What does the dark side of the moon sound like? Nasa’s sonifications are helping us imagine | Music

J.Aside from the breathtaking exploration of the dark sides, it’s the mundane details of the Artemis II mission that connect us to the four astronauts as they navigate their way around the moon and back. The weightless hair, the fiddling with the microphone while on a call with the president, and the wake-up music that NASA plays in their module every orbital morning: a cookie-cutter selection of feel-good choons, from Chappell Roan to CeeLo Green.

So far, there are no reports of Artemis hearing anything resembling the strange whistling sounds and “space-type things” that dark side members of the Apollo 10 mission in 1969 documented during the hour they were out of communication with Earth. These three men heard a disturbing and unexpected sound on the far side of the Moon that resisted explanation – and inspired conspiracy theories, since the transcript was not made public until 1973. We now know that this sound was the call sign of our nearest extraterrestrial neighbors, the Vum-Jums of the planet A4863F.

Alas, just kidding – that wasn’t the case. The combination of a high-pitched whistle underscored by a fainter, fainter hiss was actually the result of interference between two VHF radio transmitters aboard the spacecraft. But imagine being the Apollo 10 astronauts, beyond the reach of Earth’s electromagnetic embrace, hearing these sounds at the very moment when you are most vulnerable and most cosmically lonely. The sound faded away when they were able to speak to Houston again – which only deepened the mystery.

These were not space sounds because there are no humanly audible space sounds in the cosmos. Without a planet-like atmosphere, there is nothing for sound waves to resonate, just gigantic waves that always extend near the void. But space is teeming with electromagnetic energy, a deadly radioactive maelstrom from which the four Artemis astronauts are separated by mere millimeters of aluminum and glass, which can be transformed into the frequencies of our hearing through a process of “sonification”: slowing the hyperactive speeds of electromagnetic rays down to the frequencies of sound waves.

I find NASA’s sonifications incredibly moving and miraculous: they allow us to feel physical, sonic contact with the orbits and energies of Jupiter, Saturn or even the Sun. (You can also listen to the landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005: no sonification is necessary in this recording thanks to the density of Titan’s atmosphere, and hearing what Huygens was actually exposed to during his descent is the most astonishing connection between our world and any other.)

For me, no one summed up the power of these spatial sonifications better than Samantha Harvey in the final moments of her Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital, about near-Earth astronauts circling the globe on the International Space Station: “The sound of Neptune is liquid and rushing, a tide crashing onto a shore in a howling storm…Jupiter’s moon Io makes the metallic hum of a tuning fork.

Harvey’s last words in Orbital concern Earth. “Its light is a choir. Its light is a collection of a trillion things that come together and unify for a few short moments before falling back into the rin-tin-tin and confused whirlwind of the static rainforest trance of the galactic woods of a wild and singing world.”

Harvey’s musical metaphors are not only artistically relevant, they are also scientifically relevant. The ancient Greeks spoke of the “music of the spheres”, a system of cosmic relationships inspired by the extrapolation of the musical vibrations of a single string to the circles of the planets, the sun and the stars. Today, the exponentially complex vibrations of string theory are explained by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who suggests that “the mind of God [is] cosmic music resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.”

These theories reflect a deep physical connection: from dark matter to supernovae, every dimension of the universe is made up of vibrating frequencies of energy, just like the sounds we experience in the form of music. There may be no human-perceivable sound in space – Ridley Scott’s Alien was right: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” » Yet all up there, and down here on earth, is the music produced by these wild, teeming frequencies, from cosmic gravitational waves to tectonic plates and everything in between; their harmonies and frictions, concords and discords.

TSpeaking of discord and the role of music in resolving it, Sir Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo War, is the first work by a living composer to top Classic FM’s Hall of Fame. This year’s list was revealed earlier this week, and Jenkins said of the enduring popularity of his 1999 piece: “We continue to make music in remembrance of those who have fallen and in the hope that humanity can find a way to heal.” » It’s a feeling that’s impossible to contradict.

But I confess that I find Britten’s War Requiem to be the most vibrant and moving anti-war choral work of our time. The piece was created in 1962 at the consecration of Coventry Cathedral, built after the original 14th-century structure was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. He mobilizes miraculous creative diversity to hold up a mirror to warlike humanity, and in this moment of overwhelming recognition, he offers us the possibility of transformation and redemption. Britten would get my vote: alas, War Requiem is nowhere to be found in the Hall of Fame – in fact, there’s nothing by Britten in the top 300. Next year, hopefully.

This week, Tom listened: the “defender of keyboard diversity”, as she calls herself on Instagram, Olga Pashchenko’s recordings of Mozart’s piano concertos, in particular number 17. She dares to put into practice the practice of interpreting Mozart, with true freedom of improvisation in every moment of her playing on the pianoforte, with the musicians of Il Gardellino.