{"id":18206,"date":"2018-12-31T18:36:59","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T10:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/queens-rock-star-astrophysicist-brian-may-debuts-his-space-anthem-for-a-far-out-trip\/"},"modified":"2018-12-31T18:36:59","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T10:36:59","slug":"queens-rock-star-astrophysicist-brian-may-debuts-his-space-anthem-for-a-far-out-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/queens-rock-star-astrophysicist-brian-may-debuts-his-space-anthem-for-a-far-out-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen\u2019s rock-star astrophysicist Brian May debuts his space anthem for a far-out trip"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_471191\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-471191\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-471191\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181231-may1-630x578.jpg\" alt=\"Brian May\" width=\"630\" height=\"578\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181231-may1-630x578.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181231-may1-768x704.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181231-may1-1260x1155.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181231-may1.jpg 1842w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-471191\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brian May, who is the lead guitarist for the rock group Queen as well as a Ph.D. astrophysicist, shows off his New Horizons mission patch during a Q&amp;A with journalists. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>LAUREL, Md. \u2014 After you\u2019ve participated in NASA\u2019s New Horizons mission to the edge of the solar system, and written a rock anthem for the mission as well, what is there left to do? For Brian May, the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen who went on to&nbsp;earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics, maybe it\u2019s taking a trip to space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m probably too old to do that,\u201d the 71-year-old British rocker said at first. \u201cA little too old in the tooth to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, after a moment of reflection, he changed his tune.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI probably still would like to, yeah,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t really fancy the idea of going up and having a few seconds and then coming back down again. That doesn\u2019t appeal to me. What appeals to me more is, for instance, the ISS [International Space Station], where you can go up there and you sit there and contemplate the world which you were born on, and watch it turn underneath you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also might fancy a trip around the moon, like the one that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa plans to take on SpaceX\u2019s Starship in the 2020s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow incredible would that be?\u201d he said here at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory during a Q&amp;A with journalists. \u201cI\u2019ve been lucky enough to meet a number of the men who walked on the moon, and they all, I think, have a spiritual quality which is beyond what any of us have understood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hours later, May took the wraps off a song that he wrote to celebrate New Horizons\u2019 flyby past Ultima Thule, an icy object more than 4 billion miles from Earth. May said he wrote the song in response to a request from Alan Stern, the mission\u2019s principal investigator.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Brian May - New Horizons (Ultima Thule Mix) [Official Music Video]\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/j3Jm5POCAj8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>May joked that he wasn\u2019t immediately sold on the idea, \u201cbecause I can\u2019t think of anything that rhymes with \u2018Ultima Thule.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>But he quickly embraced the idea of writing a rock song that paid tribute to explorers of the farthest frontiers, including the New Horizons spacecraft. \u201cThis has gone way beyond where anyone else has gone before,\u201d May said.<\/p>\n<p>May teased the song in a smattering of sample clips on Instagram over the weeks leading up to New Horizons\u2019 flyby, but tonight\u2019s music video marked the first performance of the entire album. It incorporates a sound bite from the late physicist Stephen Hawking, who once said \u201cthe revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now that the song has made its debut, it will be made available via iTunes, YouTube and other streaming outlets, May said.<\/p>\n<p>So what about coming up with that rhyme for \u201cUltima Thule\u201d? May said he still shies away from that challenge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThink I would go and make a fool-ee of myself?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other riffs from Brian May:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>May stressed that he was attending this week\u2019s festivities as a scientist rather than a rock star. \u201cI\u2019m not here as a celebrity,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m here to work, and I love it.\u201d His specialty is creating 3-D images of astronomical objects, including the Rosetta mission\u2019s view of Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and New Horizons\u2019 view of Pluto&nbsp;\u2014 and he\u2019s hoping the Ultima Thule flyby will yield a fresh batch of stereoscopic images.<\/li>\n<li>3-D imagery is more than a scientific interest of May\u2019s. \u201cMy spirit is kind of anchored in Victorian times,\u201d he said. That\u2019s why he has revived the London Stereoscopic Company, which was famous in the 19th century for its stereoscopic scenes of London. May has created his own 3-D viewing system, known as the Owl viewer, and makes use of the technology in two recently published books: \u201cQueen in 3-D\u201d and&nbsp;\u201cMission Moon 3-D.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>May says he\u2019s happy with the way he was portrayed in \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d the film about Queen and its flamboyant lead vocalist, the late Freddie Mercury. May had warm words of praise for the actor who played May\u2019s part, Gwilym Lee&nbsp;\u2014 particularly for his ability to mimic May\u2019s voice. \u201cHe even fooled my kids,\u201d May said. The way May tells it, his children were sure that his own voice had been dubbed into the movie.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian May, who is the lead guitarist for the rock group Queen as well as a Ph.D. astrophysicist, shows off his New Horizons mission patch during a Q&amp;A with journalists. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) LAUREL, Md. \u2014 After you\u2019ve participated in NASA\u2019s New Horizons mission to the edge of the solar system, and written [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2786,4547,4809,2174,4810,5089,5090,2937],"class_list":["post-18206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-brian-may","tag-music","tag-nasa-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons-probe","tag-queen","tag-rock","tag-ultima-thule"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}