The music of the spheres has never sounded better. Burak UlaÅŸ of the Izmir College Planetarium in Turkey has successfully duetted with a stellar partner 1100 light years away. Listen to it here:
The star is , one half of an eclipsing binary in the constellation Camelopardalis. Measurements of the star’s brightness over time show that its surface rings like a bell, vibrating at four frequencies.
Ulaş converted the frequencies into an unsettling, atonal chord by setting the lowest frequency to concert A – 440 hertz – and scaling the other three tones accordingly. He then repeated this process by mapping the lowest tone to the notes G, D and C, in order to have enough notes for his composition.
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In previous work, UlaÅŸ had shown that Y Cam A’s frequencies correspond best to the , often used in jazz. So alongside the star’s chords, he added notes from that scale to form an accompaniment, playing it himself on the piano.
Although the resulting piece links a single star to a single piano, matching the vibrations of other stars to other instruments could easily produce an orchestral piece, UlaÅŸ thinks.
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