![]() "In the outermost layers of the Sun, because we've got parcels of gas that are moving around and carrying their energy with them, things get very turbulent. "Stars act as natural generators of sound," Professor Chaplin says. It's a field of science known as asteroseismology. ( Supplied: ESO)Īt the University of Birmingham, astrophysicist Bill Chaplin employs sonification to help make sense of the data he gathers from monitoring the internal mechanics of stars. Sonification could give us a greater insight into how stars function. "So we know what makes for a good display - pitch, timing, tempo and so on - and we can leverage that and use that to make our auditory graphs as compelling and as understandable as possible." We can use the same capabilities to listen for changes in a dataset," Professor Walker says. We accomplish speech by listening to changes in a person's voice over time. "The auditory system is a fantastic pattern recognition device. He argues there are instances where it's preferable to take a sonification approach. "It was just a really nice example of how sonification can make that type of thing more accessible." Superior sound, but a lack of uniformityīruce Walker, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes sonification is more than just a novel alternative to image-based data representation. "But being able to listen to those planets moving around you in space was actually a really powerful thing. That's a really difficult thing to describe," he says. "We created this soundscape where you could hear the planets in the solar system moving around you. Sonification can be used to track how planets move. It all depends on the purpose for which the sonifications are designed. ![]() ![]() The sounds generated can be discordant, like the jarring techno-robotic soundtracks associated with sci-fi films, or they can be melodic. Space telescopes also measure wavelengths of light and send that data back to Earth. Sonification allows the astronomical data transmitted by telescopes to then be turned into sound. Essentially, most of the universe is a giant, near-perfect vacuum.īut hot turbulent gas in stars produce internal and surface waves which can be picked up by telescopes. A lack of molecules means there is no medium through which sound waves can travel. Technically speaking, there is no noise in deep space. These days, Dr Bonne focuses on outreach and public engagement activities for the visually impaired.Īnd the technique he uses, called sonification, is not only creating greater opportunities for scientific inclusion, but helping astronomers to fine-tune their celestial observations. ![]()
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