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Monday Music: NASA Data into Music

Via Here’s how it sounds when you turn NASA spacecraft data into music (‘The process of data sonification can help scientists better identify patterns in complex data and create beautiful music for the public’):

Since NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft became the first humanmade object to cross into interstellar space, researchers have poked and prodded at decades of its data beamed back to Earth from billions of miles away, gaining insight into the mysteries of our universe. Now, a particle physicist and professional flutist have transformed the waveform data of interstellar space — that dense soup of particles — into music fit more for a classical concert.

The new space jam, which premiered Thursday at the South by Southwest EDU conference in Austin, charts the moment Voyager 1 left the bubble around our sun and entered bustling interstellar space.

The melody, played by a solo flute, begins with smooth, connected notes (some using a legato) at a lower register to illustrate the data from inside our solar system. A gradual increase in loudness, or a crescendo, follows to indicate the spacecraft crossing the heliopause, or the boundary that leads into interstellar space. Then the melody becomes very high and changes shape, with more jumps to describe the busy interstellar space environment.

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