An astronomer, composer and artist have come together to create music from waves detected by scientific instruments on Earth, space and Mars. As a result the album is available for free online, and the producers hope it will increase interest and understanding of the events that make up its foundation. Sound is a set of pressure waves whose frequencies create responses in our brain. Although sound cannot be carried in space, other types of waves – for example, electromagnetic and gravitational – can
Space meteorologist said. Nigel Meredith has collected examples of these “space words” and sent them to their composer, Dr. Kim Kunio, who turns chakras into sound waves and adapts their charms to our ears. The album includes a piece based on the sound of Perseverance Rover driving across the Jezero Crater. Another track uses a magnetic oscillation of the spacecraft when it landed on the comet Churiyamov-Gerasimenko. Another terrestrial essay uses words created by air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic ice for 200,000 years, released by glaciologists studying the Earth’s climate history.
Kunio modifies the frequencies to make them more disgusting to their ears while trying to maintain authenticity as natural waves and adds more music notes on top. Perhaps the most original piece is the cataclysm, based on the ripple of spacetime produced by merging two black holes. These events produce a distinct waveform known as a “chip,” which starts low and rises rapidly as a spiral before the combination of two large objects. Kunio told IFLScience that he reduced the speed of the original waveform 8, 16 and 32 times to create the scale that forms the basis of the piece.
Without officially studying science from school, Kunio told IFLScience that he was always interested in it. For some pieces like Jezero Crater, he didn’t feel the need to know more about the subject than to hear it on his own. For others, however, he tapped into the knowledge of both his colleagues and experts on relevant topics at the Australian National University, where he teaches composition.
