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Stellar Seismologists Record "Music" From Stars
niktemadur writes "The BBC reports that a French team of stellar seismologists, using the COROT Space Telescope, have converted stellar oscillations into sound patterns, a relatively new technique that, according to Professor Eric Michel of the Paris Observatory, is already giving researchers new insight into the inner workings of stars. The subtly pulsating, haunting sounds are very similar to artist Aphex Twin's minimalistic nineties album 'Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2,' only stripping away what little melody it had and leaving just the beat. These and many more recordings from space can be accessed at the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics website, also known as the Jodcast."
..the RIAA looks to the stars for a new revenue stream.
And are these stars receiving any royalties from these recordings?
If not, then would that make these seismologists Space Pirates?
Am I the only one who interpreted 'stellar' to mean 'really awesome'? As in 'Some really awesome, talented seismologists Record Music From Stars'?
Man, that was confusing.
This just shows that Pythagoras and Kepler were right!
After discovering The Music Of The Spheres, the pair of philosopher-scientists went on to form the ambient electronica duo P&K. After three moderately successful albums they split, citing creative differences. Pythagoras now teaches high school math in Wichita, KS. Kepler is currently in the Shady Acres Sanitarium.
Roll credits.
Actually using sound to view data from anything can be quite useful. I have worked in telcomms for some time, and in days gone by listening to the demodulated data as audio from a paging signal was very useful. Engineers can listen to it and know if it is 'right' or 'wrong' without a scope, data tracer, or any equipment at all other than a pager with audio output. I've actually located faults using this.
Using charts is a way for us to 'see' data in a form that we can readily digest. Using audio to 'hear' the signals from space will allow our brains to quickly digest what the data shows. I'd like to see more of this. We use IR cameras to see wavelengths that we do not typically see with our eyes. Why not use audio to look at radiation from space?
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Agreed. A "beat" doesn't necessarily imply periodic rhythm. I'm surprised, however, that the story here mentions on Aphex Twin and not an even more topical piece of music. In the 1980s, the French spectralist composer Gerard Grisey wrote a major concert work called Le Noir de l'etoile for six percussionist. The material is partly based on sounds from pulsars, and in fact during the concert a radio telescope is to be used to directly pipe in the sound of a specific pulsar. Grisey's work at this time was increasingly fascinated by musical time, and the contrast between the clockwork of the pulsar and more organic aperiodic rhythms is a major concern of the piece.
A number of pieces are accepted to have no beat and there is a variety of music thought to be ametrical or with long periods of ametricity. Take Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima or Xenakis' Metastasis for example. I've written a number of ametrical works. There are even works with percussion that could be argued to be ametrical such as the opening and title track to Gorgut's Obscura.
Aren't the rhythms of the beginning of Metastasis based on the Fibonacci sequence? IIRC, there's a woodblock part that clearly marks out durations that the listener can relate to.
In Formalized Music Xenakis details a lot of his mathematical process but a statement like, "that the listener can relate to" makes a LOT of assumptions about the listener. I certainly wouldn't identify a beat with those hits. Everything in sound has an underlying mathematical structure. It doesn't mean that structure necessarily translates to anything higher order or is perceptible.
From Wikipedia:
Dr. Fiorella Terenzi is an Italian astrophysicist, author and musician who is best known for taking recordings of radio waves from galaxies and turning them into music. She received her doctorate from the University of Milan but is currently based in the United States.
Terenzi is known for her CD-ROM Invisible Universe which combines music and poetry with astronomy lessons, and for a sexually charged 1998 book about science entitled Heavenly Knowledge. She has also released a number of albums of her music.
She is known as an Apple Computer "AppleMaster", and has collaborated with the likes of Thomas Dolby, Timothy Leary, Herbie Hancock and Ornette Coleman.
When she isn't performing, she teaches astronomy at Pierce College in Los Angeles. As of 2006, she was teaching astronomy at Brevard Community College in Cocoa, FL.
Home Page: http://www.fiorella.com/fiorprofile.htm
Videos: http://video.fiorella.com/
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