NASA Music Out of This World

Koyaanisqatsi writes "With detection instruments on NASA's Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini and other spacecraft, University of Iowa physicist Dr. Don Gurnett recorded waves that course through outer space. Gurnett converted the plasma waves into sounds which inspired a 10-movement musical composition called "Sun Rings." Sample the sounds from Galileo, Voyager and Cassini. (Full Story)"

Comments

It's been done

[Robotech_Master]

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi, radio astronomer and musician, has already done this sort of thing. (Plus, as her collaboration with Thomas Dolby ("Quantum Mechanic") proves, she also has a great singing voice. :)

Previous Story

[gorgon]

Slashdot posted an earlier story on this in July. Its amusing what some people can use for inspiration.

Noise vs. Signal

[tomem]

NASA spends about 1-2% of it's budget in an effort to communicate its activities to the general public or students. This is considered money well-spent, since it is the public that has paid for exploration of space.

Just as we cannot see outside the visible spectrum, we cannot hear plasma sound waves, which are mainly detected by electromagnetic antennae. But these sounds are just as informative about what is going on in our solar system as the Gamma, Xray or UV images that are brought back from space.

For example, there is a steady rumble from the roiling solar atmosphere, which expands supersonically throughout the solar system. And when a spacecraft crosses a shock wave (upstream of all the planets), there is a huge sonic boom. Lightening and auroras produce a wide variety of sounds.

So try to think of these sounds as having been recorded in the GREAT outdoors, and ask yourself what you might be hearing. One person's noise is another person's signal!