-----LYRICS----- Cosmic background All the heat coming off (See it cool, recombine) Recombining hot plasma Cosmic background, Oh from an era before (CMB) Concrete matter (Hot plasma) Looking back (Through that light) To the origin (The Big Bang) (Looking for inflation in the cosmos) All of space is alive with an ambiance Unblinking since matter was young A swarm that screens all the earlier scenes From our view of how the world was begun We scour for clues still imprinted On that light waiting there to be found And at the South Pole we spy Within the black starless sky Great swirling forms in the plasma cloud In the surface of light (Looking for a confirmation / In the background radiation) (PLANCK and BICEP!) That we'll use to show (Frozen waves of gravitation / Born as quantum fluctuation) If inflation's force (Caught up in cosmic inflation / Causing their amplification) Through space has rung (Give B-mode polarization / To light at recombination) Will we find our waves (Their purported observation / Was a cause for jubilation) In the polarizing (At a South Pole science station / But had faulty estimation) In the surface (Of a dusty compensation / Calling off the celebration) The surface of light (And with this new implication / Now we need more information) PLANCK: Hey BICEP! BICEP: Yeah Planck? PLANCK: Ever wonder what those swirly patterns are up there? BICEP: Planck! I don't wonder; I know! PLANCK: Oh. What are they? BICEP: They're gravity waves! Gravity waves that, uh, got stuck up in that big cosmic background thing! PLANCK: Oh geez! I always thought they were clouds of dust glowing billions of miles away! BICEP: Planck, with you, everything's dust. It's the surface of light (A detailed investigation / By the Planck collaboration) (BICEP3 will map it all again!) And we'll soon be shown (Of foreground contamination / polarized by grain vibration) If the data holds (On their axis of rotation / With a large-scale correlation) Or turns to dust (From magnetic orientation / Made precise determination) Will we find our waves (Of a power law relation / Showing signal domination) In the polarizing (By galactic obfuscation / Which in future application) In the surface (Should allow for calibration / And component separation) The surface of light (For CMB isolation / The surface of light)
