Tuesday, November 16, 2010

In The Beginning

Music by David Fowler
Arranged and performed by Echo Movement

Behind the Song

It's hard to romanticize theoretical physics, astronomy and metaphysics, then set it to melody. But we did our best, for now, in this song. Before we get into anything else, we want to say we owe our inspiration for this song to A Briefer History of Time by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Ok...you're probably already familiar with the Big Bang theory, although it's not much a theory anymore because we can observe its effects. Most astrophysicists agree that it may soon graduate to fact. Anyway, the concept in these lyrics is that all physical matter (you, your computer, Earth, the Milky Way and the estimated 100 billion other galaxies) was once squished into an infinitesimally-small ball called a singularity.

From what scientists currently know, the singularity exploded (or just started expanding rapidly) in all directions, simultaneously creating physical matter, dark energy, some rudimentary physics, space itself, and perhaps many other things we've yet to discover. The elements were created within seconds, and started to settle and coalesce over billions of years, thanks to the attraction of particles that we call gravity.

Hard to think that this is all true, but rest assured, this actually happened. I don't remember being born, but I'm pretty sure that happened, too.

Fast forward an estimated 13.7 billion years, and here we are- these things filled with goo on the surface of a huge ball. The pitfalls of humanity all-too-often deny us the fundamental freedom to remember that we are not just connected with the universe...but that we are the universe...and that is a beautiful thing.

Cool Facts
"Today we know that stars visible to the naked eye make up only a minute fraction of all the stars. We can see about five thousand stars, only about .0001 percent of all the stars in just our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way itself is but one of more than a hundred billion galaxies that can be seen using modern telescopes - and each galaxy contains on average some one hundred billion stars. If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball more than eight miles wide."
- Professor Stephen Hawking
A Briefer History of Time
The intro sound clip for In The Beginning is the real Professor Stephen Hawking during a live lecture.

Nobody knows yet where the singularity came from, but there are many theories about how this universe will end. The cyclic model theorizes the universe we know is just one life in an infinite cycle of expansion and contraction. In this scenario, the singularity expands, a universe (including "life") takes form over the course of billions/trillions of years, but gravity ultimately pulls all the matter back into a singularity, annihilating everything in the process...then starts all over again. Other theories include the big chill, the big crunch and the big rip. Read this awesome article at the Hubble site for the story behind the current theories.

Check out inspiring and thought-provoking images of the universe at the official site for the Hubble Telescope.

It's no coincidence that "in the beginning" is also the first three words of the Old Testament. Most members of Echo Movement are free thinkers and don't recognize a religious deity...this song talks about the real story of Genesis. No talking snakes, no garden, no incest...just straight-up physics.

Key Phrase
"It's all a distant part of me."

Music and Lyrics
[A Dm or A Bdim]

Stephen Hawking:
"The expansion of the universe was one of the most important intellectual discoveries of the 20th Century, or of any century. It transformed the debate about whether the universe had a beginning."
[Everything we see was once a little part of everything we touch]
"If galaxies are moving apart now, they must have been closer together in the past. If their speed had been constant, they would have all been on top of one another about 15 billion years ago. Was this the beginning of the universe?"

In the beginning there was just a ball
No bigger than an atom
Floating all alone in a dark room with no borders
And all the stars that glow, and seas, and people you know, we were together
A time when things were better

This was history's most peaceful time for us
We were always tight
Without a fight, we floating through the nighttime before order
And you and me and all the stars and seas and trees, we were together
A time when things were better

All we know is 15 billion years ago
The peace was suddenly shattered
A chain reaction blew us all apart like it never mattered
And you and me and all the things we know and see got torn from each other
The Big Bang is our mother

Everything we see
Was once a little part of everything we touch
Was just as much a part of those we love and hate
Can't separate them from the waves out on the sea
It's all a distant part of me

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