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Star Stuff

by Chris Harris

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1.
Star Stuff 04:35
Hydrogen. It all begins with hydrogen. Hydrogen plus hydrogen gives heliium Helium plus helium plus helium gives carbon Carbon plus helium gives oxygen Oxygen plus helium gives neon Everything's made from star stuff Everything's made from star stuff Neon plus helium gives magnesium Magnesium plus helium gives silicon Silicon plus helium gives sulphur Sulphur plus helium gives argon Neon fusion takes a year Silicon, a day Argon plus helium gives calcium Calcium plus helium gives titanium Titanium plus helium gives chromium Chromium plus helium gives iron Iron is the ash that's left from burnt-out stars
2.
(Instrumental)
3.
If you're burning bright, you're burning fast It's good to be the King But enjoy your reign, because it won't last Fading out is not your thing And one day, when you're old and vast, alarm bells will start to ring Not one to go quietly, even if you could Folk are going to notice when you call it quits for good If you've gotta go BANG You've gotta go BANG and show that you're a superstar But the way you go BANG if you've gotta go BANG shows just what kind of star you are When you can't get a reaction, you shrivel up inside You're running out of road The flames that once sustained you have all guttered out and died Your bounce back is beginning to forebode You scatter heavy elements galore to far and wide as in a blaze of glory you explode But maybe you're not big enough to go BANG on your own You need not sit there feeling too depressed Just find a helpful neighbour, don't just fade out all alone A massive one that's close by is the best Skim off their material until you find you've grown big enough to blow up like the rest
4.
Eta Car 04:10
If you were an Aussie who could see in infra-red At night the brightest thing you'd see, directly overhead would be Eta Carinae, a supergiant star As night-sky objects go, it's probably the most bizarre And if you were a Kiwi, who observes in ultra-V "Eta Car" is quite the strangest thing you'll ever see The photons from its hydrogen and iron are so bright that when it shines it does so by emitting laser light Eta Car, Eta Car Absolute unit of a star Going to blow to bits one day Thankfully, it's far away It used to be 250 times the mass of our own Sun but there's little of its stellar lifetime left for it to run A century or two ago it very nearly died Blew thirty solar masses worth of gas into the sky Eta Car, Eta Car Absolute unit of a star Going to blow to bits one day Thankfully, it's far away Space is big; the light in which it's currently portrayed set out towards us well before the pyramids were made Be grateful that our galaxy has lots and lots of room 'cos millions of years from now, it's going to go BOOM but thanks to all the many thousand light years in between us it will most likely shine as bright as we see light from Venus Eta Car, Eta Car Absolute unit of a star Going to blow to bits one day Thankfully, it's far away
5.
(Instrumental)
6.
Born in fire as hydrogen burns Going lower or higher, don't know which way to turn 1700 centuries to escape from the Sun now, eight minutes later your trip to Earth is done Bathing in a furnace of intense heat and light Not at all surprising that you need to shine so bright Pity the poor photon Understand its plight A hundred and seventy thousand years Successful overnight The struggle, sad to say, is just the same as yours and mine Trying to find a way where we've a chance to get to shine All that time Coming and going For suce a crime of a momentary showing Yet each neutrino And trillions more gets here with ease and is totally ignored...
7.
Your appetite's prodigious you don't know when to stop The elephant in the room was pushed aside You'll always keep us waiting for the other shoe to drop, for closure that is endlessly denied You know whatever happens you'll be coming out on top A winner, though you never even tried Behaviour that increasingly goes far beyond the pale You've grown so massive you're simply much too big to fail Heaviest of hitters, infinitely dense Relying on your size your single line of defence What made you so bitter that you totally withdrew? Inside your horizon, you tell yourself: it's all about you Given up pretending that you care what we all think Your character completely irredeemable You're still getting started while we teeter on the brink Empathy, for you, is unachievable Empires rise and fall within the time you take to blink What motivates you simply inconceivable
8.
(Instrumental)
9.
Heliopause 04:25
(Instrumental)
10.
0.0072973525693(11)
11.
Relative directions in matters of the heart Despite a common background we slowly drift apart By day we cannot see the guiding stars we need At night they show where our trajectories will lead It's more than parallax Viewed from eye to eye Your proper motion is revealed as we pass by From our own perspective We see the other move But which of us is static is difficult to prove Close enough as neighbours Occupying space From just part of the landscape To gone without a trace
12.
Interstellar 05:08

about

I recently started writing songs that were inspired by the concepts and facts I read about in my ever-growing collection of popular science books. These songs were an attempt to celebrate just how extraordinary it is that a middling, carbon-based lifeform such as us could have figured out many of the processes by which we came to inhabit a lump of rock drifting about two-thirds of the way out from the centre of our local galaxy.

People seemed to like them. They even passed peer review.

Eventually, of course, I decided that I should release them all as an album. So I embraced my inner nerd and set to writing some even more geeky music to go with them. And this album is the result. It's intended as a joyful celebration of the fact that we're a little less ignorant of how the Universe works now than we were when I was born (back then, continental drift was still a crazy idea rather than accepted fact. Yes, I am old.)

Special thanks should go to Robin Ince, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Professor Brian Cox, Professor Lucie Green, Professor Chris Lintott, Professor Alice Roberts, Dr Helen Czerski, Dr Hannah Fry, Dr Brian May, Dr Adam Rutherford, and many others for providing the inspiration for these songs.

And remember: the stuff from which you're made was literally forged in the fires of a dying star. You are *awesome*.

credits

released July 3, 2022

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Chris Harris Bristol, UK

I'm still trying to get the music I record to sound like the version I can hear in my head. To do this I've ended up playing every instrument I can get my hands on. These days, I'm closer to "That Sound" than I used to be, but the journey continues.

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