I'm in here researching, I'm watching, I'm spinning the atoms They crash for me, yeah they crash for me Discov'ry, the law'll be lovely They'll go round and prove my the-o-ry And it makes me smile, like I'm finding God Except I don't believe in God Just a bunch of laws That determine what we go through Two laws for the forces that control you One of them describes things like EM, strong and weak One's for gravity, because gravity's a freak But infinities I'll push aside To make the Grand Unified I said, (CHORUS) I want one big law To help explain these Strange and charm kinds of quarks, baby, baby I want one big law Not leaving any force behind The sky it is dark, it is cold It is over ten billion years old And I wish I could get back there, Some time back there, Looking at inflation taking place, Seeing the Big Bang and how it generated space, It will stop, it won't go crunch, I must guess 'Coz the mass we see is a tenth, more or less, Of what is out there. So take my word for it, baby, It's all cold and dark. I said it's cold and dark. I said How do we go out there to Determine why space is smooth around us? When will we fin'ly get to prove That protons decay? (CHORUS) I believe in a final theory Cause I have a feeling, A certain feeling, Like we've seen all there is to see And the Strong Anthropic is a lie -- No evidence that IQ means design -- The weak one is all right, all right And when strings came up they said I was crazy I see what they mean The dimensions extreme There are 10 through which strings glide And 16 more that just like to hide But like every scientist, I must guess Since no quark found is partnerless This spiffy new theory will pass the test Explaining just why physics is in such a mess, now One Big equation It's symmetric But there's something that throws it off (just a little now) Watch that break, see what it can do Make quarks, in red and green and blue (gluons too) And I sit here in my lab Doing research on things too small to see Because I believe, now Believe ... (FINAL CHORUS) I'll find one big law To spend my research ... grant, baby, I'll find one big law Not listening when you say We can't We can't ... (repeats, out)
Scansion has forced me into a few compromises (such as the age of the universe being "over ten billion" years old -- true by virtually all estimates, but almost certainly too low), and my layman's understanding of particle physics may have caused a slip or two, but you physicists out there should still get a kick out of it. E-mail me if any of my physics is egregiously wrong or out of date.
Sources: The End of Physics, David Lindley, Basic Books, 1994; Dreams of a Final Theory, Steven Weinberg, Vintage Books, 1994; Third Eye Blind, Third Eye Blind, Elektra, 1997
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