Pretty much the last thing any pop songwriter might give two craps about is ensuring that the lyrics of their tween-pleasing ditties square with the best and most recent science. Not Katie Melua, who I guess is the “Norah Jones of the UK.”Because this happened (a few years back, before I was a full-time internet peruser), and it’s pretty amusing. I’ll let the TED talker explain:So that’s what a pop song sounds like when tuned to science.The Telegraph has the full story details:Mr Singh, 41, who has recently written a book on the history of cosmology called Big Bang, described the flaw as “deeply annoying” … “It’s the word ‘guess’ that I rail against. I can guess the lottery numbers for next week but the edge of the universe is better than that. It’s a pretty good estimate, a really well defined number of 13.7 billion light years. After thousands of years of wondering about the universe we’ve now got a number and I just wanted to celebrate that.”
On hearing the lyric Mr Singh … complained that it demonstrated a deep ignorance of cosmology and scientific method. He suggested in a letter to a national newspaper that the internationally renowned star rewrite the song using the scientifically accurate figure of 13.7 billion. He said: "Katie Melua has no right to call the age of the universe “a guess” or quote it as 12 billion years when we now know it to be 13.7 billion years old. You might think that I am being rather uptight, but the role of the scientist is slowly being undermined with a growing belief that scientific results are merely subjective guesses. “In the light of this, I propose that Miss Melua rewrite the verse.”
Obligingly, the amused artist agreed, and returned to the studio to re-record the track for the BBC radio programme Today. Mr Singh added: "We met in the studio when she re-recorded the track and had a chat. It was quite sweet because Katie had been a member of the astrology club when she was at school.
“I have learnt my lesson, I’ve heard my lyrics and they weren’t great so I’m going to step back.” Melua, who despite recording a new version intends to stick with the original, joked yesterday: “It was quite hard to get all the syllables in.”