dissertation brian may

A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud

• © 2007
• Brian Harold May 0

Astrophysics Group Department of Physics, Imperial College, London, UK

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• Written by Brian May, guitarist of the legendary rock band, Queen

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Brian Harold May

Preparations and experimental details 1971–1974

Reduction of the data, interpretation of results in terms of physical models, current developments and future plans, back matter.

• Brian May PhD
• Brian May thesis
• Brian May's research
• El Teide observations
• Imperial College London
• Solar System
• Zodiacal Dust Cloud
• dust in solar system
• musician scientist
• zodiacal light book
• zodiacal light explained

About this book

Authors and affiliations, about the author, bibliographic information.

Book Title : A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud

Authors : Brian Harold May

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77706-1

Publisher : Springer New York, NY

eBook Packages : Physics and Astronomy , Physics and Astronomy (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer-Verlag New York 2007

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-387-77705-4

eBook ISBN : 978-0-387-77706-1

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXII, 215

Number of Illustrations : 25 b/w illustrations, 54 illustrations in colour

Additional Information : Jointly published with Canopus Publishing Ltd, Bristol, UK

Topics : Astronomy, Observations and Techniques , Popular Science in Astronomy , Planetology

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Rock And Roll Garage

Queen’s brian may talks about his doctorate in astrophysics.

Classic Rock

Queen guitarist Brian May talked in an interview with Kevin O’Sullivan Show about his doctorate in astrophysics and how hard it was to go back to the thesis 30 years later.

Queen’s Brian May talks about his doctorate in astrophysics:

You were at imperial college studying astrophysics, along came a little band that distracted you for a while, but was it always in the back of your mind, ‘i must finish that doctorate sometime’.

“You know, it was – in a way, it was unfinished business. I always had a passion for astronomy right alongside the passion for music. There was always that kind of yearning feeling, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice…'”

“But I thought it was impossible, to be honest. It was Patrick Moore, my wonderful mentor, and kind of a surrogate uncle, who kind of persuaded me. He said, ‘Oh, Brian, you can do it,’ and I said, ‘Patrick, I can’t. My brain’s gone. I’ve been playing music; my brain is in a different place.’ He said, ‘No – you can do it, you can go back there.’ I started talking about it in an interview on the radio.”

“I got a call from the head of Astrophysics at the Imperial College, the new professor of Astrophysics, Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson. He said, ‘If you’re serious about this, you can come back here and I will be your supervisor and you can finish your Ph.D.'”

“It was so hard, you know? Three distinct times I thought to myself, ‘I have to give up, I cannot do this.’ I think that’s the nature of PhDs. They have to make it hard for you.  Of course, I was very visible. So my supervisor couldn’t make it easy for me. Because everyone would have attacked him and said, ‘He made it easy because he’s a rockstar’.”

“So it was really tough. I gave up a year of my life totally to doing it. And I gave up everything. All I could do was focus on this Ph.D. thesis, which I resurrected from 30 years ago,” Brian May said.

Your subject was Zodiacal dust. Tell us just briefly what you can what Zodiacal dust is…

“Zodiacal dust is basically the dust from which the solar system forms. And it’s continually created and sucked into the sun, so it’s continually replenished. But in the days when I started, not much was known about it. There was a bit of research done, and what I did was look for the motions of the dust to figure out which way it was rotating and where it was coming from, etcetera, etcetera.”

“So 30 years later, it’s been really not that much talked about, but suddenly we’re discovering exoplanets, exosolar systems, solar systems, planets revolving around other suns, other stars, and suddenly it’s realized that all these solar systems have their own Zodiacal dust clouds.”

“And how can we study those dust clouds? Well, let’s go and study our own one, it’s right on our doorstep. So suddenly my subject became kind of – not exactly trendy but it became definitely of interest, and a sort of a hot subject, so I was very lucky,” Brian May said.

Maybe in years to come, you will not be remembered as the amazing Queen guitarist, but the man who put the Zodiacal dust on the map… [Laughs]

“Maybe so, yeah, maybe so. It’s interesting, I thought I saw dust coming from outside the solar system, which was a little bit of a sort of a risky thing to say at the time. It was kind-of a heresy. And my supervisor said, ‘Don’t publish that.’ This is 30-40 years ago now; he said, ‘Don’t publish it because people are going to laugh at you.’

“But now we know that material does come into our solar system from outside, from interstellar space. So I kind of wish I’d published that. But you know, some things are not meant to be,” Brian May said.

I'm a Brazilian journalist who always loved Classic Rock and Heavy Metal music. That passion inspired me to create Rock and Roll Garage over 6 years ago. Music has always been a part of my life, helping me through tough times and being a support to celebrate the good ones. When I became a journalist, I knew I wanted to write about my passions. After graduating in journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, I pursued a postgraduate degree in digital communication at the same institution. The studies and experience in the field helped me improve the website and always bring the best of classic rock to the world! MTB: 0021377/MG

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Brian May: A life in science and music — the full story

Skiffle, stars, and 3-D A postwar baby, Brian May was born July 19, 1947. In his boyhood home on Walsham Road in Feltham on London’s western side, he was an only child, the offspring of Harold, an electronics engineer and senior draftsman at the Ministry of Aviation, and Ruth. (Harold had served as a radio operator during World War II.)

The seeds for all of May’s enduring interests came early. At age 6, Brian learned a few chords on the ukulele from his father, a music enthusiast. A year later, he awoke one morning to find a Spanish guitar “hanging off the end of my bed.” At age 7, he began piano lessons and started playing guitar with enthusiasm. His father’s engineering genius came in handy for repairing and fixing up equipment, as the family was of modest means. “We were very, very poor,” says May.

As he explored music, Brian also developed scientific interests. “In the school library there was this little book called The Earth ,” he says. “It was written by the man who is now Sir Patrick Moore, who has become a good friend in recent times. It had a picture of Earth on the cover and gave a history of Earth from its formation all the way through the beginnings of life, and I was just enthralled. I read it from cover to cover again and again.”

May excelled in school, and he readily says, “I had a lot of application, and I liked achieving.” His was an intellect that was mathematical, ordered, and also quite creative. Astronomy and music each found a comfortable home here. He entertained his parents by writing a monologue about the stars and speaking it over a playing of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets . A collector, he acquired toys, comics, matchboxes, and before long a camera and telescope, the latter home-built. The scope, which he still has, is a 4-inch reflector.

“It was just a kit we bought at Tottenham Court Road,” he says, “which was famous for bits of recycled stuff, ex-government lenses, and electrical bits and pieces. Me and my dad used to go down there and find things, and we located a kit for making a telescope that must have cost 10 pounds, I don’t know, and we made it together. It’s a small scope, but it still gives me pleasure because even though I have a bigger telescope now, the 4-incher can be wheeled out in 10 seconds flat if there’s something interesting in the sky.”

Another interest emerged to coexist with astronomy and music. All May had to do to acquire this fixation was to sit down as a kid to breakfast. Weetabix, compressed wheat in the form of a biscuit, is served with milk at many an English table. “It was a big thing when I was a kid,” says May, “and when you got your packet of Weetabix in those days you would get a free card inside. An incentive for kids to badger their mums to buy it!”

Enter the Red Special As May began his teenage years, he continued to play guitar, borrowing one here and there, a friend’s Fender Telecaster, say, or a Gibson SG. His talent was expanding by leaps and bounds, and he had no instrument of his own, unable to afford one. By the spring of 1963, when May was 15, he and his father decided to build their own guitar. Designing and building an electric guitar from scratch was no easy undertaking, although Harold’s engineering background and Brian’s methodical, mathematical mind helped the process along. The project took 18 months, and produced one of the most famous guitars in rock ’n’ roll history.

Nothing else like this instrument existed, and it conspired to give May a unique tone in playing pop music. The guitar’s body was made from oak, the neck from an 18th-century mahogany fireplace mantle, and the fret markers from mother-of-pearl buttons taken from Ruth May’s sewing box. Oh, and the valve springs used to balance the string tension were salvaged from a 1928 motorcycle.

The pickups and fret wire used for the strings created one-of-a-kind qualities. In the end, the Mays produced a carefully considered instrument with 24 frets and special placement of pickups that produced a unique tone. When the finished product was varnished in deep red mahogany, the guitar took on the name “Red Special.”

“Basically, we had no money,” May remembers. “I couldn’t afford to buy a guitar, so I said, ‘By God, we’ll make one, and we’ll make it better than anything that’s ever been seen or heard.’ ”

The guitar’s clean tone also came from the Vox AC30 amplifier, and Irish rocker Rory Gallagher showed May how to set it up and drive it to achieve that tone. Another part of the equation was a treble booster, which, as May says, “drives the amp into smooth distortion as it gets rid of a little of the low end.” Couple that with Burns pickups that May installed in the Red Special, and you came out with a unique sound in rock ’n’ roll.

Another part of May’s approach was the unusual habit of using a British sixpence coin as a pick. When he was first experimenting with playing guitar, May didn’t want to buy picks because, “you know, it would have been a waste of money,” he says. “So I’d use anything I could get my hands on, little pieces of plastic cut off a packet of my Dad’s flints, stuff like that. Coins presented themselves, too. I soon noticed that having minimal flexure gave me more control in my fingers. I discovered the old sixpence coin, which had a reeded edge and discovered that if I held it parallel to the strings it would produce a smooth, nice, warm sound. If I held it at an increasing angle, I’d get this rasp that mimicked the consonants from articulating a voice. That was another ingredient in making the guitar talk.”

With all these parts of the process working together, May produced a clear, tenor tone that is vividly sharp and distinct. It would come to be known very well in many solos in the years to come, and he has used this same guitar as his principal instrument for 48 years.

Music+astronomy For May, the balance between school and music was a fine line that sometimes teetered one way or the other. Described at the time as “serious-minded” or even “sheltered,” May was expected to excel at his studies and then perhaps branch out and play and experience the world a bit by the time he was about 20. But many teenage musical groups were moving away from their studies and following the Beatles’ path to glory, or so they thought. “I completed my studies, O-levels [high-school-level exams], and applied for various universities,” says May. Astronomy and space science had become increasingly attractive to him through his schoolwork.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, May did it all. In the music world, he saw Jimi Hendrix play in London, which transformed and inspired his idea of guitar playing and what it ought to be. 1984 was busy playing gigs, with May adorned in Hendrix-style clothes, sporting Beatle-like hair. On May 13, 1967, the band played at Imperial College in London on the same bill as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the day after the latter released its first album, Are You Experienced? Just after the new year, however, May quit 1984. A new band that May and Staffell formed recruited a blond-haired drummer they had met in the bar at Imperial College, Roger Taylor, age 18, who hailed from Cornwall. They wanted a “high-energy” drummer in the mold of Mitch Mitchell or Ginger Baker, and Taylor would fit the bill admirably. The new band, which began in 1968, would be called Smile.

“Jimi Hendrix really opened up the heavens,” May says. “It‘s really hard to imagine the world without Jimi because he changed it so much. All of us thought we knew what guitar playing was. Jimi tore asunder all the limitations that none of us really knew were there.” The first time May heard Jimi’s track “Stone Free,” he thought much of the guitar part was studio trickery. “We went to see Jimi at Brian Epstein’s theater and my jaw just dropped to the floor. I had never seen anything like that. He only had a Marshall stack and I think one PA, but the sound was just colossal. It was just pure magic. I saw him a few times and Freddie did, too — sometimes we went together. And it was always the same; things would just be falling to bits around him but it was the sound of heaven coming from the stage. Absolutely, unreasonably colossal.”

Instead, May accepted an offer to attend Imperial College, which would keep him in London, able to play music. May thought he was going to do infrared astronomy, which was really just beginning at the time. “The strange thing is that Professor Jim Ring, the department head, was involved in optical spectrometry at the time and looking to radial velocities,” says May. “And so I somehow got hooked into this whole program!” May thought he would be interested in working on radial velocities, but “was a little scared at the time because then spectrometry was a little arcane, or so I thought.”

Ring and his colleagues were interested in a novel idea: looking at the radial velocities of particles in the zodiacal dust cloud and beginning to understand how dust in the plane of the solar system is moving. “This appealed to me,” May says, “so I said, ‘Yes, I’m your man — I’ll take this on as a project!’ ” The researchers were looking for “clean” spectral lines that would allow them to detect Doppler shifts, indicating motion, and they settled on magnesium I, which corresponds to the easiest transition line of the magnesium atom.

“We looked for it in the zodiacal light,” says May, “and, of course, the zodiacal light is not a very well-known phenomenon even to this day. But we were looking at this green line reflected in the dust and looking for a shift in the frequency of that line, which would then show us how the dust was moving.” May and his colleagues were able to make a velocity map of the dust as opposed to what everyone else was doing, simply making positional maps. It was somewhat revolutionary at the time.

When May returned to London, he found that Tim Staffell wanted to move on, and after some coaxing, Freddie wound his way into a new band that consisted of May, Taylor, Bulsara, and, for some months to come, a rotation of bass players. Eventually, by mid-1971, the guys found a bassist who would stay in John Deacon, a 19-year-old electronics student from central England who had played with some other London groups.

Well before then, two big name changes had occurred. Freddie suggested the new band’s name, Queen, taken from the hippy world centered on Kensington Market, which prominently included gay culture — and Freddie would himself have gay relationships, although at this time he was still ensconced with his live-in lover Mary Austin. Secondly, Freddie had written a song he really liked called “My Fairy King,” which included the line “Oh Mother Mercury what have you done to me?” Freddie decided on a dramatic stage name change and the world was introduced, slowly at first, to Freddie Mercury. It seemed necessary from Fred’s point of view to complete the transformation from shy schoolboy to where he hoped he was going — full-fledged, stage-extrovert god.

The new band played a series of London-area gigs and secured some studio time to create a demo. This, of course, dragged May increasingly away from astronomy, which displeased his family. He continued to travel to Tenerife occasionally, which halted the band, as he worked on his Ph.D. And then he returned to England and the band started up with live gigs again. Queen came away from studio time in mid-1971 with some demos that were far from the polished band the world knew later. The tracks included a version of the later hit “Keep Yourself Alive.” But that is what the four were doing then — no semblance of big-time musical success had yet arrived.

And yet he became a tour guide, showing the sky to many other musicians. “Lots of people really like that, and, of course, it’s incredible how many people who live in cities rarely get to see the Milky Way, for instance,” May says. “There were so many times when people have said, ‘My God, I’ve never seen that!’ when seeing the planets, or star clusters, or M31. It’s nice to be able to share that with people who don’t know about it.”

And May points out that many musicians tend to be interested in astronomy. “I think the things tend to go together,” he says. “Maybe it’s a kind of a romantic spirit to making music that spills over into curiosity about the universe. I would say the majority of musicians I know have a bit of passion for the night sky.”

As with many bands of the era, despite successful album releases and touring, Queen’s individual members were slow to accumulate the benefits. This was partly due to the crazy system of record companies essentially fronting money to the bands that had to be paid back to the labels, and to the dealings of the band’s first manager, Norman Sheffield. The manager would be savagely remembered in Mercury’s delightfully nasty song “Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to … ),” from the 1975 album A Night at the Opera .

But the band was achieving success and becoming famous, so May abandoned his astronomy, for the time being, to get on with rock ’n’ roll. And Queen caught a big break when it toured with the established act Mott the Hoople.

The next release, A Night at the Opera , made Queen’s members international superstars. Not only was the album full of memorable and electric hits, but one of them, Freddie’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” exploded as a huge smash. It began years earlier in Freddie’s mind as “The Cowboy Song,” a simple ditty that commenced with, “Mama, just killed a man.” Inspired by the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” the song became a three-part “mock opera,” in Freddie’s words, whose middle operatic section married references to Galileo, the 17th-century Italian clown Scaramouche, the Italian composer Rossini, Mozart’s operatic character Figaro, the Arabic prayer expression “bismillah,” and the Spanish and Portuguese folk dance known as the fandango.

There was also Brian’s great sci-fi folk song “ ’39,” about interstellar travel; Roger’s rocked-out “I’m in Love with My Car”; and John’s sentimental “You’re My Best Friend.” Not to mention Freddie’s lasting “Love of My Life” and Brian’s working of “God Save the Queen,” which would be used again and again as a live concert coda. Now Queen had arrived with unrelenting momentum, careening success, big money, unbounded critical acclaim, and another major touring romp in 1975 through Great Britain. From then on, the mere first keystrokes of Freddie’s hammering out the intro to “Rhapsody” would produce screams and cheers in concert. The sky was now the limit.

The band spent much of 1975 touring the United States, Canada, Japan, and Great Britain. Inspired by huge success, its next move was to release A Day at the Races , the 1976 album that contained more huge hits. The boys were fans of the Marx Brothers, and this second consecutive album named for one of the brothers’ movies secured an invitation from Groucho for a visit and a plea not to name the next one Duck Soup . “He was very much like he was in the films,” says Brian of Groucho. “He was ancient by that time and they wheeled him out, but he was sharp as a razor. He sang this curious little song and then we all clapped and then he said, ‘Now you sing!’ It was that terrible moment when you think, ‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ I remember saying that we couldn’t sing without a guitar, and he had one brought out! And so I settled down to strum away ‘ ’39,’ I think it was. He enjoyed it, told us a few jokes, and went off to have his nap!”

The band had a healthy relationship that, as with nearly all bands, became difficult at times in the studio. “We focused so much on the music and it was too close and too emotional to be dispassionate about,” says May. “So we got into fierce arguments. We’d leave the group for a day or so. I suppose making music is like a baby, really — when someone starts pulling it apart, you get very angry and defensive. But that kind of thing just goes with the territory.”

The band toured the United States, Japan, and Australia in early 1976. The following year saw an enormously long tour schedule around the world and the release of News of the World , a spectacularly successful album that contained two explosive hits. Having challenged each other to write “anthems” in which concertgoers could participate to the fullest, Brian composed “We Will Rock You,” which since has become one of the best-known arena rock songs of all time. Its recording with the double thump followed by single hand clap came about when May found a bunch of loose boards in a studio hallway and the guys experimented with stomping on them followed by a clap. Freddie produced the anthem “We Are the Champions,” a song so bold and outrageous in its ego that at first the other band members thought they simply couldn’t do it.

The next album, Jazz , was released in 1978 and again contained some high-powered hits. Just as “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were linked, Brian and Freddie created a twosome of songs for this release. Brian’s tongue-in-cheek “Fat Bottomed Girls” was lyrically linked to Freddie’s curious and poetic “Bicycle Race.” The album also contained “Let Me Entertain You,” which became a live favorite, and Freddie’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” which symbolized his increasingly rambunctious and reckless lifestyle in the gay community. When asked about his flamboyant and wild antics, Freddie simply retorted, “I sleep with men, women, cats, you name it.”

The touring continued with a major United States outing, along with Canada and Europe. Whereas previous albums had been recorded in England, in Montreux, Switzerland, and in France ( Jazz ), the recording work now shifted to Munich, Germany, which the band members loved but which exposed them to a “dangerous” world of excess. The band also recorded an album to serve as soundtrack for the sci-fi film Flash Gordon .

Written by Freddie in a bathtub in the Munich Hilton in 10 minutes, “Crazy Little Thing” was a conscious attempt at recreating an authentic 1950s rockabilly sound. It marks one of the rare times that May used a guitar other than the Red Special. “I was in the studio with our producer Reinhold Mack, who’s a rather dour German,” says May. “His humor was very dark. I wanted a conscious echo of the ’50s as we were consciously playing in Elvis’ style. I said to Mack, ‘Hey, I can make my guitar sound pretty much like a Telecaster,’ which has that ’50s sound. He said, ‘If you want it to sound like a Telecaster, why the hell don’t you just use a Telecaster?’ So I did.”

Queen’s relentless schedule careened forward. The band played huge soccer stadiums in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico. In 1982 the new album, Hot Space , took a direction that not all fans were crazy about. Tracks like “Back Chat” and “Body Language” strayed increasingly away from the Queen sound and had some labeling the band’s full entrance into disco.

The album’s big hit, however, came from a chance session with old London friend David Bowie. “Under Pressure” was a collaboration between Deacon, who came up with the repeating bass line, Bowie, and the other three Queen members — although at first Brian was unenthusiastic. The song and its famous scat singing by Freddie nonetheless caught on and became a huge concert staple. Again in 1982 the band was touring in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Amid an all-star lineup, Queen stole the show during its 21-minute set that opened with “Bohemian Rhapsody” and closed with “We Are the Champions.” It was the band’s greatest moment, witnessed by 1.9 billion people, and played out on its favorite stage at Wembley. May and Mercury closed out the show later in the day by playing and singing “Is This the World We Created … ?,” which seemed to have been made for the cause. “We wrote that song together as a rare event,” says Brian. “We just sat down and said we need something personal and intimate, and talked about the state the world was in. It was one of those great moments when you can just feel it coming out. That was one of the few times we collaborated directly in that way.”

But what was May’s biggest memory of Live Aid? “Well,” he says. “I think the moment when everyone’s hands went into the air to ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was one, because the audience had not paid to see us. It was a great confirmation that people not only knew the song, but also had seen the video and knew what to do. The power of the video was amazing because the whole 70,000 in the Old Wembley Stadium just erupted into that synchronized arm movement.

“The other amazing moment at Live Aid was just walking back out on stage with Freddie, he in his T-shirt and jeans, me in something similar, and just sitting down with the acoustic guitar,” says Brian. “It was as naked as could be. There was some weird noise, a technical thing, happening as we were singing the song. But we just sang it and the whole place focused on that moment. It was a great feeling.”

Although to most it seemed that Freddie and Brian were the dominant musical influences in Queen, May is quick to correct that. “It was a very democratic outfit, really,” he says. “We were all conscious of fighting for our voices, but we were also four fairly intelligent human beings, and we realized that everyone had to have an equal part in the creative process or the whole thing would disintegrate.” He points out that “Roger and John definitely grew as creators as time went on. Proportionately, John had a better batting average than any of us. He didn’t write that much, but it was all big. ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ ‘I Want to Break Free,’ ‘Spread Your Wings’ — his track record was astounding. In later years Roger wrote ‘A Kind of Magic,’ ‘Days of Our Lives,’ and ‘Radio Ga Ga,’ which were huge hits.”

In 1988, rumors swirled around Mercury’s health as he appeared increasingly thin and gaunt. Denials came out quickly to protect him, but the truth was that he had contracted HIV and was increasingly ill. The band continued with albums but stopped touring. 1988’s The Miracle presented special highlights in May’s “I Want It All” and Mercury’s “The Miracle.” Two years later, Innuendo was released. The album featured three songs that struck a special chord with fans, especially watching a clearly ill Mercury working through the videos “I’m Going Slightly Mad,” “The Show Must Go On,” and “These Are the Days of Our Lives.” In November 1991, as he was terribly sick and bedridden, Mercury issued a statement confirming he did have AIDS, and he died 24 hours later. The band’s final album featuring all four musicians, Made in Heaven , was released four years after Freddie’s death.

A new beginning — and back to astronomy During the late 1980s, May had many challenges. Mercury’s illness had a depressing effect on the band. “There was all that time when we knew Freddie was on the way out,” he says; “we kept our heads down.” Moreover, May’s first marriage ended in 1988, and he fell into a serious depression that lasted into the early 1990s. He has even stated that he contemplated suicide. “My life was falling apart,” he says. And, in a way, astronomy was responsible for bringing him back into a new life, one that came together after his struggles.

He has recently gone through a bit of a tough time again, and found he had to change his life. “I’ve done that and I’ve gone through the pain of that and I’m good now, I feel fine, very optimistic and strong, and my sense of humor is back.”

Music, of course, continued after Freddie’s death. There was the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley in 1992. May also recorded several works with a changing lineup dubbed the Brian May Band. For several years starting in 2005, Queen+Paul Rodgers toured with the former lead singer of Free and Bad Company. One of May’s biggest musical moments came in 2002 when he and Taylor played on the roof of Buckingham Palace to help celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee — and something like a billion people saw it.

The Jubilee moment came about quite by surprise. “Someone just rang me up,” says Brian, “and asked if I’d like to play the national anthem while strolling through the state apartments at Buckingham Palace. I said I didn’t think it would work. They said I should do it as if I were Jimi Hendrix. I said that I wasn’t Jimi Hendrix, and then it struck me that I could do it as a sort of lone piper on the roof of the palace. With a full orchestra. They went silent on the other end, and then called back and said yes.”

When asked about his own musical legacy, May replies, “Well, I suppose ‘We Will Rock You’ will be written on my tombstone because that’s the one which connected so many people around the world. You know, every day people send me clips of their babies on YouTube singing it. Soon there will be a fetus in the womb going ‘boom boom chick’ with its feet and hands. I feel happy that it encircled the globe like that.”

What‘s the best song he’s ever written? “ ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’ might be the best song I’ve written both lyrically and musically. That song is a kind of therapy for me, and I wrote it with two people, Frank Musker and his girlfriend, and it all just poured out. I feel very proud of that song. Some people remember that Freddie sang it, and after he passed away that made the song very special. It‘s just a song about love going wrong.”

What is Brian’s favorite song written by Freddie? “Probably ‘The Miracle,’ ” he says. “It has an incredible lightness, and he wrote it at a time when it must have been very hard for him to be optimistic and light. There’s just such a wonderful transparency to the way it’s recorded and the lyrics have a great whimsy to them. But also a serious overtone. I love that song, but Freddie wrote some corkers; I mean, he wrote some wonderful songs. I always play ‘Love of My Life‘ whenever I’m performing almost anywhere in the world.”

So Michael Rowan-Robinson served as the advisor, and May finished the research. In 2007, he submitted his dissertation, and Springer-Verlag published it as A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud . The next year, he co-authored a popular astronomy book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe , with Moore and Chris Lintott, published by Johns Hopkins. And the following year, his interest in stereophotography produced a collaborative book with Elena Vidal, A Village Lost and Found , which presented the stereo views of an Oxfordshire village taken by T. R. Williams in the 1850s. (For more on May’s interest in stereo imagery, see “Brian May’s world of stereo astro pictures” in the January 2012 issue of Astronomy .)

When he’s not playing music, worrying about astronomy, or fiddling with stereo photography, May is passionate about animal welfare, and he blogs about it on his website, www.brianmay.com. Fox hunting, badger culls, and other activities raise May’s ire and keep him focused on journalists, members of Britain’s Parliament, and the public with his energetic activism. “The interest in animals was always there,” he says, “and I always promised myself that the time would come when I could devote time to doing something about it.”

May says he has an astronomical approach to animal welfare. “For thousands of years we believed we were at the center of the universe. Turns out we’re not. We’re relegated to a tiny little spot parked way out in the suburbs of a very normal galaxy. If you apply that concept to the way we regard ourselves as a species, to me it’s similar. We think we’re the pinnacle of life on Earth. To me it’s self-evident that all creatures are the pinnacle of evolution and they are all worthy of respect. Every creature is worthy of decent treatment. Unfortunately, we’ve become so self-important that we have relegated many species to the point of unimportance and also to a place where they are abused and used by us. There are so many creatures that will never walk Earth again because we have destroyed them.” For his services in many fields, May received the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005.

May is as busy as ever these days. “I’m ashamed to say I get so little time to observe the sky,” he says. “I live in England, where you don’t get clear skies very often, and if you do, you rush out with the first telescope that comes to hand.” His favorite sky objects? “I get most excited about planets, so I’m a local man, really. I never get tired of Jupiter and Saturn.” He was also a bit of a total-solar-eclipse addict for a while, seeing four or five eclipses out of eight or nine attempts. “That first time you see totality, you really understand where you are, on a piece of rock hurtling around the Sun,” he says. “It’s an awesome feeling — a life-changing experience.”

Where does May see the next generation of astronomy enthusiasts, with so many young kids straying away from science? “Well, I guess we’re entering a phase where knowledge for its own sake is not something that’s amassed in the brain,” he says. “In the days of Patrick Moore, you would learn lots of facts and figures and details about everything you came across. But I think things have changed an awful lot. There’s more emphasis on using your smarts to analyze what the facts mean, and more checking of such a huge mass of data from references that are so easily available now. I think we’re moving toward looking for the meaning in things rather than just the pictures.”

He adds, with a laugh: “Although I love the pictures.”

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Brian May CBE, PhD, ARCS, FRAS, and a founding member of Queen, is a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer.

May abandoned his PhD studies at Imperial College London in 1974 when Queen’s popularity first exploded but always retained a keen interest in astronomy, and has been a regular contributor to “The Sky at Night,” BBC TV’s monthly astronomy program hosted by Sir Patrick Moore.

Returning to astrophysical research in 2006, he was awarded his PhD and is now Chancellor of John Moores University, and a patron to a number of charities, including the Mercury Phoenix Trust and the British Bone Marrow Donor Association.

His PhD thesis "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" has just been co-published by Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd.

May’s thesis examines the Zodiacal Light, the misty diffuse cone of light seen in the West after sunset and the East before sunrise. Though anyone can see the Zodiacal Light from a suitably dark location, it is poorly understood, and has been the subject of relatively little research. May began his research of the Zodiacal Light in 1970 and completed his research and thesis in 2007, following a 30-year hiatus to play guitar in the well-known rock band Queen.

While some readers may expect a rock-and-roll guitarist to write a less rigorous 'popular' astronomy book, May's work is instead a rigorous, academic examination of the Zodiacal Light. His thesis documents the building of a pressure-scanned Fabry-Perot Spectrometer, equipped with a photomultiplier and pulse-counting electronics, and its deployment at the Observatorio del Teide at Izaña in Tenerife, at an altitude of 7,700 feet (2,567 m), to record high-resolution spectra of the Zodiacal Light. More than 250 scans of morning and evening Zodiacal Light were recorded, in two observing periods in 1971 and 1972.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my years playing guitar and recording music with Queen, but it’s extremely gratifying to see the publication of my thesis, A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” May said. “I’ve been fascinated with astronomy for years, and I was happy to finally complete my PhD last year and record my studies of the Zodiacal Light in this book.”

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Queen Guitarist Brian May Is Also an Astrophysicist: Read His PhD Thesis Online

in Astronomy , Music , Physics | July 1st, 2019 6 Comments

Pho­to by ESO/G. Huede­pohl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Queen could­n’t pos­si­bly have been Queen with­out Fred­die Mer­cury, nor could it have been Queen with­out Bri­an May. Thanks not least to the recent biopic,  Bohemi­an Rhap­sody , the band’s already larg­er-than-life lead singer has become even larg­er still. But its gui­tarist, despite the film’s sur­face treat­ment of his char­ac­ter, is in his own way an equal­ly implau­si­ble fig­ure. Not only did he show musi­cal promise ear­ly, form­ing his first group while still at school, he also got his A Lev­els in physics, math­e­mat­ics, and applied math­e­mat­ics, going on to earn a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Physics with hon­ors at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

Nat­u­ral­ly, May then went for his PhD, con­tin­u­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege where he stud­ied the veloc­i­ty of, and light reflect­ed by, inter­plan­e­tary dust in the Solar Sys­tem. He began the pro­gram in 1970, but “in 1974, when Queen was but a princess in its infan­cy, May chose to aban­don his doc­tor­ate stud­ies to focus on the band in their quest to con­quer the world.” So wrote The Tele­graph ’s Felix Lowe in 2007, the year the by-then 60-year-old (and long world-famous) rock­er final­ly hand­ed in his the­sis. “The 48,000-word tome, Radi­al Veloc­i­ties in the Zodi­a­cal Dust Cloud , which sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like a Spinal Tap LP, was stored in the loft of his home in Sur­rey.” You can read it online here .

Accord­ing to its abstract, May’s the­sis “doc­u­ments the build­ing of a pres­sure-scanned Fab­ry-Per­ot Spec­trom­e­ter, equipped with a pho­to­mul­ti­pli­er and pulse-count­ing elec­tron­ics, and its deploy­ment at the Obser­va­to­rio del Tei­de at Iza­ña in Tener­ife, at an alti­tude of 7,700 feet (2567 m), for the pur­pose of record­ing high-res­o­lu­tion spec­tra of the Zodi­a­cal Light.” Space.com describes the Zodia­cial Light as “a misty dif­fuse cone of light that appears in the west­ern sky after sun­set and in the east­ern sky before sun­rise,” one that has long tricked casu­al observers into “see­ing it as the first sign of morn­ing twi­light.” Astronomers now rec­og­nize it as “reflect­ed sun­light shin­ing on scat­tered space debris clus­tered most dense­ly near the sun.”

In his abstract, May also notes the unusu­al­ly long peri­od of study as 1970–2007, made pos­si­ble in part by the fact that lit­tle oth­er research had been done in this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject area dur­ing Queen’s reign on the charts and there­after. Still, he had catch­ing up to do, includ­ing obser­va­tion­al work in Tener­ife (as much of a hard­ship post­ing as that isn’t). Since being award­ed his doc­tor­ate, May’s sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ties have con­tin­ued, as have his musi­cal ones and oth­er pur­suits besides, such as ani­mal-rights activism and stere­og­ra­phy. (Some­times these inter­sect: the 2017 pho­to­book Queen in 3‑D , for exam­ple, uses a VR view­ing device of May’s own design.) The next time you meet a young­ster dither­ing over whether to go into astro­physics or found one of the most suc­cess­ful rock bands of all time, point them to May’s exam­ple and let them know doing both isn’t with­out prece­dent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch 94 Free Lec­tures From the Great Cours­es: Dystopi­an Fic­tion, Astro­physics, Gui­tar Play­ing & Much More

Based in Seoul,  Col­in Mar­shall  writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book  The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les  and the video series  The City in Cin­e­ma . Fol­low him on Twit­ter at  @colinmarshall , on  Face­book , or on  Insta­gram .

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (6) |

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Comments (6), 6 comments so far.

“Woody Paul” Christ­man aka “King of the Cow­boy Fid­dlers” from the cow­boy band “Rid­ers in the Sky” (they did the music for the movie Toy Sto­ry) has a PhD in Plas­ma Physics from MIT. Yes, the King of Cow­boy Fid­dlers is a Rock­et Sci­en­tist!!!

Love­ly to see well known peo­ple with strong left brain as well as right brain men­tal activ­i­ty! Wow!

Bri­an May is so genius!! Tal­ent­ed, kind, sweet tge rea­son why he deserved all of this. Long live leg­end!! We quee­nies are so proud of you! :)

My son, Christo­pher, is an aero­space engi­neer (and a drum­mer in his band!) He had to explain to me what astro­physics is! I adore Queen and hope my dream to meet you, Bri­an, and Roger comes true when you are in Wash­ing­ton DC this month! It would be such a dream come true. (I have a lit­tle hedge hog present for you.) Music and space will always go togeth­er in our fam­i­ly and yours! May God bless your fam­i­ly, your kind­ness and com­pas­sion. Espe­cial­ly today, on our plan­et, we need more Bri­an Mays! Hope, hope, hope to shake your hand at the stage door. Love, Ann (Miss Fred­die so much.)

Got my A‑levels in physics, pure math, and applied math in Hert­ford­shire. Went on to get my BSc and ARCS in physics at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege in 1970. Very much inspired along the way by Sir Patrick Moore. Did­n’t know how much I had in com­mon with Sir Bri­an May. Wish I had met him when we were there. Great mem­o­ries.

The two fields aren’t as dis­parate as you might think. Music, at its core, is real­ly just very beau­ti­ful math.

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A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud 2007th Edition

Purchase options and add-ons.

• ISBN-10 0387777059
• ISBN-13 978-0387777054
• Edition 2007th
• Publisher Springer
• Publication date August 5, 2008
• Language English
• Dimensions 8.5 x 0.75 x 11 inches
• Print length 237 pages
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

From the reviews:

"The Queen guitarist Brian May has achieved a new milestone: he has published his PhD thesis in astronomy. … Entitled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, his thesis analyses what happens to the dust particles left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. … Mike Lockwood, a physics professor at Southampton University, said May’s work was timely … . Brian Cox, a physics professor at Manchester University, applauded May’s tenacity. … That’s hugely impressive." (Jonathan Leake and Robert Watts, Times Online, August, 2008)

From the Back Cover

The Zodiacal Light, that misty diffuse cone of light seen in the West after Sunset and the East before Sunrise, is a beautiful and intriguing phenomenon. Even though everyone can enjoy the sight from a suitably dark location, it is poorly understood, and has been the subject of relatively little research. Brian May began his research into the subject in 1970, and was finally awarded his PhD in 2007, after a hiatus of more than 30 years pursuing his other career as guitarist with his rock band Queen. This book is Brian’s thesis, and as such presents the results of his research for astronomers.

About the Author

Brian May CBE, PhD, ARCS, FRAS Is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer. Brian was forced to abandon his PhD studies at Imperial College London in 1974 when Queen’s popularity first exploded. He always retained a keen interest in astronomy and has been a regular contributor to The Sky at Night, BBC TV’s monthly astronomy programme hosted by Sir Patrick Moore. Returning to astrophysical research in 2006, he was awarded his PhD in 2007. He is Chancellor of John Moores University, and a patron to a number of charities, including the Mercury Phoenix Trust and the British Bone Marrow Donor Association. To contact Brian and enjoy updates on astronomy and his thoughts on various subjects from relativity to rock, visit his interactive website at www.brianmay.com.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Springer; 2007th edition (August 5, 2008)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 237 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0387777059
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0387777054
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.6 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.75 x 11 inches
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Queen guitar legend Brian May helps analyze NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples

The Queen musician, who is also an astrophysicist, described his involvement in the Bennu sample return mission.

Legendary guitarist Brian May, arguably the most famous citizen scientist in the world, has spoken about his involvement with NASA’s historic asteroid sample collection mission, OSIRIS-REx.

The sample from an asteroid named 101955 Bennu was returned to Earth on Sept. 24,; May and fellow citizen scientist Claudia Manzoni were invited to examine visual data collected by mission principal investigator and University of Arizona researcher, Dante Lauretta.

May and collaborators searched through images taken of Bennu’s surface by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to find opportunities to apply a technique called stereoscopy — which can basically add a 3D dimensional effect and illusion of depth to a 2D image.

"We looked for pairs of images of Bennu’s surface taken from viewpoints some distance apart," May wrote in a NASA blog post. "This separation of viewpoints, known as the 'baseline,' has to be just right to give us the experience of depth and reality when the images are viewed stereoscopically." Related: NASA's 1st asteroid sample is rich in carbon and water, OSIRIS-REx team finds  

Pairs of 2D images are required for stereoscopic imaging so a parallax effect can develop from subtle differences in both images taken with slightly different viewpoints. 

"Such viewing requires the left and right images to be delivered separately to our left and right eyes, which is how we see in 'real life.' When this is done, the small differences between the components of the stereo pair  —  known as parallax differences  —  give our brains the opportunity to instantaneously perceive depth and solidity in the image," May explained. 

Images of the Bennu sample taken after its return to Earth in the Utah Desert were prime for such a stereoscopic approach.

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"In the moments when the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) head was flipped over after removing it from the avionics deck at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, photographs from many angles were captured, enabling us to find just one (nearly!) perfect pair, showing the intimate structure of just a few grains of the dark, coal-black sample," May said. "The curation team made it easy for us."

Though the best stereoscopic view of the sample and its roughly 1-centimeter-wide (0.4-inch-wide) grains of asteroid material requires the use of an actual stereoscope, it is possible to mimic that false 3D view by relaxing the eyes and effectively "staring through" the screen. 

Scientists and citizen scientists like May are keen to get a look at the material that makes up asteroids like Bennu because these rocky bodies are thought to be composed of matter that was present during the solar system 's formation around 4.6 billion years ago. That means these untouched asteroids could reveal the nature of the material that collected together long ago, gathering into overly dense patches of gas and dust that surrounded our infant sun to form what astronomers call a protoplanetary disk.

—  Queen legend Brian May helped NASA ace its asteroid-sampling mission, new book reveals

—  NASA's 1st asteroid sample is rich in carbon and water, OSIRIS-REx team finds

—  Queen's Brian May talks to Space.com about his role in NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission and new book on asteroid Bennu (video)

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, launched in 2016 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, took two years to journey the 1,720-foot-wide (524-meter-wide)  asteroid Bennu. After arriving at Bennu in August of 2018, the craft studied the asteroid from a distance for two years before dipping to the space rock’s surface and grabbing a sample. OSIRIS-REx started its 1.2 billion-mile (1.9 billion-kilometer) trip back home in 2021 and dropped the Bennu sample, safely inside a sample canister, into Earth's orbit just last month. Then, the canister descended to the ground.

But after dropping its important cargo off in orbit and changing its name to OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft left Earth’s vicinity once again, beginning a journey to the near-Earth asteroid Apophis . OSIRIS-APEX will reach an orbit around the 1200-foot (370-meter) wide space rock by 2029, enabling scientists to investigate yet another space rock in stunning detail. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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Queen's Brian May is now a Doctor of Science: watch his acceptance speech

Queen guitarist Brian May is awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the University Of Hull

Queen guitarist Brian May has been awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the University Of Hull in England. 

Already a Doctor of Astrophysics, having completed his PhD studies at London's Imperial College in 2007, May accepted his Doctor Of Science, honoris causa via video link as he's currently on tour in Europe. The 74-year-old guitarist also gave a five minute speech to the university Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and fellow graduates and their families.

"I'm sorry that my commitments prevented me from celebrating with you in person today," May began, "but let me stress that it is with great pleasure that I accept this award. Please be assured that my virtual presence doesn't lessen the pride and honour that I feel in graduating alongside the University Of Hull's Science and Engineering's class of 2020. "Let me start by congratulating you all wholeheartedly on achieving your undergraduate, masters or doctoral degrees... And of course, you will have made many friends for life along the way, as I have. "When I embarked on my scientific career as a physicist at Imperial College in 1965, I didn't really appreciate that there would be a 40-year musical interval causing a delay in the completion of my doctorate in astrophysics until 2007. My keen passion for the subject hadn't waned along the way, nor had my desire to fulfil my academic journey, so I hope this inspires you, in some small way as you follow your own journey, and have your own hiccups, and discover that you can achieve - albeit sometimes with a little patience thrown in along the way - you can achieve what you wish for."

May also promised to visit the university when Queen's touring schedule permits. 

Watch the speech in full below:

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica ( Birth School Metallica Death , co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography ( Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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Queen Guitarist Brian May On Writing Anthems And Studying Astrophysics

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Brian May spoke to Fresh Air in 2010 about writing "We Will Rock You," recording the many vocals in "Bohemian Rhapsody" and getting a Ph.D. The biopic Bohemian Rhapsody details Queen's meteoric rise.

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Crime and Public Safety | California man sentenced to 11 years for…

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Crime and public safety | california man sentenced to 11 years for killing still missing girlfriend and her fetus.

A Banning jury in March found Angel Martine McIntire, 29, of Beaumont guilty of one count of voluntary manslaughter and acquitted him of two counts of first-degree murder.

McIntire was arrested in 2022 after a nearly two-year Riverside County sheriff’s investigation into the disappearance of Diana Perez Gonzalez.

According to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney’s Office, McIntire and Gonzalez had a conflicted relationship that began in August 2018. McIntire and Gonzalez moved in together, but within a year, he became abusive, prompting Gonzalez, who was pregnant with their daughter, to obtain a restraining order against him and to move out of their shared residence in December 2019, according to the brief.

The abuse inflicted on the woman culminated in a domestic violence conviction against McIntire. However, because the two had a baby together, they continued to communicate, ultimately resulting in her welcoming the defendant into her home in the 3000 block of Crooked Branch Way in the fall of 2020, the brief said.

Gonzalez then became pregnant again, which fueled discord, and McIntire again turned physically abusive, according to court papers.

On Dec. 4, 2020, with Gonzalez eight weeks pregnant, investigators theorize McIntire attacked her, inflicting fatal injuries, though the method remains unknown.

According to the brief, relying on mobile phone signal pings and social media activity, detectives were able to track McIntire’s movements that day, which took him through Cherry Valley, Beaumont, Gilman Springs, Aguanga, Cahuilla, Palm Desert and back home. At one point during the circuit, he dropped his and the victim’s daughter at his mother’s home in Beaumont, telling her that he didn’t know where the victim was, relaying the same information to Gonzalez’s family over the following week, according to court papers.

McIntire’s attorney, Daniel DeLimon, said he told jurors during the trial that there was not enough evidence to convict his client of murder.

“There was an absence of evidence as to where, when, how, and why she was murdered,” DeLimon said in an interview Friday. “The prosecution argued that those things didn’t matter as long as they believed he killed her and argued a killing under those circumstances could only be murder. They relied heavily on prior instances of domestic violence and his conduct after her disappearance. We argued there was insufficient evidence to show he did it and insufficient evidence to set what crime he committed.”

While someone can be charged with murder for the death of a fetus, DeLimon noted, there is no charge of manslaughter of a fetus, so there was no conviction related to the fetus’ death.

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