It was an Ancient Greek idea that came from Pythagoras.
Pythagoras had a profound influence on all the scientists and philosophers who
came afterwards, saying, for example, that the Universe was based on number.
And in modern science, we believe this.
We believe that mathematical, numerical theories underly nature.
Pythagoras also talked about the harmony of the spheres.
He thought that this celestial music was such that
only enlightened people could actually hear it.
In this second example, we dramatically hear what the entire Universe might have
sounded like in the first 10,000 years after the Big Bang.
This is the sonification of the interactions of matter and
radiation in the infant Universe when the temperature was thousands,
perhaps millions of degrees.
We hear the ringing of the Universe as these oscillating waves and
particles interact with each other.
Remember this is the precursor state to a vast and
ancient universe that eventually would contain 100 billion galaxies.
This work was done by Mark Whittle at the University of Virginia and
it's a dramatic example where we compress 10,000 years into about ten seconds.
And because the audible range of the true physics is 42 octaves below what we
could hear, we upshifted to come into the audible range.
[NOISE] Vision is how
we learn about the universe.
In astronomy initially, it was with the eyes, and then with telescopes and
electronic detectors.
Vision also extends to other senses and
to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Vision and this kind of data is how we learn about the Universe.