[edit] References
- ^ How fast does the Earth spin in miles per hour? - Ask Yahoo!
- ^ What is Earth's mean orbital speed? - a definition from Whatis.com
- ^ Earth's Speed, Jerry Pool's amateur astronomy website
- ^ The Speed of Light, University of Virginia
- ^ Period of the Sun's Orbit around the Galaxy (Cosmic Year), HyperTextbook.com
- ^ Ready Reference, JustForKidsOnly.com
- ^ a b Milky Way Galaxy, University of Oregon
- ^ speed of light@Everything2.com
