Can We ever Hear Gravity's Music ?

[Antonio Lao]

Can We ever Hear Gravity's Music ?

Kepler's Music of the Spheres was his dream to hear the songs played by the universe. The waves of this music are now believed by theorists to be the gravity waves of spacetime undulations. These waves might be what inspired Beethoven to compose his symphonies since his lost of hearing allow him to be more sensitive to the sound of gravity.

Without having to duplicate the gift given to Beethoven, can scientists ever construct an instrument that is sensitive enough to hear the songs and music from the cosmic voice?

 

[arildno]

"These waves might be what inspired Beethoven to compose his symphonies since his lost of hearing allow him to be more sensitive to the sound of gravity."

Really?
Why should the "music of the spheres" be so anthroposensitive that it would be as aesthetically pleasing as the 9th??

 

[Antonio Lao]

Why should the "music of the spheres" be so anthroposensitive that it would be as aesthetically pleasing as the 9th??

Somehow the anthropic amplification of gravity waves must be possible otherwise the ultraweak gravity waves are not detectable. My theory is that Beethoven's musics (and all other beautiful music composed by man or natural music such such bird's songs and the cries of the wolves and the sound of the humpback whales) are all out of this world and these are the amplification of celestial gravity waves. All have something in common, this is the rhythmic vibration of matter.

 

[Bariyon]

You may not have to look outside this world to understand where musical inspiration comes from.

Let me share an experience I once had.

I was standing on a beach, looking out to sea, when I thought that my ears were deceiving me, because I could hear "music". After a while I realized that I was hearing the "music" of the vibrations taking place all around me. I was in a natural amphitheatre, so it was magnified. And why do I call it "music"? Because it was some of the best I have ever heard! On the way home, the old bus I was in was rattling away, and its "music" was actually distasteful. Later I was listening to some manmade music on a car stereo, which was actually a poor attempt at replication.

So why are we not hearing this "music" all the time? Partly because we are so noisy, but mainly because our ears are not programmed to hear sounds for musical content, but for informational content. We are constantly listening to the sounds around us, and packaging the data, so we know what is happening around us, what may be approaching, whether we are safe, etc. As a simple example, we say "that was a wave breaking" not "that sounded like the surface of the sea tearing."

In a way this is the sound of gravity, but closer to home than you were suggesting.

 

[Antonio Lao]

Bariyon,

Thanks for sharing your unique experience. I can say that you are also among the gifted ones with this extrasensory hearing perception of the cosmos. The physiology of hearing seems to indicate that human beings tend to lose the detection of lower frequency sound as they get older. This is true in my case because I also used to hear sounds at a much lower frequency. I was wondering could there be gravity waves that are comparable to the heartbeat? Or frequency of just a few cycle per second? Could the lowest frequency of gravity be just 1 cycle per second?

 

[Janitor]

This isn't quite what you are getting at, but it seems to me that one of the probes to Jupiter gathered data on the magnetosphere (?), and some scientist--mainly out of curiosity, I guess--went to the trouble of converting it to sound in a way that is audible to human ears. I have not actually ever heard it, though.

About five years ago I saw a very brief item on the TV news about some guy who was trying to get decent music from using DNA base sequences as input. I no longer remember what sort of algorithm he used, but I suspect it told us more about his own musical composition talent than it did about DNA. Again, not what you are asking about--sorry!

 

[Antonio Lao]

Janitor,

Thanks for your reply. Sound wave is the vibration (longitudinal) of mass. Electromagnetic wave is the vibration (transversal) of electrically charged particles. But when the frequency of both types of wave are comparable, the mode of vibration can be interchangeable, I think.

In "empty space," there is no mass (the kind that causes sound wave) to create audio signal but now we believe that space is really not "empty" there are fields (spacetime fields of inflaton and Higgs) and we must not forget the gravitational field itself of which quanta are the gravitons and the inseparable electric field and magnetic field of the vacuum.

So if we restrict wave propagation at lower frequency as traveling phonons (manifestation of mass property) and higher frequency as traveling photons (manifestation of charge property) then gravity wave belongs to phonons.

Edits:

And another idea I have is that as the universe grows older, detecting the heavier mass particles such as the magnetic monopoles, heavy supersymmetric particles, the heavier quarks, the heavies leptons, all other heavier than usual particles becomes harder and harder. So for an infinite mass such as the singularity of the big bang, there is no sound at all, the singularity does not vibrate, its frequency (longitudinal) is zero. But its EM frequency (transversal) must be infinite so that its energy is infinity. Its temperature (random vibration of heat) is infinite, its density (is this density of mass or density of energy?) is infinite, its volume is zero (absolute rest).

 

[LURCH]

Kepler's Music of the Spheres was his dream to hear the songs played by the universe. The waves of this music are now believed by theorists to be the gravity waves of spacetime undulations. These waves might be what inspired Beethoven to compose his symphonies since his lost of hearing allow him to be more sensitive to the sound of gravity.

Without having to duplicate the gift given to Beethoven, can scientists ever construct an instrument that is sensitive enough to hear the songs and music from the cosmic voice?

If LIGO is succesfull in detecting gravity waves, I can see no reason why those waves could not be converted to soundwaves in the same way electromagnetic waves are converted by an amp. However, I do not know if we expect to detect waves in a frequency that would be audible to human ears.

 

[wespe]

Let me share an experience I once had.

I was standing on a beach, looking out to sea, when I thought that my ears were deceiving me, because I could hear "music". After a while I realized that I was hearing the "music" of the vibrations taking place all around me. I was in a natural amphitheatre, so it was magnified. And why do I call it "music"? Because it was some of the best I have ever heard! On the way home, the old bus I was in was rattling away, and its "music" was actually distasteful. Later I was listening to some manmade music on a car stereo, which was actually a poor attempt at replication.

That reminds me of my usage of a drug (nutmeg, for recreational purposes, long in the past..). Everything around looked alive and it was like they were trying to say something to me. Once my hearing was amplified too.