Queen guitarist, Brian May releases 'New Horizons', January 2019. Photo by Mairo Cinquetti/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Settle in, there is a lot to take in right here. Brian May - celebrated guitar god, songwriter, composer and classic rock superstar is also an astrophysicist. The rockstar scientist's anthem for NASA's ‘New Horizons Probe’ is worth more than just a listen. Study it, the man is an oracle.
From this point forward, we shall respectfully refer to him as Dr May.
Best known for his place in the legendary foursome that was Queen…whose story is currently being told in the , Bohemian Rhapsody biopic…and as the composer of multiple Queen hits, including “We Will Rock You”, Dr. May is in the rare, and possibly exclusively unique, position of being able to call deep space exploration a side hustle.
May was studying astrophysics at Imperial College in London before taking a detour into the rapid rise of Queen. Not bad options to have! As May explained (via TIME):
“When I was about to finish my thesis, it was just the beginnings of Queen and I had to make that choice … my choice was made on the assumption that I wasn’t very good at physics and I might be quite good at music. The thesis I had been working on was on zodiacal dust…the dust clouds in the solar system. When I began, it was a hot topic, but in that 30 years, it kind of lapsed … very luckily for me, however, people began discovering dust clouds around other suns, in other solar systems. And suddenly my subject became very in-demand again. I started talking about astronomy again to people who said, “why don’t you still do it?” I put everything, and I mean everything, on hold for a year. And they put me in a little office in Imperial College and I got down to it.”
And his hard work really paid off, landing him a job on the NASA's New Horizons Probe team, tracking the spacecraft that in 2015 reconnoitered Pluto and then, this New Year’s Eve, flew by Ultima Thule, a 22-mile long bowling pin-shaped object 4 billion miles from Earth…the most distant object a human spacecraft has ever explored.
Dr May’s formal role in the mission role involves data analysis and stereoscopic imagery. But Project Scientist, Alan Stern, was more than aware of his colleague’s vast array of talents and asked him to compose some music for the upcoming fly-by.
“…he called me about 6 months ago and said, “is there any chance you can make music for the new flyby?” And I kind of very nervously said: “okay, let me think about it.” There’s not a lot of things that rhyme with Ultima Thule. But I went away and thought about it. And what hit me was how inspiring the whole project was from the point of view of the human spirit of adventure. So that’s really what I wrote this song about, as a tribute to the New Horizons team.” – Brian May (TIME)
It’s almost impossible to imagine that nerves would even enter into the equation for a man with an unsurpassable successful music career and PhD in Astrophysics under his belt, but thankfully he brushed them aside, dusted off his signature red axe and penned a progressive modern space opera in pure celebration of the elation of possibility.
“The future is beckoning – onwards and upwards we fly!”
- Dr. Brian May, “New Horizons”
With all this talk of space, go on - get your GLAM! on. You know you wanna!
