If you know me or have ever read one of my posts, you will see that I am a nerd. I try to hide it… Okay, I try, but I know that I continuously fail. I have always been, and still am, a nerd, there’s no getting around it.
However, I had hopes that maybe, someday, I would do something that was seen as cool by the general public. And I may have almost done that with the help of the amazing NASA Communications team. I mean, I think what we did was very cool, but it was cool in probably the most nerdy way possible. I got to help design an installation for SXSW. It was a silent disco party for the sounds of space… At the NASA exhibit… which was housed at the Austin Library. Perhaps the nerdiest part of SXSW.
And if like me, you missed being able to travel to SXSW - no worries. You can hear the exhibit here.
We wrote out a transcript that I will put below - and I think a few things changed - but for the most part, it should be right.
Intro:
Sound is one of the best connectors. Listening to a song you haven’t heard in years can take you back immediately to a place. Sounds can transport us to the middle of the woods, and 2 notes can create an entire sense of fear and looming… dun dun... dun dun.... dun dun, dun dun, dun dun. And sound can help us understand, share, and connect to our universe. In this sound experience, we will venture across the cosmos listening to the proclamation of the space age. Tune into radio waves that inhabit our Earth’s protective shield, the magnetosphere, and their sister waves at Jupiter. We will listen to the sonification of data from literally across the universe and back here on Earth. Then we will hear sounds created on other worlds… Join us as we listen our way through the universe
Sputnik https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sputnik_beep.ogg
For the last 4.6 ish billion years, the inhabitants of Earth have been confined to, well the Earth. A short 67 years ago we took our first steps of leaving this planet and venturing out into space. Sputnik transmitted a beep, something that could be heard the world over as this small probe orbited the Earth—announcing humanity’s first steps into the vastness beyond our atmosphere.
Apollo
Only 12 years later, the world listened as Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on soil beyond our Earthly home.
Earth Whistler waves https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/chorus.mp3
But humans are not the only things that create radio waves in space. Naturally occurring radio waves bounce through the universe. In the early days of computing, it was easier to listen to these waves than to try to process the large amount of data for visual inspection. Because we were listening, the names we gave these waves were depictions of how they sound. One class of waves we find in our magnetosphere are called whistlers. There are many types, but my favorite are the chorus waves. They got this name because they sound like a chorus of birds in the morning, and these waves are typically found on the dawn side of the Earth.
Jovian Whistlers https://space.physics.uiowa.edu/plasma-wave/juno/audio/201608/jno-bkom-16-240.mp3
Studying the Earth helps us understand other planets. Just as there are whistler waves at Earth, there are whistler waves at Jupiter. But Jupiter has a much larger magnetosphere and different types of particles zooming around, so while these sounds are the same… they are also different.
Astrophysics sonification https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2020/sonify/animations.html
Radio waves, like whistlers, can be found throughout the universe, but that’s not the only way we use sound to study the cosmos. Sonification is a process of taking the data we receive, such as x-ray and optical data, and map it to sounds to help us connect, find interesting new things to study, and share our results. If we sweep across three different images of the center of our galaxy from the Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer telescopes, we can hear the data. The vertical position of the recorded light controls the pitch, while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Each telescope gets its own “instrument,” allowing us to hear a symphony of data from all wavelengths.
Landsat https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a013400/a013417/Landsat_cropland_sonification.mp4
Sound evokes emotion, connecting us to our everyday lives. We can use sound to help us communicate important information, such as crop yield in the US. In this piece, every sound carries meaning. Six notes of an acoustic guitar indicate the current top six crops by acreage, in order: corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, cotton,n and sorghum. In each year, the pitch of these notes indicates the acreage recorded. Higher pitches indicate more acreage, and a low percussive sound distinguishes each year. This data and beautiful melody of farming in the US is provided by Landsat, a joint mission from NASA and USGS.
Mars Wind, rover, and helicopter
Wind on Mars
Rover on Mars
Helicopter on Mars
Mars doesn’t yet grow crops, but it has an atmosphere like Earth. And like Earth, it has winds. The Perseverance Mars rover has provided the first sounds from the red planet, and they are both familiar and out of this world. Just close your eyes and imagine you are lounging on a foreign planet, with the rustling of wind. Then the serene sounds are interrupted by the rover driving past, and again with the Ingenuity helicopter taking flight, off to discover the secrets the Martian landscape holds.
Philae and the sound of success.
And we end our travel with the sound of success from the 12 November 2014. Just over half a billion miles away from Earth, the Rosetta-Philae lander landed safely on a comet, transmitting data from the edges of the solar system.