BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy A comet's song

Since August, Rosetta's instruments have been picking up sounds from comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. These sounds are at a frequency way too low for the human ear, so the frequency has been increased so that it's audible to us. They made a short video called The Singing Comet 67P C-G (A Space Oddity).

Andrew Huang was so inspired by Rosetta's - and the comet's "song" - that he decide to embellish it to make some cosmic music. In A Song Made out of a Comet, he's used the sounds of the comet as the accompaniment to his version of the Beatles's "Across the Universe". This is very, very cool.

The origin of the concept of the ‘music of the spheres’ is attributed to ancient philosophers. It was based on an Earth-centered Solar System. The distance from the Earth of each orbiting celestial body had a tone, rather like the pitch of a note from a plucked string is related to the length of the string. In the 16th century, Johannes Kepler developed the idea for a Sun-centered cosmos. In the theory of the ‘music of the spheres’, the sounds are not supposed to be directly audible to mortals.

I wonder what the ancients – or indeed Kepler – would have thought of the comet's song. We are privileged mortals for we can hear it when the frequency is changed.

The short film Ambition, inspired by the Rosetta mission to a comet, has had about 2.5 million views. Its soundtrack - here is the Prologue - is by Polish-Bulgarian composer, Atanas Valkov. The composer has made a full album of music both from the soundtrack and generally inspired by Rosetta, including sound samples from ESA’s space science missions. It's due to be released on 15 January 2015.

The "Ambition" album is out today. You can listen to it - and buy the album or individual tracks - on Google Play.

There are also other places to buy. This page has links.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has had a lot of music inspired by the Rosetta Mission. Here is a mission tribute by Austrian Apparel. a duo from Vienna launched who play electronic live music.