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Band Uses Nuclear Isotopes To Make Music

Posted by Soulskill on from the music-of-science dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Every second in your body, thousands of tiny isotopes are bursting with radioactive decay. And, all around you, imperceptible gamma rays explode in a brilliant but invisible lightshow. And they've just formed a live band. Yes, you read that correctly. But it's all for science: The Radioactive Orchestra 2.0 is part of a Swedish project to help us understand how low-energy radiation works, by showing the energy patterns of nuclear isotopes. Swedish musician Kristofer Hagbard conceived of the orchestra about a year ago and released an album last spring, but the new 2.0 version of 'the band' allows him to perform live in front of an audience. 'This can be looked at as a piano for high energy photons, so every detection gives us a note,' Hagbard said. 'The musical instrument is as good as the gamma spectrometer we are using.'"

10 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Great Bands by infidel_heathen · · Score: 5, Funny

    All great bands are highly energetic, yet their halflives are so short.

    1. Re:Great Bands by TheLink · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They should do a gig in Fukushima then.

      --
  2. A must have for air travel now by Lucas123 · · Score: 3, Funny

    A pair of Bose isotope isolating headphones

    1. Re:A must have for air travel now by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      A pair of Bose isotope isolating headphones

      But if it's beta rays you're worried about, you need the Fermi headphones. Bose headphones are not going to protect you.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  3. Kraftwerk Radioactivity by joelsherrill · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://youtu.be/eaScyfSHc-Y

  4. Misleading Title by FriendlyStatistician · · Score: 4, Funny

    Should be "Band Uses Nuclear Isotopes to Make 'Music'."

  5. Music Categorization by odysseus_complex · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think this takes the concept of "heavy metal" music a little too far, don't you think?

  6. Nuke Rap by bit+trollent · · Score: 2

    This kind of music encourages teens to enrich uranium. Just look a these lyrics.

    "Topin' all night like a motherfucking physicist.

    Now every third world arab nation in the world wanna get with this."

    Topin' and Freakin'

  7. I have monster cables... by dnahelicase · · Score: 2

    They isolate any rogue gamma radiation or radioactive decay and line up the charges so I only receive the purest electrons...

  8. Every great band did that. by nospam007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just by smoking a cigarette, you inhale radioactive Polonium isotope 210.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=radioactive-smoke