Queen Guitarist Completing Doctorate in Astrophysics

Folks who subscribe to the notion that guitar players ain't exactly practicing rocket science may need to cancel that subscription once and for all -- now that Queen string-slinger Brian May is on the verge of earning a doctorate in astrophysics from London's Imperial College.

May probably could've simply rung up the folks in charge at his one-time alma mater to wrangle one of the honorary degrees that fall onto celebrity mantelpieces the way hair extensions drop to Adam Duritz's kitchen floor, but he opted to do things the old-fashioned way. The guitarist, who was studying astrophysics when he joined Queen back at the dawn of time, holed up at an observatory in Spain's Canary Islands to complete research for his long-in-the-works dissertation on "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud."

We'd reserve a copy for a late-night read, but we'll probably just wait until Coheed and Cambria turn it into a comic book and concept album.