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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.
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What method did the professor use to turn the radiation into music?
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
"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?
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
So your mom is back in town, I gather?
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
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).
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?
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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
before Puff Daddy remixes it.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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.
It's the acoustic equivalent of a false color image.
Yes, exactly. And false-color images are used in astronomy all the time for a very good reason: they take information measured in wavelengths beyond the visual range and present it in a way that can be quickly understood by a human. It's not just about making pretty pictures (although I would say that's a bonus in some cases) - it's about presenting information in a human-understandable form. Of course you could process your IR or X-Ray astronomy pictures in a way that never involves making a visual representation of them, but then you miss out on the insight that comes from processing the image visually, which our brains are designed to do.
Likewise with gravitational waves: we have no biological way of experiencing them directly. We can measure them with sophisticated intstruments like LIGO and LISA (or at least we hope to soon). Any representation of a waveform is artificial, whether it be a plot, a datafile, or and audio file. And each format can be used to emphasize a different aspect of the data. In the case of gravitational waves, some of the frequency bands overlap with the sound frequencies the human ear is sensitive to - no need for artificially tweaking the frequencies to make it audible.
So I would strongly disagree that such representations interfere with understanding. As long as you are not misrepresenting the process you use to make a sound file or false-colour image, I would say they can only enhance our experience and understanding - for scientists as well as the general public.
You hear Carl Sagan saying "billlllions and billllions"...
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
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.
I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand.
Have you ever considered that few people would want to listen to someone who starts out with that attitude about them?
I work with a project that places cosmic ray detectors in schools. The goals are both scientific and educational. I have had school security people drop by after their shift to talk and learn more about what we're doing. This - making science accessible and interesting to people - is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. You might be surprised how much "the average joe" can grasp, given the opportunity and the right resources.
Is it worth it to only give them half the facts?
No one is dishing out half-truths. All the relevant information is there. In the original article it clearly states:
I have never seen a similar presentation that didn't include some explanation of how it was done and what the relationship to the original data is.
It seems to me like you are asking, "Is it worth trying to disseminate interesting science even though it might be only partially understood?" To that my answer is that getting some of the information across is enough to make science outreach a worthwhile excercise.
I think it is more important to find creative and interesting ways of engaging people in science than making sure they've got all the facts straight right away. After all, if they you can get someone's interest, they will be motivated to learn more, and then any original misconceptions can be disspelled. If you start out expecting people to learn science by picking up the nearest Astrophysical Journal, it just won't happen.
Don't forget, it's legislators who only understand half the facts that cause most of the problems that
Again - more information, not less, is the answer. There's nothing wrong with presenting data any way you feel like it, as long as you explain what you did. If more scientists were working to publicize their research like this guy is, maybe everyone, politicians included, would realize that science is not something which is the exclusive domain of the specialists in ivory towers. When science is accessible, I think people are more likely to feel that it is of true value, and hence more willing to fund it with their tax dollars.
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.