{"id":997588,"date":"2026-08-13T06:10:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/997588\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T06:10:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:10:24","slug":"neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-why-a-queen-song-by-brian-may-is-one-that-scientists-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/997588\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why a Queen song by Brian May is one that scientists love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Released in 1975, Queen\u2019s A Night at the Opera is the band\u2019s top-selling album<\/a>. It features massive hits, including \u201cBohemian Rhapsody<\/a>,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re My Best Friend,\u201d and \u201cLove of My Life.\u201d\u00a0The fifth song on the album, \u201c\u201939,\u201d written and sung by Brian May, has been called the band\u2019s \u201cmost underrated,\u201d<\/a> by some because of its deceptively simple sci-fi folk premise.<\/p>\n

The song is about a team of astronauts who go into space to find a new world and, after being gone for a year, return to Earth<\/a>. Only, their year in space was 100 years on Earth. The main character in the song learns that his wife has passed away and is met by his daughter, who looks a lot like her. May cleverly cloaks the time change by mentioning that the astronauts left in \u201839 and returned in \u201839. So, they could have left in 2039 and returned in 2139.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201939\u201d<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s big reveal comes at the end:<\/p>\n

In the year of \u201939 came a ship in from the blue
The Volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weight
For the Earth is old and grey
Little darling, we\u2019ll away but, my love, this cannot be
For so many years are gone
Though I\u2019m older but a year
Your mother\u2019s eyes from your eyes cry to me<\/p>\n

The song is a perfect example of the time dilation<\/a> effect of Einstein\u2019s theory of special relativity. In layperson\u2019s terms, this means time can pass at different speeds. If you travel at an extremely fast speed or come close to an object with strong gravity, your clock runs slower than someone back home on Earth.<\/p>\n

The song clearly came from May\u2019s heart because he received a degree in physics in 1968 and a PhD in astrophysics in 2007, both from Imperial College London.<\/p>\n

An astrophysicist and a rockstar <\/p>\n

The time dilation premise of the song wasn\u2019t lost on astrophysicist and host of the Star Talk podcast, Neil deGrasse Tyson. \u201c[May] had a very strong interest in this. And I\u2019ve met him only once,\u201d Tyson said in an interview with Second Listen<\/a>. \u201cBut it makes complete sense that the storyline would have come from him because it\u2019s one of the fundamental things you learn in the beginning of modern physics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyson then explained the science behind time dilation. \u201cIt turns out when you travel at high speeds and other people don\u2019t, then your coordinate system changes for you at a different rate than it does for others. If you travel in space, your space coordinate\u2019s changing and other people isn\u2019t,\u201d Tyson continued. \u201cSo there is a speed and a time with which you can travel and stay away where if you come back after one of your years, Earth could have aged 10 years, 100 years or even a thousand years depending on how fast you moved. So in that sense, yes, we can go to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The many levels of \u201d\u201939\u201d<\/p>\n

The song features a traditional folksy arrangement that builds to a middle that\u2019s pure, classic Queen. It has an atmospheric vocal lift-off with drummer Roger Taylor singing a magnificent high falsetto. In the \u201970s, the band often played the song sea shanty-style with Freddie Mercury on vocals. In recent Queen + Adam Lambert shows, May has played the song on his acoustic alongside Opera staple \u201cLove of\u00a0 My Life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201839\u201d works on many levels. It can be seen first as a traditional folk song, second as a glimpse into the effects of time dilation, and finally, as a metaphor for May leaving familiar surroundings to pursue the rock and roll lifestyle. Though he gained famed and fortune, he was never really able to return home again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt a little like that about my home at the time, having been away and seen this vastly different world of rock music which was totally different from the way I was brought up,\u201d May said, according to The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cPeople may not generally admit it, but I think that when most people write songs there is more than one level to them\u2014 they\u2019ll be about one thing on the surface, but underneath they\u2019re probably trying, maybe even unconsciously, to say something about their own life, their own experience\u2014and in nearly all my stuff, there is a personal feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great art can mean different things to different people, and \u201c\u201939\u201d is so packed with context it even has multiple meanings to its own composer. It\u2019s another reason to keep your ears open when listening to new songs, because they may be about much more than they appear on the surface. Plus, you may even get a lesson in astrophysics.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Released in 1975, Queen\u2019s A Night at the Opera is the band\u2019s top-selling album. It features massive hits,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":997589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[169269,28891,34695,40450,34696,159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-997588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-169269","tag-astrophysics","tag-brian-may","tag-neil-degrasse-tyson","tag-queen","tag-science","tag-space","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117086717971036243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}