What are Chords? What is the smallest unit in physics?

[Mason_Free]

What are Chords? What is the smallest "unit" in physics?

Someone told me they read a Yahoo AP article stating the most basic "building block" of the universe was a sound wave, and upon discovery this had been named a chord(or perhaps cord/kord/etc).

Again, this was an AP article, but I haven't found anything on it.

What is this?

 

[genericusrnme]

That's nonsense I'm afraid.
Are you sure this wasn't april the 1st?

 

[atyy]

I bet it was http://today.lbl.gov/2012/02/28/smoot-helps-grateful-dead%E2%80%99s-mickey-hart-interpret-music-of-the-cosmos/ .

More seriously, Wilczek has used a musical analogy. I can't locate it now, but IIRC it was about the Schroedinger wave equation and its eigenstates, which are analogous to the wave equation for sound and its harmonics.

 

[atyy]

Here's Wilczek's musical analogy: "in quantum mechanics, atoms appear as musical instruments".

It's 4 minutes into The Universe is a Strange Place.

 

[Mason_Free]

Yeah...Someone had told me it might be a misunderstanding of a string theory analogy ..something about tiny strings being the most basic bit of the universe, and these strings vibrate. With different vibrations creating a different particle, etc.