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Listen To The Universe On Your iPod
ptorrone writes "The New York Times had a great story about Dr. Mark Whittle, a professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia who has taken the cosmic background radiation of the universe and made a series of sounds. The folks over at Engadget made the sounds available in MP3s so you can listen to them on your computer, iPod or whatever. Also, If you'd like to read more about Dr. Mark Whittle's work visit his site, there are a lot of presentations and information regarding Big Bang Acoustics."
Is it coincidental that the MP3s sound an awful lot like a bomb fuse burning and then a toilet flushing?
The Universe was created by the big bang in the high-school men's bathroom!
People have also turned gravitational wave simulations into sound files. Gravitational radiation can be a hard concept to explain to people, but make it into a sound file and it helps people (non-physicists) grasp the idea. Here's a page with a set of audio files for inspiral into Kerr Black holes.
A few years ago I made an audio file out of the gravitational wave background in our galaxy (from white-dwarf binary stars). It sounded rather like listening to the ocean... I wish I had kept a copy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What method did the professor use to turn the radiation into music?
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
...if you want to hear the sounds of the Big Bang!
Totally straight out of a sci-fi classic....felt like I was streaming through space at light speed.
Interesting concept on how he altered the waves to be audible for humans - and sped them up so we could actually listen to them in this lifetime.
You can Whittle while you work?
(sorry.)
"listen to the universo on your computer"
or
"listen to the universo on your MP3-player"
There is nothing in this story that requires mentioning an iPod. And frankly all the plugs on slashdot are getting a bit tiring.
before this turns up sampled in a hip-hop song?
I don't think this has the same implications, I'm just reminded.
Thanks for your time. :-)
Let me konw when someone makes a techno tune out of it, and adds the lyrics "Let there be light!"
Open Standards Portal
Fucking A, for the love of free beer, would you stop pimping Apple?
/. editors add/allow such flamebait in the articles just to enjoy the flame fests. And like a retard I just complied....
I think the
Damnit, knew I shouldn't have left the tinfoil hat at home today.
IOException - Can't Speak
Downloading @ 0.5 k/s.. sheesh..
What is your penile percentile?
If someone can get a bittorrent started, I'll leave it hosted all day at work here. At the moment, I can't even download the file though.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
When listening to background radition, we here in Western New York can only hear the cryptic cosmic phrase, MY TEE TAH KOH MY TEE TAH KOH.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Teenager 2: The universe, man, the universe.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut short story called "The Euphio Question". Someone discovers accidentally that if certain deep-space signals are amplified from a radio telescope and broadcast, it causes ultimate euphoria in the listener. A good read (like all of his work).
and the story isn't great either. pretty boring.
A few years ago CNN posted a link to a recording someone had made of a comet passing by... some hissing, then a minor whistle. Very spooky. I think I still use it at home as my minimize sound.
-jls
Techno-pagan
Just what I need to spend 300 bucks or more on an electronic device to hear the universe.
I have been doing this with a Sea Shell for decades
Assuming it wont be a copyright infringement to do so, does anybody want to set up a torrent?
My lame blog.
Some massaging of the data was needed...Dr. Whittle shifted the sounds to the human audible range, producing a chord like the sound of a jet engine. He used computer models to generate the cosmic chords from creation for the first million years and condensed them to five seconds.
I don't know much about sound, but this seems odd to me...if he's editing it this much, at what point is the guy just making his own music?
---
Adult Toys
Let me know if you hear sounds in prime number intervals.
so I can *see* the universe.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
I just hear some cosmic fart...oh wait my microphone is on.
We like the universes, the universes that go BOOM
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
before Puff Daddy remixes it.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
1. Turn your tv to an unused channel
2. Turn the brightness all the way up
3. Turn the contrast all the way down
4. ????
5. 1% of the dots are energy left over from the big bang. (PROFIT!)
To experience the original sound of the big bang in all its glory, turn your volume gain up 11 billion deciBels. Amplifiers that only go to +10 GdB gain just wont cut it for true audiophools.
the AC
Some slight hearing loss may occur. Don't try this at home, go to a friends house.
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
nyah, nyah, nyah!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
What about ogg?
There are some other good soundclips on the Sounds of Jupiter site as well; e.g., Jupiter's lightning and the "bow shock."
Personally I would have thought Space Invaders, but I really can't argue with the universe can I?
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Really, this has virtually nothing to do with science.
I have some experience in astronomy. I understand gravity and the cosmic microwave background and have gone through the calculations for a handful of Big Bang parameterizations.
That being said, I don't understand the purpose of this. Doing the acoustic analysis is fine and informative. Making an audible sound out of it is nonsense. It's almost entirely arbitrary, as the sound is not audible. It's the acoustic equivalent of a false color image. It really tells you nothing you didn't already know, it's just a pretty picture. Hardly worthy of all the press it is getting.
I don't believe that it improves people's understanding of fundamental phenomena. In fact, I'd say that, if anything, it gives them the impression that they understand more than they really do. And that's usually a bad situation.
The public just likes to have shiny objects dangled in front of them, they rarely (bother to) understand the significance of said objects.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
This professor is going to get a subpoena from the RIAA soon. "You have unauthorized mp3's available your server. We are suing you for $5,000,000,000."
I don't understand why the headline had to read iPod instead of mp3. Why not just say you can listen to the mp3? I think more people listen to mp3's from other players (be it computer or a Creative product, etc...) than the iPod.
Perhaps I'm just silly, but I don't think of the iPod as soon as I find an mp3 or a new sound.
Are these sounds available in Ogg Vorbis? If these guys were truly interested in furthering science, they would have released these sounds in a free (as in speech!) format.
"Listen to atmospheric noise (and extraterrestrial radiaton!) on any AM or FM radio! Just tune to static and start dancing." "See extraterrestrial radiation! Stare at the sky!"
... I'll probably listen to the Big Crunch before the Big Bang.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
It is an mp3 file, DON'T tell me how to listen to it. MP3 is a portable format and the majority of us use software players. What is next? "Linux kernel released, use WinZip version X" or whatever.
Am I the only fucking one seeing this? I am offended.
'The new your times' is singular. You are the one who needs english lessons.
Is it just "Set the controls to the heart of the sun" being answered?
I don't need the mp3s for listening to in my portable HD audio player, as it already supports wavs.
/iriver; cp mp3s/* /iriver/mp3s" on my win or nix machines respectively.
noPods are nice looking, but I find others to be more convenient. I like being able to drag/drop or "mount
"Am I the only fucking one seeing this? I am offended."
Try reading the two or three previous comments with the exact same complaint. And the replies to them which indicate you should definitely have been able to notice these comments before posting this redundant crap.
'The new your times' is singular. You are the one who needs english lessons.
YHBT. FOAD.
Regards,
The Have-Has Troll
so NOW I'd like to see who's complaining that the internet is used to share music without paying royalities.
On the other hand (seriously now) this reminds me of the Silmarillion, a book of J.R.R.Tolkien that describes the beginning of the Universe as a Music... cool.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
You hear Carl Sagan saying "billlllions and billllions"...
First the Universe, the next thing we'll be listening to is bit-by-bit samples of old *nix binaries.
Isn't this what Richard MacDuff was working on?
Nuclear war would certainly set back cable--Ted Turner
This is really old news, folks. Fiorella Terenzi has been making sounds out of "cosmic noise" for years.
www.fiorella.com
-- Space Ghost
but i'm sure it only sounds good in .ogg or .flac and i'd rather listen not on my iPod but on a rio karma.
waka waka waka.
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
those beeps... those are... prime numbers!
oh wait... 1 3 5 7 8... never mind, carry on.
I was so ready to tear into my brothers iPod (just to piss him off) when I read the next blurb and see it has ABSOLUTLY nothing to do with an iPod. Would you please stop accepting money under the table from apple? Seriously, this isn't just an oversight.
A set of CDs called "Symphonies of the Planets" which are recordings of magnetic flux in deep space as recorded by voyager probes. I had the fortune to pick up one of the cds on a whim at a Tower Records in about 1992. The one I have is *EXTREMELY* cool and my favorite thing to listen to if I am having trouble sleeping.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
There is also a way to view cosmic background radiation on your television as well. It might only work on older TVs though. It has something to do with switching to a "snow" channel on UHF, turning down the brightness, turning up the contrast and maybe one other setting. Maybe someone here will know. It was on some documentary back in the 80s or 90s.
A great excuse to tie in some iPod product placement.. well done.
Strap This Portable GPS Onto Your Backpack
"WTF, doods? I use a satchel. Don't TELL ME what to use to carry my books!"
Watch The Star Wars Holiday Special On Your TV
"DVD = TV???? I've got a PLASMA you bitches. What is it with the analog bias on Slashdot these days, huh????"
New NASA-developed Lens Cleaner Keeps Glasses Dry In Rain
"Why couldn't you have titled this Eyewear???? I think most people use contacts these days anyway."
My guess is: probably not. Something about the iPod just drives these people nuts.
Just when I thought I can listen to the Universe... you go and slashdot it...
grrr...
It's pretty similar...
Ass MP3
Audible range compression is for the mortals.
What would I do with my big huge ears!?
Give me my uncompressed music
(Have you paid $0.75 for your mp3 decoder!?!?)
Are we doomed to ethernal silence?
seriously.. mirror anyone?
I can't wait to waste space on my mp3 player with a bunch of farts and rubbing noises from outer space!
On the upside, I'm sure it's neat to listen to that stuff once.. and that is it.
is there ANY possibility someone got a copy of these before they took the files offline?
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
I don't know what I expected, but it was basically just short clips of varying pink noise, (as opposed to white noise). I'm with the other commentators.. WTF does this have to do with an iPOD?? Into the bit bucket with the files and mod the article down..
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Pythagoras didn't need an iPod...
They were an Apple commercial.
"You're listening to this on an iPod!"
Am I the only person having difficulty extracting the mp3 file?
Perhaps it's really an old spice-girls number and my computer is cleverly stopping me from accessing it,
Hey! What pretty widgets?
try this:f iles/index.html
wget -r -l2 --no-parent -A.wav,.mov -R.html,.gif http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~dmw8f/sounds/cdrom
Is it just me or do these clips sound eerily like the fake songs the RIAA is putting out?
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Your examples are flawed. The main compaint people are having is not that they have been told to listen to this on an mp3 player, it's the mention of the iPod. To use your examples:
"Strap This Portable GPS Onto Your Backpack"
Becomes:
Strap This Portable GPS Onto Your Northface Backpack
"Watch The Star Wars Holiday Special On Your TV"
Becomes:
Watch The Star Wars Holiday Special On Your Sony TV
"New NASA-developed Lens Cleaner Keeps Glasses Dry In Rain"
Becomes:
New NASA-developed Lens Cleaner Keeps Ray-Bans Dry In Rain
Do you see the difference?
I knew I should have waited for one of those 60gb models!
Glad somebody mentioned this. I guess the prof mentioned in the story put the red shift radiation through some signal processing, but that just makes it prettier. We've all heard the universe before: it sounds like someone tripped on a cable.
No man, the future is ringtones!
sulli
RTFJ.
You got it right. In fact, most of the beautiful Hubble Telescope photos take advantage of falsecolor, at least for one component, such as infrared light combined with visible light. Obviously, a color has to be assigned to the infrared light or any other wavelength not in visible range. For Hubble, the falsecolor images often end up having far more useful science than the realcolor images.
There is definitely science in turning non-acoustical phenomena into sound, and it does a hell of a good job introducing science to the masses, just like Hubble Telescope photos. Zero/One-dimensional phenomena (time) can most easily be converted to sound frequency ranges, since you only have a single sample point for a given moment. Background noise is one example since certain types are fairly uniform in all directions of the universe. Thus, there is, indeed, a certain amount of legitimate science in converting this to sound, just like hubble falsecolor (most of 'em!) is legitimate science. Just bear in mind that human hearing is very narrow slice of all the frequencies in the universe, just like the human eye eye is another very narrow slice of (much higher) frequencies in the universe. Sound equivalents for things like black holes, pulsars (beep...beep...beep), etc, have been done, and have proved very useful science in the past.
Obviously, it shouldn't be your only science (just like you have to do things like graphs, charts, mathematics, write proper papers, comparative analysis, etc.)
I am no scientist, but I know enough to tell you that falsecolor is useful science.
It's all silence with a brief
"What the f*ck do you think you're doing!"
at the beginning.
I don't have an iPod, you insensitive clod!
free online diet tracking.
Fiorella Terenzi released music based on telescope readings as far back as 1991.
And she's "a cross between Carl Sagan and Madonna"!!
False color is good for looking at geometric data. If you want to know where objects lie in an image, you can overlay and false color some intensity maps at a few different wavelengths. That is very useful. A lot of the time, it's done just to impress the peasants, of course.
/.ers complain about.
With this data, the temporality of it renders it pretty much worthless to the human ear. Anything you can detect by ear will very easily be seen in a simple Fourier transform or similar technique. A Fourier transform and a plot against logarithmic time is probably the best (most efficient and informative) way to visualize it.
Image processing is still not very good at identifying features, unless those features are very well stereotyped. This happens to be a part of my current work, albeit with time-series acquired microscopic images (EM, laser scanning, etc). The human eye/brain will pick up on visual cues that the best algorithms will miss. The algorithms themselves are generally designed/trained based on analysis conducted by eye.
Picking out 2/3D phenomena is where false color images can be useful. Simple grayscale intensity images are often just as good or better (I worked for a professor that insisted on keeping color channels separate during viewing). Listening to 1D data, you won't learn anything new that the computer couldn't have told you.
I know this was done just for the sake of doing something neat. And, I don't fault it for that. What does bother me, however, is that now you'll have some NYT-reading, liberal artsy, pseudo-intellectual douchebags running around thinking that the Universe plays an audible tone. In the end, they only get half the facts down and make up the rest, then go on to propogate that misinformation.
I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand. Is it worth it to only give them half the facts? Don't forget, it's legislators who only understand half the facts that cause most of the problems that
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
I've been listening to the universe my whole life.
I have a CD of space recordings dated back to 1992. Granted it's out of print these days, but, there is still some info to be found on them.
From the liner notes:
These recordings are the most unique approach to deep level relaxation... hmmm.. let me type the better ones...
These recordings come from a variety of different sound environments:
1)From the intersection of the solar-wind with the planet's magneto-sphere (...)
2. From the magneto-sphere itself.
3. From the trapped radio waves bouncing between the planet and the inner surface of it's atmosphere.
4. Electromagnetic field noise within space itself.
5. From charged particle interactions of the planet, its moons, and the solar wind.
6. From charged particle emissions from the rings of certain planets.
OK, I guess that gets the point across. This stuff dated back a number of years.
FYI, for anyone that knows most of Brian Eno's recodings, this won't sound any different...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
...to listen to the universe. I do it pretty much all the time.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Generally when one turns binary information into audio they just slap a WAV header (or MIDI) on the file and the compress it to an MP3. The result is just static or a mess of notes.
A Better way to do it, is to read in the file as tones. DeCSS.mp3 actually has a deep base beat and repeating melody that's able to be listened to. I ran two versions of DeCSS C code through it and it's very easy to recognize when it gets to the key.
The way it works is that the forumla for piano key frequencies is used and only every other key is used. The result is always harmonies. In the INI file you can specify the number of simultanious tones that make up the chords and the delay between them. If you have say 8 tones, the first 8 bytes will make up a chord. If in the next 8 bytes one of the values is repeated the note is "held." This results in a more fluid "composition."
It's a slightly older version of MathSound. The newest revision will be posted probably this weekend.
It allows for MiddleC to be defined (currently it's 440Hz which is actually A) and what byte value represents it. Currently zero is middle C. It also allows you to limit the number of keys so you don't get too high pitched or too deep.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Then again, it's not as though God would find a music industry lawyer in heaven, right?
They should have released this file as a torrent, its going at like 1.5 k/s!
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
This reminds me of SpaceSounds.com
You seem confused. They are not praising Apple.
Muuuuusik - nonstop.
Fuse burning - nonstop.
Hear Universe flushing - nonstop.
It's a PR stunt, to get people interested in cosmology and to give back to the people who actually pay taxes to fund experiments like WMAP and stuff.
I am perfectly happy with hanging shiny objects to the public. If they are interested, they'll ask more questions, and who knows, the younger ones might get excited enough to want to find out more (and pursue a career in science). If they don't bother to find out more, then fine with me, someone got to keep things like the water supply running.
So, all the power to those people who spend time doing such things.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Definitely sounds like the old defender video game... or else the aliens really do sound like that and Atari managed to hit the nail on the head.... Either way, I'm scared.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Just this morning saw an Outer Limits episode where teenagers who listened to a certain recording of noise from outer space become zombies and began to turn into aliens. I had to go to work so I didn't catch the twist (not that the Outer Limits really has Twilight Zone quality twists), but it seems a bit strange to me that MP3 records of sound from space would now be made available after I just watched that show this morning. Or maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep.
boo
In Soviet Russia, universe listens to you!
This is about as scientifically useful as "What do colors sound like?" or assigning sounds to coefficient of friction. But won't you get as much science from maryjuana? False color imaging helps people see details since our brains are wired for visual input. But mapping to arbitrary audio would be like mapping the alphabet to a musical scale then playing a book on the piano. I'm not sure you would get anything useful out of it.
Oh man I've totally been listening to the universe with my ipod already. I just get real comfy on my beanbag chair, grab some munchies and tune in some floyd. Oh man I am so hungry right now. I love chips. Corn chips, kettle chips, barbeque chips. They are soooo good.
_nfotxn
Has anyone but me read the book The Stardroppers by John Brunner? In this book, "stardropping" is the latest hype. Using portable receivers, people listen to cosmic background radiation. What they hear is not only noise and static...
Sounds like Brunner's story from 1972 has become reality :-)
(And yes, I know, we don't carry receivers, but the resemblance with the plot is still striking :-)
/virtual void
Just tune your (older) TV between channels. The snow is partly caused by the cosmic background radiation. Newer TV's just show a blue screen when there's no signal (there's gotta be a Windows joke in there somewhere...)
...of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?
Man, I just saw an Outer Limits episode like this. Pacey (Joshua Jackson) took some sounds and then Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and her friends started listening to it, and they all mutated.
It was "Music of the Spheres," Episode #3.14, and SciFi just reran it during their marathon.
Don't listen to it! You'll all turn iridescent gold!
Radio Astronomy, in the literal sense
http://www.radio-astronomy.net/
And pulsar sounds
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/research/pulsar/
Is it me or does track 9 sound exactly like doing a whippit? :)
Perhaps Nitrous Oxide is one of the secrets of the Universe.
-PMP-
Gah, so this is what happened to my server and network on the 9th!
(Looks to corner, sees ashes of machine still smoking...)
Sigh...