Song, er, Singh of the Nitpickers

[beamjockey]

The new issue of Symmetry hit the streets. In it is Simon Singh's account of the mock feud he got into with pop singer Katie Melua.

Originally, the song went:


We are 12 billion light years from the edge
That’s a guess
No one can ever say it’s true
But I know that I will always be with you.

Singh persuaded her to re-record the song with more scientifically accurate lyrics:

We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe
That’s a good estimate with well defined error bars
Scientists say it’s true, but acknowledge that it may be refined
And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.


He writes, "Thanks to my flippant spat with Katie, people who would never think of picking up my 500-page book on the big bang were getting a dose of cosmology. As a writer who wants to get people excited about science, the writing of the original article was probably the most productive hour of my career."

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I don't have any idea about the actual song, but just reading the lyrics, the original sounds sappy and empty and the update makes me laugh, so in the printed form, it's clearly better.