1. |
The Ballad of Carl Sagan
02:39
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He was born and raised in Brooklyn where he wondered ‘bout the stars
Insatiably curious about this universe of ours
Universe of ours, universe of ours
Everywhere he went he always tried to understand
The mysteries of the stars and the conundrum that is man
Conundrum that is man, conundrum that is man
Straight outta Brooklyn like a comet to the stars
Carl’s mind wandered from this pale blue dot of ours
He had ideas about the planets that tested quite well
Launched a bunch of missions when he worked with JPL
Worked with JPL, worked with JPL
Mariner, Galileo, Viking, Voyager 1 and 2
He even lent a hand to the manned mission to the moon
Manned mission to the moon, manned mission to the moon
Straight outta Brooklyn like a comet to the stars
Carl’s mind wandered from this pale blue dot of ours
He went on TV and pointed to the sky
Said we’re probably not alone but need a skeptical eye
Need a skeptical eye, need a skeptical eye
He used Drake’s equation to calculate the chance
That somewhere there’s a planet with impressive intelligence
Impressive intelligence, impressive intelligence
Straight outta Brooklyn like a comet to the stars
Carl’s mind wandered from this pale blue dot of ours
For a man who spent such time with his eyes fixed above
He kept his two feet planted on the planet that he loved
Planet that he loved, planet that he loved
Carl surely proved that a skeptical mind
Could still be filled wonder and the mysteries of mankind
Mysteries of mankind, mysteries of mankind
Straight outta Brooklyn like a comet to the stars
Carl’s mind wandered from this pale blue dot of ours
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2. |
Continental Drift
03:03
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In the year of 1910 there was a scientist
whose name was Alfred Wegener
He noticed that the continents looked just like
pieces of a broken puzzle
By 1915 he called it Continental Drift
It caused a rift
With his fellow scientists
Who sang:
Ha! Ha! Alfred Wegener!
You are a crazy man!
Ha! Ha! Alfred Wegener!
You are a crazy little man!
They reminded him he had no proof for how or why
the continents could do this
And until you show just how or why
you merely have one interesting hypothesis
Until this evidence we see
You don’t have a theory!
Ha! Ha! Alfred Wegener!
You are a crazy man!
Ha! Ha! Alfred Wegener!
You are a crazy little man!
In the year of 1930, on an expedition to Greenland
Wegener got caught in a blizzard
When they finally found him, it was much, oh much too late
And they buried him in an icy mausoleum
Thirty years after he died
A new idea came to light
(Plate Tectonics, Plate Tectonics)
It changed the way geologists saw the world
And brought Continental Drift back to life
Now everybody sings:
Yee haw! Alfred Wegener!
You are a brilliant man!
Yee haw! Alfred Wegener!
You are a brilliant, brilliant man!
Continental Drift! Alfred Wegener’s theory!
Continental Drift! Alfred Wegener’s theory!
Continental Drift! Alfred Wegener’s theory!
Continental Drift! Alfred Wegener’s brilliant theory!
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3. |
Seismograph
02:33
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Deep beneath the surface
Where tectonic plates collide
The crust is slowly shifting
From the heat on the inside
The pressure builds up
Year after year
Till the pressure's so strong
Something's got to give
Then the plates finally slip
And the energy's released
And the ground begins to shake
Right beneath your feet
Here come the P-waves
(primary waves are the fastest seismic wave)
Here come the S-waves
(secondary waves are slower but much stronger)
Here come the surface waves
(when P-waves and S-waves reach the surface)
Oh no,
What's that?
Did you feel that?
Well it's an EARTHQUAKE!
(and the seismic waves are moving)
Well it's an EARTHQUAKE!
(the clock is falling off the mantel)
Well it's an EARTHQUAKE!
(just stay calm, try to relax
as the seismologists keep track
as it scratches on the seismograph)
The earth's rocky crust
Is broken into plates
They're moving all the time
But at a very slow rate
Convection currents from
Deep in the mantle
Push on the crust
Till it's hard to handle
But every now and then
The plates get stuck
And the pressure builds up
And the pressure builds up
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4. |
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So you’re sitting on your futon and your thoughts turn to cosmology
And how we’re tiny specks adrift in space
And you realize where you sit is really just the start of it
As your mind begins to wander from this place
For your futon’s in a room and the room is in a house
Or an apartment on a block in a neighborhood
And whether homely, plain or pretty, it’s in a town or in a city
Just like you’d expect a neighborhood would
And at this time I should relate
The city’s in a county and the county’s in a state
The state’s in a country and the country’s in a continent no matter how you scan it
And I’d like to make it clear that the continent's in a hemisphere
Which is part of a bigger sphere we call a planet
And you're sitting on your futon
And your thoughts turn to cosmology
Our planet’s in a system which revolves around a star
Called the Sun which is 93 million miles away
And the Sun’s in the outer arm of a spiral-shaped galaxy of stars
Which the ancient Greeks named the Milky Way
And the Milky Way is part of something called the Local Group
Which contains our galaxy and roughly 30 more
And the Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster
Containing galaxies, nebulae and quasars
And everywhere in the universe you look, in every cranny and every nook
Are superclusters brimming with billions of stars
And you're sitting on your futon
And your thoughts turn to cosmology
Now here’s the trippy part, the part that may just blow your mind,
For stars are made of elements, as you may know
The elements found in stars are in birds and trees and cars
As well as rocks and air and Grandma’s cookie dough
Yes, the building blocks of the sun are everywhere and in everyone
Including you and me and your crazy Uncle Leon
They have names that are quite common like helium, hydrogen and carbon
And stranger ones like beryllium and neon
But to see the magic of these stars you needn’t travel oh so far
Or blast off in your custom-made spaceship
For the elements found in space can even be found inside this place
And in your futon where you sit there eating corn chips
And you're sitting on your futon
And your thoughts turn to cosmology
And you sit there on your futon
And you wonder, what exactly is a futon?
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5. |
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Well he was brought before the court in 399 B.C.
And he was charged with corrupting the youth
He was sentenced to death for his impiety
But his only crime was that he spoke the truth
(chorus)
Socrates, oh Socrates
The Athenians simply couldn't bring you to your knees
The figured if they could kill the man then they could stop his ways
And them low down dirty rotten Grecian scoundrels
Who cast their wicked votes in their comfortable sandals
Laid Socrates in his grave
The oracle it claimed he was the wisest man alive
So he set out to prove it wrong
But every wise man that he met was filled with arrogance and pride
And he found that he just could not play along
(chorus)
A wise man, he said, is not a man who claims he's wise
But a man who admits what he does not know
And man of high esteem is far less likely to be wise
Than a simple man who is considered low
(chorus)
So they cast their votes and they voted for death
It seemed a crime against the very universe
But before he drank that hemlock he said, All is as I've said
For a better man can't be hurt by a worse
(chorus)
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6. |
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They carry tiny hammers,
They're chipping at the crust.
Like a John Fante novel
They're inclined to ask the dust.
Converging on the continents,
They're fearless and they're brave,
Cruising down through canyons
And exploring every cave.
Uncovering the mysteries
Of the planet's history,
Deep into the Cambrian
For all the world to see.
The geologists are coming!
Yes, they're trudging down the hill.
When they say that mountain's young
They're talking ten to twenty mil.
They're classifying rocks
From destruction to rebirth
The geologists are coming!
They're converging on the Earth!
The G is for granite,
The E is for eon,
O is the outcrop
Which they're inclined to be on.
L is for the layers
Showing how things have evolved
The O is for "Oh, my!
Another puzzle to be solved."
The second G is meant to give
A little bit more insight
For nine times out of ten
A granite rock is granodiorite
The I is for igneous,
The S is for sand,
T is for the timeline
That they're holding in their hand.
The geologists are coming!
They're emerging from their tents,
Braving steep volcanoes
To explore volcanic vents.
They take note of the processes
That shape the planet's crust.
They're driven to inquire,
Explore this Earth they must!
The geologists are coming!
Yes, they're trudging down the hill.
When they say that mountain's young
They're talking ten to twenty mil.
They're classifying rocks
From destruction to rebirth.
The geologists are coming!
They're converging on the Earth!
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7. |
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It is often erroneously taught that when Columbus set sail in 1492 he proved the Earth was round. But in the 3rd Century B.C. a Greek mathematician, poet, scientist and librarian named Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth some 1700 years before Columbus' voyage. He is known to be the first man who accurately measured the wold.
Draw a line way back in time
Calculate the date and you'll find
He's the man who measured the world
He's the man who measured the world
Eratosthenes, who lived in Alexandria, learned that on the summer solstice in the town of Syene, sticks and columns cast no shadows at noon. But in Alexandria, which was north of Syene, they did cast shadows. He concluded that the only way to account for this was if the surface of the Earth was curved.
Draw a line way back in time
Calculate the date and you'll find
He's the man who measured the world
He's the man who measured the world
Eratosthenes then measured the distance from Alexandria to Syene and found it to be 800 kilometers. The distance between the cities on a curved surface came out to 7 degrees. He then multiplied 800 kilometers by 50, since 7 degrees is 1/50th the circumference of a circle, and got 40, 000 kilometers, an incredibly accurate answer for a man who never left the city of Alexandria, but ended up calculating the circumference of the world.
Draw a line way back in time
Calculate the date and you'll find
He's the man who measured the world
He's the man who measured the world
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8. |
Asteroid, Asteroid
01:14
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Asteroid, asteroid
Hope we don’t sound paranoid
But you are gainfully employed
In wiping out the human race
Asteroid, asteroid
You could make us null and void
If your orbit can’t avoid
Colliding with the planet Earth
All throughout our his’try
You’ve earned a rare distinction
You’ve got a nasty habit
Of causing mass extinction
Asteroid, asteroid
Can’t blame us if we’re annoyed
On behalf of every anthropoid
We wish you’d change your course
(whistle solo)
Asteroid, asteroid
We can take your picture with a Polaroid
But the question is: can we avoid
You wiping out the human race?
All throughout our hist’ry
You’ve earned a rare distinction
You’ve got a nasty habit
Of causing mass extinction
Extinction, extinction
K.T. Extinction
Extinction, extinction
Permian-Triassic extinction
Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhhhhhh
Asteroid, asteroid
Hope we don’t sound paranoid
But you are gainfully employed
In wiping out the human race
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9. |
Mineral Man
01:43
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A mineral is a substance
It's surely not alive
It has a chemical structure
That's how it's built inside
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh
Mineral Man
Mineral Man
In the early 1800s
That's how the story goes
There was a mineralogist
And his name was Friedrich Mohs
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh
Mineral Man
Mineral Man
He classified the minerals
On a scale of one to ten
He judged them by their hardness
Now let's count them down again
1-talc
2-gypsum
3-calcite
4-flourite
5-apatite (I'm hungry)
6-feldspar
7-quartz
8-topaz
9-corundum
10-diamond (not included--and we should not here that for some strange reason diamonds are NEVER included in minerals sets that are used for educational purposes and we just can't seem to figure out why)
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER!
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh
Mineral Man
Mineral Man
(repeat ad nauseum)
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10. |
The Ecliptic Plane
02:29
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Every time you look into the sky at night and see a planet
You will notice you can trace the planets in a line
Called the ecliptic plane
The ecliptic plane
It's sort of like concentric hula hoops around the Sun
And every hula hoop's an orbit at about the same level
The ecliptic plane
The ecliptic plane
(chorus)
Around the Sun we go
All along the ecliptic plane
Round and round we float
All along the ecliptic plane
Along the ecliptic plane
Hey now, here we go
Every time you look into the sky at night and see a planet
You will notice you can trace the planets in a line
Called the ecliptic plane
The ecliptic plane
Every now and then the Moon will pass across the plane
Thus creating an eclipse--that's how it got its name
The ecliptic plane
(repeat chorus)
The ecliptic plane
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11. |
Dear Pluto
02:02
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Dear Pluto,
How are you?
I’m writing because you’ve been the source
Of some controversy here on Earth
And I’d like to reassure you
That no matter how you’re categorized
You’re still our favorite object in the night sky
Dear Pluto
But how did it come to this?
Let’s go back . . .
To the beginning
Once upon a time back in 1930
With a pioneering spirit unwaveringly sturdy
Clyde Tombaugh discovered you
A faint little speck beyond Neptune
Your name was selected by a little girl
For the Roman god of the underworld
You were called the ninth planet and everyone was smitten
If the sun were a mama cat you were its smallest kitten
But all of the while you acted quite strange
From time to time your orbit would change
You’d take a short cut across Neptune’s orbit
The clearest pictures that we had were badly distorted
Years passed by and technology progressed
With high-powered telescopes they put you to the test
Soon it was clear that the astrophysicists
Found some things that they could not dismiss
They learned you’re in a place called the Kuiper Belt
And if you were closer to the sun then you’d probably melt
And to top it all off there was something new
There was an object farther out that was bigger than you
They found much more and they couldn’t ignore it
So they had to make a new category for it
You’re now called a dwarf in this new category
And supposedly that’s not meant to be derogatory
Change is something we cannot avoid
But you’ll always be our favorite planetoid
Dear Pluto
Goodbye to a categorical designation
Is not farewell to a friend
You’ll always matter
Dear Pluto
Dear Pluto
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12. |
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The Amoeba People Lakewood, California
The Amoeba People are musical ambassadors from the Planet Crouton, here to learn about our world, to unravel the wonders of its natural history, to study the life which inhabits it and to parse the mysteries of the human species by learning its dance moves. The band consists of Mr. Hedgpeth (captain), Mr. Jordan (navigator), and Mr. Mosley (engineer and technician). ... more
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