QUEEN'S BRIAN MAY FINALLY PUBLISHES ASTROPHYSICS THESIS
PASTE MAGAZINE
Decatur, GA, USA
By Henry Freedland
August 7, 2008
Between this day and the next, an ethereal luminescence will pour down from the sky, twisting into view just after sundown in the west, before sunrise in the east. Some will imagine it a false dawn; the more paranoid will assume UFO. But astronomers now understand this nightly celestial secretion, the Zodiacal Light, to be sunlight reflected off space debris near the center of the solar system.
How do we know? Why, with help from the Fabry-Perot Spectrometer, of course, which recorded 250 scans of the light in the early '70s from its Canary Islands location. Diligent astrophysics student Brian May recently published his PhD thesis on the subject, entitled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.
Give it a second.
Yes, that's Brian May, co-founder of legendary progressive/metal/arena/rock band Queen. Shortly after he and his friend Tim Staffell drummed up the idea of Smile, the original incarnation of the group back in 1969, the young astrophile put his studies on the backburner for a few years.
But then Smile took in one Farrokh Bulsara, AKA Freddie Mercury, who renamed the band, which soon began its run as one of the most popular British groups of all time—and it's not like there's an observatory or periodic table in every backstage dressing room from London to Los Angeles.
"I have thoroughly enjoyed my years playing guitar and recording music with Queen, but it's extremely gratifying to see the publication of my thesis," May recently told USA Today. "I've been fascinated with astronomy for years, and I was happy to finally complete my Ph.D. last year and record my studies of the Zodiacal Light in this book."
The guitarist, who finally received a doctorate from Imperial College in London just under a year ago, will soon return to beating paper with rock: Queen, with Paul Rodgers of Bad Company and Free, will release a new album this September and head out on tour to support it this fall. And though there has been no official announcement, here at Paste we imagine that reading the 215-page dissertation gets you a free CD.
As for May, well, it must be said: another goal bites the dust.
