physics

Van der Graaf Generator - Interference Patterns - live in Trieste Rock Festival 02 August 2009.

It may be an interesting challenge to compile a list of Peter's songs that mention physics.
Stranger Still is one of the better known, with its discussion of entropy - though many may miss the title's sideways allusion to quarks.
The neutron star reference in Every Bloody Emperor may even have escaped Kuky's all-seeing eye.

Physics can be fun!

In the here and now....
Between sensation at the nerve-ends
and arrival of information at the cortex
time elapses.
So, you see, each time we touch
we did so in the past.

Now, lover,
slicing through time in a perfect curve,
Due for a moment of energy;
somehow we'll get what we most deserve
in the here and now.

In the here and now,
although completely different people
in the moments before and after having sex,
we are time-locked.
Cracked, forgotten statues,
we are strangled in the undergrowth,
lost in ancient magic, we are motion,

All that we see illusory
every assumption based on blind faith alone....
On with the motley, bring it home!

Everything's formed from particles,
all that you see is a construction of waves.
Hold onto both thoughts,
under general relativity
the cradle connected to the grave.

Luminous Aether dissipates,
Michelson-Morley with a point to disprove,
Millikan oil drops
and the cargo-cult science evaporates,
improbable physics on the move.

Nearer and nearer,
it's clear that in interference
what happens when matter shatters

All that we see illusory
every assumption based on blind faith alone....
On with the motley, bring it home!

Everything's formed from particles,
all that you see is a construction of waves.
Hold onto both thoughts,
under general relativity
the cradle connected to the grave.

Luminous Aether dissipates,
Michelson-Morley with a point to disprove,
Millikan oil drops
and the cargo-cult science evaporates,
improbable physics on the move.

Nearer and nearer,
it's clear that in interference
what happens when matter shatters

I'm getting the idea, I haven't got a clue.
As my fabulous career ends up dead in the gutter
the stars are shining down right on cue.
It's not much of a shock, it comes as no surprise
that changing all the locks when the horses have bolted
is a useless exercise.
And play it how I will and say it as I may
I won't pick that poison pill as a effortless exit
from the Mystery Play.

I'm so glad I'm still here to see this,
the break of day at the end of the long dark night...

All's not as it appears, this tale has many twists -
but if I wasn't here documenting the story

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room
of the patient mind;
raging at the illness
when the rage may be its cause,
the purpose of the will is lost
in the search for an escape clause.

Fatal convalescence,
the wound becomes a weal;
the poison is in essence just
the virus of the real.
But there's sympathetic healing,
the power of the soul bandages,
concealing all that we can't control.

Waiting for the doctor to come.

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room

Stranger still in another town,
how normal to sit out the dance,
eating the good meal by myself,
toasting the empty glass
and they're already setting out the next place,
already forgetting about the last.
No, nothing could be less strange:
in entropy
no change, no change, no change.

No danger in a normal life,
better steady down the adrenalin pump.
Excess refraction in the mirror
only leads to the quantum jump....
Oh, but it leaves me in limbo -
how strange, what a stranger I become.
No, no, nothing could be less strange,
in entropy

Once, all the stars in the sky were bright,
now they're red and fading
and all the colours we wore, the shades that we bore
have moved.
And the gold turns to red with no time for changes.
Red Shift, all moving away from we.

Once, constellations were holy, now darkness
pervades all the older ones
and in the brunt of implosion, all yesterday's golden
now reddened suns
and hope is a word with no space for blame in.
Red Shift, displaced now in time and relativity,
Red Shift, all moving away from we.

So here I am, though I might well be with me,

They say we are endowed with Free Will -
at least that justifies our need for indecision.
But between our instincts and the lust to kill
we bow our heads in submission.
They say that no man is an island
but then they say our castles are our homes;
it's felt the choice is ours, between peace and violence...
oh, yes, we choose, alone?

While the comet spreads its tail across the sky
it nowhere near defines the course it flies,
nor does it find its own direction.

Though the path of the comet be sure,
its constitution is not
so its meaning is possibly more