This post was originally published on socialsim.

I’m in love with a string theory fancier. So, when it came to a Valentine’s/Anniversary gift-o, I was stumped. Apart from buying a star (no), and extra redundant copies of Sagan/Feynman/Greene/etc/etc/etc (no), I couldn’t think of anything suitable.

Thank goodness for Web 2.0. I did what any digitally-sentient creature could and crowd-sourced the solution. Results: 1) A Higgs Boson plush toy from ParticleZoo (cheers @felix_cohen!). 2. A three-CD mix tape (how retro) of particle physics-related music. We=geek.

And of course a trip to CERN.

As I can’t seem to find most of the tracks on Spotify to create a shared tracklist (thanks @tombot18 for the invite!), I thought I’d post up the list here. It’s over the fold.

Feel free to add more in the comments below. The Best Particle Physics Album In The World Ever (Vol. 2) is already in the works.

Theme from Cosmos (Vangelis)
CERN (Alpine Kat)
White and Nerdy (Weird Al Yankovic)
Kargyraa Rap (Durgen Chugaa) (with Richard Feynman) (Kongar-ol Ondar)
(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space (John Cooper Clarke)
Intergalactic (Beastie Boys)
Big Bizang (MC Hawking)
The Girl is Mine (Richard Cheese & “Stephen Hawking”)
Protons, Neutrons, Electrons (The Cat Empire)
Kelly Watch the Stars (Air)
Looking for Astronauts (The National)
Mysteries (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Quantum of Solace (Adam Buxton)
Robot man (The Aliens)
Baby I’m Yours (Math and Physics Club)
No Atmosphere (A Band of Bees)
Blackout (British Sea Power)
The End of the World (The Cure)
Free Radicals (Flaming Lips)
Star Power (Sonic Youth)
Space Oddity (David Bowie)
Man In The Moon (Grinderman)
I Am A Scientist (Guided By Voices)
Electricity (Joni Mitchell)
The Big Sky (Kate Bush)
Space Walk (Lemon Jelly)
Katamari Stars (Katamari Damacy)
Music To Watch Space Girls By (Leonard Nimoy)
Brave New World (Jeff Waynes)
Moonland (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
Planet of Sound (The Pixies)
Orion (Rodrigo Y Gabriela)
Introduction to Capital Reef, Utah (Blue String Theory)
Space-Age Couple (Captain Beefheart)
Spiral Static (Muse)
Space I (Butthole Surfers)
Finding Higgs’ Boson (Frank Zappa)
Quantum Physics (Can)
UFO (Photek)
Cern (Monolake)
Tachyon Paradox (Merzbow Vs. Nordvic)