"Why Does The Sun Shine?" - They Might Be Giants, 1993 (alternative indie rock)

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees.

The sun is hot
The sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives.

We need its light
We need its heat
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy.

The sun is hot

The sun is so hot that everything on it is a gas:
Aluminum, copper, iron, and many others.

The sun is large

If the sun were hollow a million Earth's would fit inside
And yet it is only a middle-sized star.

The sun is far away

About 93 million miles away
That's why it looks so small

But even when its out of sight
The sun shines night and day.

Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine.
The heat and light of the sun are caused by nuclear reactions
between hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and helium.

The Sun, ladies and gentlemen. 'Nuff said. Well, maybe not quite 'nuff. The tune is catchy, the cd is pretty good, and the facts are straight. As a matter of fact, while I was looking around for something intelligent to say about the sun that TMBG didn't already, I found the lyrics of this song included in some astronomy lecture notes from some pretty prestigious educational institutions. However, I find that in some aspects these lyrics fall short in discription. Allow me:

• More specifically, 600 million tons of hydrogen are "built into" 596 tons of helium at a temperature of 5800 degrees Kelvin. That's 9,980.33 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's just on the surface where it's cold! The core temperature of the sun is modeled to be 15.5 million degrees Kelvin. That's 27,899,540.33 degrees Fahrenheit. Sunblock anyone?
• Are you always reminding people at home to turn out the light when they leave the room? The sun's luminosity is 390 trillion trillion watts (that's 3.9 with 26 zeros after it) and a "watt" is the amount of light it puts out in 1 second. Since the sun burns night and day, that means that at today's rates, at 6.3 cents per kilowatt hour, your electric bill for ONE DAY (24 hours) would be $5.9 nonillion (yes, it's a word). That's a 5.9 with 30 zeros after it. Better start puttin' in for some overtime.
• It takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth, but for you to outrun the shadow of the setting sun, you would have to travel at 1,038 mph. Fasten your seatbelt!
• "Large" is an understatement. It would only take you about 2 weeks to drive all the way around the Earth at 60 mph. The sun is 2,733,185.6 miles in circumference (870,000 miles in diameter). At 60 mph, it would take you 5 years to drive all the way around...and that's providing you don't stop to eat, sleep, use the restroom, or ask for directions.
• But remember it's only a middle-sized star. Stars the size of our sun are called "dwarf stars"...probably because the largest stars, called "giants" and "supergiants" that can be hudreds of times larger across than our sun. For example, Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation is 650 times larger in diameter than the sun.

I hope that clears up some of the ambiguity that the song leaves us with about certain things. Just please don't ask me to sing all of that.

"Why Does The Sun Shine?" - They Might Be Giants, 1993

~sun facts from stellar places such as Ohio State University's astronomy department and UC Berkeley's Center for Science Education and many other hot spots. The math is all mine, so if it's wrong, be a sport and give it a little help.

"Enola Gay" - O.M.D., 1980 (synthpop)

Enola Gay, you should have stayed at home yesterday
Aha words can't describe the feeling and the way you lied

These games you play, they're gonna end in more than tears someday
Aha Enola Gay, it shouldn't ever have to end this way

It's 8:15, and that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio, conditions normal and you're coming home

Enola Gay, is mother proud of little boy today
Aha this kiss you give, it's never ever gonna fade away

Enola Gay, it shouldn't ever have to end this way
Aha Enola Gay, it shouldn't fade in our dreams away

It's 8:15, and that's the time that it's always been
We got your message on the radio, conditions normal and you're coming home

Enola Gay, is mother proud of little boy today
Aha this kiss you give, it's never ever gonna fade away

True to the spirit of the 80's, O.M.D.'s (Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark) 1980 hit "Enola Gay" is a bright, catchy, poppy tune...with some incredibly dark and sinister lyrics. But that's all part of the idea, sometimes, isn't it - to get an otherwise hush-hush topic on the lips of thousands of people by making it cute or catchy? Sardonic gallows humor at its best. The song soared to No. 8 on the UK charts.

The Enola Gay was an aircraft - the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan in WWII on August 6, 1945. Enola Gay, in the song, is "mother" - impregnated with a "Little Boy" bomb that would go down in infamy.

Little Boy was the codename of that nuclear bomb, which was deployed over the city at 8:15 am that morning. It was dropped three days prior to the "Fat Man" bomb was used on Nagasaki. It exploded with a destructive power equivalent to 13-16 kilotons of TNT and killed approximately 140,000 unsuspecting civilians. Death was immediate and occurred either by blast, fire, or radiation. The death toll of this explosion is technically unknown because any people within the blast area were instantly cremated. The figures of those deaths are estimates gathered from area population information.

The first effect of a nuclear explosion is blinding light and then radiant heat from the fireball. Little Boy's fireball was 1,200 feet across. This intense fire melted glass and any water-based organisms (aka living things) were vaporized instantly. The blaze was even enough to vaporize one anonymous subject yet leave his shadow permanently etched on the stone steps of a bank building. But the bomb's fire isn't alone. This blaze would ignite secondary fires with electrical shorts and combustible and flammable materials.

Little Boy's blast, the fireball, was a result of x-ray heated air and sent shock and pressure waves travelling through the air at the speed of sound, which is the same as hearing a thunder roll. The blast levelled an area two miles in diameter from the detonation site, even turning buildings into kindling and rubble in a matter of seconds.

There were survivors, however to survive a nuclear explosion is only to die in the following fallout - the air particulate in the detonation zone and surrounding - contaminated with radioactive fission particles. The fallout area, sadly, is much larger than the blast and fire areas. They are easily spread by wind, rise up to the stratosphere, dissipate, and actually become part of the global environment forever. Thousands died in subsequent years due to the radioactive contamination of the area. Millions more suffered physical defects and serious illnesses as a result of the fallout.

The dropping of Little Boy by Enola Gay was a huge mistake, and as the song suggests, the Enola Gay should have stayed home that day.

"Enola Gay" - O.M.D., 1980

(compiled from various sources)