There's a hole in the middle of it all

[naomikritzer]

There's a filk song called (I think) "Carl Sagan's Cosmos" that's a spoof of "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea." I was singing it tonight and Molly stopped me on the third verse to demand that I start the whole song over so she didn't miss anything. It goes like this:

There's a hole in the middle of it all
There's a hole in the middle of it all
There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the middle of it all.

The bang caused the hole in the middle of it all
The bang caused the hole in the middle of it all
There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the middle of it all.

There's a void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

There's nothing in the void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

I'm looking for the nothing in the void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

Molly stopped me at this point and wanted to know how you look for nothing. I told her that scientists who study the universe really do look for nothing, and have ways to look for nothing, but I don't know how they do it.

The song continues:

I'll get government funding for looking for the nothing in the void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

I'll get a book contract and a TV show with the government funding for looking for the nothing in the void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

I'll make BILLIONS AND BILLIONS with the book contract and the TV show with the government funding for looking for the nothing in the void where the bang caused the hole in the middle of it all...

(On the last verse you cut yourself off right before the last line and add, "assuming the theory holds...there's a hole in the middle of it all.)

It was a hit. I think Molly was a lot more fascinated by this version than she would've been by the original "Hole at the Bottom of the Sea."

(I would include lyric credits, but I have not the first clue who wrote this and Google was unable to tell me, though it found me this slashdotter who clearly knows the same song.)

If anyone cares to offer up an explanation for how they look for the nothing, I'll try it on Molly and see if she gets it.

Comments

[a-c-fiorucci.livejournal.com]

Apparently the author/performer is Frank Hayes, you can find his music at Firebird Arts and Music (although I couldn't find that exact song, I did find some others that I know including Never Set the Cat on fire.

I did a yahoo search on the whole phrase "there's a hole at the bottom of it all". Wikipedia came up.

As for the nothing search, see if this helps: get some containers with lids. Put something that makes noise in all but one of them & seal them. Which one doesn't make noise? (Note that it is not proof that there is nothing in it, just nothing that makes noise.) Repeat for various different observation techniques (can you see anything? Feel anything? Smell anything?) I don't think you can prove a nothing, but you can collect a lot of evidence that there is nothing there to measure by the methods at your disposal (which is likely more than you wanted for her age!)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I can confirm the Frank Hayes.

Love that song.

[naomikritzer]

Ooooh, the nothing search through containers would definitely be a good illustration. Thank you.

[thefaeway.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time since my Discover subscription ran out, so I could be off by quite a bit. I'm pretty sure when scientists look for nothing, they do it by a combination of weight, volume and movement of space.

The simplest way for me to explain something I don't really understand myself: They look to see how particles move within a certain amount of space, then they add variables (of which I don't remember, and couldn't explain) to see how those affect the particles' movement and mass.

Though I don't remember reading about scientists finding nothing, I do recall several theories on what is now called Dark Matter. It's basically what used to be considered nothing, but is now believed to be both nothing and something at the same time. Crazy scientists.

How precisely they are able to acquire a sample out in "space" is beyond me, but I know they've done similar things here even in the air around us.

Love the song, by the by, but I couldn't find any info on its author for you.

Not a scientist

[(Anonymous)]

Don't scientists look for nothing by looking for the spot where there isn't any something? I realize I sound a bit Lewis Carrol-ish, and I know that's simplistic, but I bet that's what they do: Look for the places in space where there doesn't seem to be any obvious somethings, then look closer and closer to rule out the less obvious somethings. Eventually, if there isn't any somethings there at all, it must be nothing, right?

LOL

[(Anonymous)]

I fled from a doctoral program more than thirty years ago but sometimes (perhaps when I spend too much time reading writers' blogs) my brain must sink back into grad student mindset and start mentally free associating from one literary allusion to another. If you see me standing outside the coffee shop take pity upon me and drop a spare metaphor or or two into the empty styrofoam cup tremblingly clutched in my outstretched hands... (after all, nothing will come of nothing)...

Archibald MacLeish -- "The End of the World"

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

[jimlawrence.livejournal.com]

Such nothingness in mind that I posted as Anonymous instead of as myself. Ah well, 'twas nothing...

[sub-musashi.livejournal.com]

The first answer is that there is no hole where the big bang was - the big bang was "Everywhere." There's no center to the universe, and there's no hole. The big bang actually left a lot of stuff behind, which we can see. I think the song is just silly, there's nothing in it that corresponds to cosmology.

The second is actually pretty intuitive. Scientists look for nothing exactly the same way normal people do: just see where the stuff stops.