Comments on: Music of the spheres

Music of the spheres

blahblahblah — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:51:13 -0800

Earth is not a quiet planet. It transmits a rather hideous sound [flash] into space that is 10,000 times greater in strength than any man-made radio transmission. The Earth also quietly hums with seismic Love Waves (hear them), while the Magnetosphere is alive will all sorts of sounds (check out the creepy-sounding Chorus Emissions). Also, stars sing out in middle C before they explode as supernovae, and the Perseus Cluster black hole has droned a B-flat for the past 2.5 billion years.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:02:41 -0800

Previous thread on black holes.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:10:12 -0800

Uranus is all like, "hommina hommina hommina ..."

By: jlowen

jlowen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:23:17 -0800

Now before I click on that Perseus Cluster link, is the recording 2.5 billion years long? Because I only have a billion and a half max before my next meeting and I can't be late.

By: Nick Verstayne

Nick Verstayne — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:26:32 -0800

I am way more into B-flat than boring old Middle C.

By: notsnot

notsnot — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:40:28 -0800

This. Is. Cool.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:41:00 -0800

I just emailed the professor who wrote a paper about the AKR, requesting a long sound clip. I'm gonna make a song with it.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:42:22 -0800

"200 to 400 hertz, in the audible range around middle C" That'd be a full octave, starting and ending roughly halfway between G and G#.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:43:01 -0800

There is another AKR clip in the Magnetosphere sounds link.

By: sleevener

sleevener — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:43:24 -0800

The "rather hideous sound" link starts off with a Dark Knight trailer. Ha ha

By: The Straightener

The Straightener — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:48:25 -0800

...the Perseus Cluster black hole has droned a B-flat for the past 2.5 billion years. That's even longer than the last SunnO))) album!

By: Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:41 -0800

That's even longer than the last SunnO))) album! Yeah, but without Steve O'Malley and Greg Anderson, who cares? ;)

By: Senator

Senator — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:54:45 -0800

I think the Earth sound is so hideous is perhaps because our Earth is in alot of pain.

By: zennie

zennie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:57:30 -0800

You can hear the sounds without the narrator on this European Space Agency page. I don't think the sound is so hideous. There are some quite musical things in there.

By: Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:58:51 -0800

I think the Earth sound is so hideous is perhaps because our Earth is in alot of pain. You're being sarcastic, right? It's a hunk of rock floating about in space. I don't think our planet has performing inter-stellar emo tunes.

By: joe defroster

joe defroster — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:20:27 -0800

Jesus fuck! The earth emits Batman commercials out into space?

By: le morte de bea arthur

le morte de bea arthur — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:35:29 -0800

There is no sound in space; this is all very silly. In order to hear this 'sound', you have to convert electromagnetic radiation into a series of compressions and rarefactions in air. The fact that the frequency of the radiation falls into the audible range is coincidental. Pretty much any batch of data can be manipulated to produce a 'sound'. Maybe you could take some road death statistics and produce something akin to a jolly Irish jig; in other words, any emotional response we have to that sound is just our own creativity at play and gives no insight whatsoever into the original phenomenon. Cool sounds though.

By: namespan

namespan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:38:28 -0800

The earth emits Batman commercials out into space? Jaguar commercials too.

By: NemesisVex

NemesisVex — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:42:33 -0800

You know what else about B-flat ...? (Includes reference to the Perseus cluster.)

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:48:51 -0800

Maybe you could take some road death statistics and produce something akin to a jolly Irish jig; Did someone say Mefi Music Challenge?

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:25:09 -0800

This post is useless without Holst. I'm using Opera, if it helps. Advise, please.

By: bwg

bwg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:35:07 -0800

This explains the aliens then. They're trying to get us to shut up.

By: eric1halfb

eric1halfb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:41:27 -0800

Try also the "Symphonies of the Planets" series from, now defunct, Laserlight Digital. It's made (somehow or other_ from signals received by the Voyager probes. I managed to find a couple of these, and though the sound quality is on the hissy side sometimes, this is quite possibly some of the most sublime and trance-inducing ambient music you're likely to hear.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:43:59 -0800

The moon, on the other hand, makes a sound best described as "Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang ba ba ding a dong ding"...

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:59:36 -0800

World Music indeed.

By: rocket88

rocket88 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:22:42 -0800

the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. 57 octaves lower, with each octave halving the frequency, would result in an oscillation every 19 million years. It's a bit of a stretch to call that a B-flat.

By: Naberius

Naberius — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:36:34 -0800

"Jesus fuck! The earth emits Batman commercials out into space?" Yes, and for billions upon billions of years this has made absolutely no sense. And from very soon now until the end of the world itself, it will be pointless and irrelevant. But right here, and right now, it all miraculously falls into place. We are living in the most specialest moment in the history of the universe.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:32 -0800

In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, this is the deepest note ever detected from an object in the Universe. Aparently the guys at NASA haven't heard the jackass in the Hummer that drives back and forth in front of my house every night just after I get my daughter to bed.

By: etaoin

etaoin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:04:09 -0800

You're being sarcastic, right? It's a hunk of rock floating about in space. I don't think our planet has performing inter-stellar emo tunes. posted by Dark Messiah at 11:58 AM on July 2 [1 favorite +] [!] You know, we could be in a lot of trouble if Earth starts cutting itself.

By: aldus_manutius

aldus_manutius — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:46:21 -0800

Hey, Nick Verstayne! C sharp or B flat! /me ducks quickly.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:39:14 -0800

I must concur with BeaAuthur'sDeath. In space, no one can hear Earth croon.

By: Dark Messiah

Dark Messiah — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:47:44 -0800

You know, we could be in a lot of trouble if Earth starts cutting itself. It can start with my lawn. Off-topic: how many emo kids does it take to screw in a light-bulb? None; they prefer to cry in the dark. *BA-ZIIING!*

By: flaterik

flaterik — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:14:25 -0800

It's a bit of a stretch to call that a B-flat. Be more of a squish than a stretch, wouldn't it? That there wavelength is pretty damn long.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:34:15 -0800

There is no sound in space; this is all very silly. No foo! There isn't any sound as we could here it, even if our ears were made of space-resistant material, but it does happen. Unless you consider sound to be only the spectrum of matter waves that the human ear can hear, but then you have to consider other animals, too. That earth-sound thing is really cool. I wonder if our CFC emissions have altered the sound? And if could listen to the sound of an earth-like extra-solar planet over a long period, could we notice the change and deduce that there was an industrious civilization?

By: darkstar

darkstar — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:43:47 -0800

Needs more cowbell.

By: lapolla

lapolla — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:37:40 -0800

i flagged 2 coments here as fantastic... i think i shoulda flaged 'em all as "noise".

By: darkstar

darkstar — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:10:30 -0800

Cowbells aside, one more to add to this collection of cosmic sounds: the primal scream of the first million years of the universe, here.