Gravitational Waves Explained To The Beat Of ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ Sounds Awesome

Gravitational Waves Explained To The Beat Of ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ Sounds Awesome

Are you tired of hearing about how awesome it is that we’ve discovered gravitational waves? LIGO is so last month, right? Here’s something to make the topic seem fresh and wondrous again: a delightful a cappella parody music video, set to the tune of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face”, by A Capella Science.

A Capella Science is the creation of physics aficionado Tim Blais. As Blais told the folks at Perimeter Institute, he joined his mum’s church choir when he was just three “and simultaneously discovered Bill Nye the Science Guy”. So combining music with science comes pretty naturally to him. He got the idea for A Capella Science while procrastinating one night over his master’s thesis in string theory.

The result was “Rolling in the Higgs”, a parody of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, about the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. Blais had no idea it would go viral. “If I’d known so many people would see that video, I would have sung it better,” he confessed. He’s making a cappella parody videos ever since, spending a good 200 hours of work on each one.

Given his love for physics, it’s not surprising that his latest effort is all about LIGO and the chirp heard ’round the world — the first direct detection of gravitational waves, and the first evidence for binary black holes. Check it out:

And here’s his classic parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, inspired by his master’s thesis, for good measure (“Bohemian Gravity“).

Space is a pure void
Why should it be stringy?
Because it’s quantum not classical
Nonrenormalizable
Any way you quantize
You’ll encounter infinity
You see

Rock on with your bad aca-self, Mr Blais. Rock on.

[Perimeter Institute]


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