[beep beep beep.]
[high-pitched whooshing]
That’s one small step for man...
[clunking, quiet whooshing]
[trilling music]
[high-pitched whooshing]
[whooshing fades like wind]
One giant leap for mankind.
[beep beep beep beep]
Sound is one of the best connectors.
Listening to a song you haven't heard in years can take
you immediately back to a time and place.
Sounds can transport us to the middle of the woods.
And two notes can create an entire sense of fear and looming.
[as the Jaws theme]: Dun 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 the 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 then come back here to Earth.
Then we will hear the sounds created on other worlds.
Join us as we listen our way through the universe.
[beep beep beep beep beeping continues]
Sputnik.
For the last 4.6ish 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 a small probe orbited the Earth,
announcing humanity's first steps into the vastness beyond our atmosphere.
3...2...1...0...Liftoff
[rocket engines rumble]
Apollo 11.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
Roger. Tranquility.
Only 12 years later,
the world listened as Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on
soil beyond our earthly home.
That's one small step for man.
But one giant leap for mankind.
[high-pitched whooshing]
Earth's chorus waves.
But humans are not the only things that create radio waves in space.
[high-pitched whooshing]
Naturally occurring radio waves
bounce throughout the universe.
In the early days of computing, it was easier to listen to these waves
than to try to process large amounts 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 the magnetosphere are called whistlers.
[staccato whooshing]
There are many types,
but my favorite are the chorus waves.
[overlapping whooshing]
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.
[overlapping whooshing]
[wind-like rush]
Jupiter's plasma waves.
Listening to the sounds of space
at Earth helps us understand other planets.
We hear whistler waves at Jupiter, too.
But since Jupiter is so much bigger, it remixes
these sounds a bit differently. And almost like a cover band,
it adds something new to the mix.
So we can listen to one of our favorite sounds from Earth –
whistler waves – remixed by Jupiter's much larger magnetosphere.
[wind-like rush]
[chimes]
Galactic center sonification.
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.
[bell chimes]
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.
[plucked string bass notes]
Our home.
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 U.S.
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, 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 U.S.
is provided by Landsat, a joint mission from NASA
and USGS.
[rushing wind]
Marks 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 literally out of this world.
Just close your eyes and imagine
you are lounging on a foreign planet with the rustling of wind.
[rushing wind]
[low clanking]
Then the serene sounds are
interrupted by the rover driving past.
[rushing wind]
And again, with the Ingenuity helicopter taking flight,
off to discover the secrets of the Martian landscape.
[a low rattle, like a cat’s purr]
Edges of our solar system.
And we end our travel with the sound of success
from the 12th of 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 our solar system.
[rattle growing higher in pitch]
[rattle changes pitch higher and lower]
Thanks for listening with me,
Alexa Holford from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Art has always been a part of my life and is one way that I feel
we can connect more deeply with science, humanity, and each other.