Presentation given to the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting 2017 More detail: http://www.binarydust.org/2017/07/06/adventures-in-acoustic-cosmology/

1. Developing a Soniverse
Can sound help us understand cosmology?
Can cosmology help us understand music?
@binarydust www.BinaryDust.org
Gavin Starks

2. Musica universalis
(literally ‘universal music’)
also called
Music of the Spheres
or
Harmony of the Spheres
is an ancient philosophical concept that regards
proportions in the movements of celestial bodies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis

3. This connection between
music, mathematics, and astronomy
had a profound impact on history,
resulting in music's inclusion in the Quadrivium:
the medieval curriculum that included
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy
along with the Trivium (grammar, logic,and rhetoric)
this made up the seven liberal arts,
which are still the basis for higher education today

4. 1265 - 1321
Dante's Universe

5. 1520
Copernicus
On the resolutions of the
heavenly spheres

6. 1617
Robert Fludd
The Metaphysical, Physical,
and Technical history
of two worlds,
the Macrocosm and
the Microcosm

7. 1750
Thomas Wright
An original theory or new
hypothesis of the universe
A finite view of infinity

8. Large scale structure of the universe
~100M ly

9. 1845
William Parsons
(drawing of the view through his telescope)
1889
Vincent van Gogh

10. Music of the spheres
a ‘music’ thought of
not as an audible sound,
but a harmonic, mathematical
or religious concept

11. Over the last century our understanding of our universe has completely
transformed. In parallel, our ability to manipulate the microcosm of sound,
not just the macrocosm of composition, has radically changed our music.

12. Music of the hypersphere
a ‘maths’ thought of
not as a physical universe, but as an
audible, navigable sonic space

13. Monophony
Pitch
Chant
Polyphony
Harmony
Madrigals
Baroque
Form
Harmony
Refinement
Bach, Mozart,
Handel
Symphonic
Operatic
Romantic
Beethoven,
Wagner,
Stravinsky
Dissonance
Mathematics
Primes
Messiaen,
Glass
Lattice
Mass
Grain
Texture
Cage,
Wishart
Dimensionality
Curvature
Gravitation
Symmetry
Manifold
Spin
...?
… 1400s … 1500s .... 1600s … 1700s … 1800s … 1900s … 2000s …
Our language of music has evolved in parallel to our understanding and language of science

14. In the ‘data cube’ each ‘pixel’
is a whole spectrum.
Each pixel/spectra has been
transformed into a visible colour
based on its redshift or blueshift.
Selecting a pixel takes the radio
spectrum (light) and transforms
it into sound.
You can listen to, and explore,
the structure of the spiral arms.
www.binarydust.org

15. sonon:
One wavelength — ∂s
The equivalent of a photon in a sonic universe (soniverse)
nb: not to be confused with a phonon

16. Our basic soniverse has basic parameters of a ‘cosmological model’
(does include mass, density, doesn’t include particles, inflation, etc)
Here we create two identical ‘big bangs’ and put them at different redshifts
(based on a randomly generated universal spectrum rest state)
Z1 and Z2 are the redshifts of the objects
H0 changes the age of the universe.
Ω = 1 would be a flat soniverse, less or more changes curvature
translations
light travel time = delay travel time
luminosity distance, = loudness/volume distance
coloured boxes are transformed into a range we can hear
Modelling a soniverse

17. The mathematics of structure, as spoken
through grains of rendered sound,
hewn from binary dust...
@binarydust www.BinaryDust.org