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"Randy Describes Eternity" by Built to Spill
"Randy Describes Eternity" by Built to Spill
One of the dangers of being a scientist is that you tend to overthink things. Take this gem from Perfect From Now On, one of the best albums of the 1990's. Here, Doug Martsch does a pretty good job of, well, describing eternity*. Let's get the gist of it — big object (10 times the size of Jupiter) swings by every once in a while (every thousand years) and you decide to hack at it with a feather, but you're not very good, so you don't hit it too often (hit it once every thousand years). However, you happen to a persistent bugger and you do this long enough really make a dent (you've worn it down to the size of a pea). So, that means you hit it every 1,000,000 years. Now, the diameter of Jupiter is 142,800 km, so ten times that is 14,200,00 km and if you assume that you take 1 micron of the material off each time you hit it, how long is this song actually describing to get down to a pea (~3 cm diameter)? Well, let's figure it out!
The difference in diameter between the object originally and the pea is, oh, 14,199,999,997 cm. If you remove 1 micron (1 micron = 0.0001 cm) every 1,000,000 years, it should only take 142,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to pull off your mythic feat. Wow, that is a long time, isn't it?
And think, you though TIG wasn't going to teach you some science today? Thanks, Built to Spill!
* note: are "eternity" and "infinity" equal? Can two things with undefined bounds be equal? Where are the theoretical mathematicians when you need them?
{iPod Roulette is a daily feature from TIG writer Erik Gonzalez, where he highlights the first track his 11,400 track iPod picks for each day. Think of it as your imaginary daily affirmation. For past rounds of roulette, check the iPod Roulette archives.}
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Erik Gonzalez said on June 26, 2008:
That's awesome! This is science folks ... ! Thanks for checking my work!
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Keith said on June 27, 2008:
To give a little more perspective to the length of time that's being described, consider that the Big Bang occurred less than 14 billion years ago. That is, all the time that has ever been since our universe began is a rounding error in the length of time described in the song.
If one were to construct a timeline which stretched the entire diameter of the Milky Way galaxy (100,000 light years or 9.461×10 to the 18 km) which corresponds to the length of time described in this song, the distance on this timeline representing the time between the Big Bang and today would be roughly 100 nanometers. 100nm is very roughly 1/1000 the diameter of a human hair.
My mind is blown, Mr. Martsch.
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Reviews
Keith said on June 26, 2008:
I hate to be pedantic, but I'm a bit of a math-geek, so I can't help myself.
The song doesn't say that you only hit it once every thousand attempts, but rather "hit it once every thousand years", or each time it comes within reach. So you're actually quite adept at hitting the sphere with your feather.
Also, I would tend to interpret "ten times the size of Jupiter" as ten times larger by volume rather than ten times the diameter, though the song is not clear on this point. (I guess I'll have to ask Doug Martsch someday -- hopefully we end up spending eternity in the same place.)
If we imagine an object ten times larger than Jupiter by volume, you've got a "metal sphere" that is by volume roughly 1.43128 times 10 to the 16th km³ (14,312,800,000,000,000 cubic kilmeters) with a diameter of just over 300,000 km.
Let's assume that the unidentified metal is iron (since that is the most plentiful metal in the universe). The density of iron is 7.86 X 10 to the 15th g/km³ (7.86e+15 g/km³), so our sphere will weigh roughly 1.125 times 10 to the 32nd grams.
Let's now (very charitably) assume that you remove 1/10 of a gram of material with each swipe of your feather. Ignoring the negligible pea sized remainder, it will take 1.125 times 10 to the 37th years (11,250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years) to whittle this sphere down.
And that absolutely unimaginable length of time is still "only half a blink" in eternity. All in all this is one of the best descriptions of something almost indescribable that I have encountered...and certainly the best in a pop song.