Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Cosmic Queries – The Sound of Space with Kimberly Arcand About this episode What does space sound like? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Matt Kirshen explore space sonification projects and Chandra x-ray data with astronomy visualization expert Kimberly Arcand. Hear what the supermassive black hole at the center of The Milky Way sounds like…
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and today is a Cosmic Queries edition. And we titled this one, "Sounds of the Universe." "Sounds of the Universe," and there's only one person who is editor in chief of the "Sounds of the Universe," and that's Kim Arcand. We'll get to her in just a moment. Let me introduce my co-host, Matt Kirshen. Matt, welcome back to StarTalk.
0:44 Matt Kirshen? Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, as always.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, host of probably Science and just all-around funny guy. We love you when you come on, so thanks for...
0:53 Matt Kirshen? I love being on. Also, I've recently just had a couple of messages. I'm on a tour at the moment and just had a few tweets from people who were like, "I didn't know you're on this show. I know you're from StarTalk."
1:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh, excellent, excellent. That's how that's supposed to work, you know?
1:06 Matt Kirshen? Exactly. So, hey, StarTalk listeners who've just seen me on stage. It's nice to see you through the screen.
1:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we have Kim Arcand as our expert guest. She's been a StarTalk visitor before. Many years ago, pre-COVID, before COVID, BC, I think we should call it that, right? She's a visualization scientist and was an engineering tech lead for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a very important space observatory on the ranks of Hubble, except its data was in X-rays, so it didn't quite get all the PR that Hubble got. But it was one of our great observatories that we put into orbit around the Earth to see the universe in X-rays. And she worked on several projects. We're interested in the stuff she's done that connects the
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? acoustic world to the cosmic universe. And some of the stuff she's done has even went viral. And so, Kim, welcome back to StarTalk.
2:06 Speaker 02 Thanks. It's so great to be back.
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what is NASA's sonification project?
2:11 Speaker 02 Well, the sonification project essentially is just a way that turns NASA data into sound. That's all it is. It's like data storytelling, but using our ears to hear it instead of just our eyes to see it. It actually started as a project because during the pandemic, I really wanted to be able to keep working with my community members and colleagues who are blind or low vision. And our previous 3D printing program just became very challenging during the pandemic. You couldn't be in the same room with someone, never mind share a 3D print. And so we started converting data into sound and it turned into a much bigger thing than I expected.
2:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this, so this is not just for, for grins. This is because it really can serve the, the needs and the desires of the seeing impaired. I mean, that's
2:57 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I mean, it's not just, oh, that's cool. No, it's like, oh my gosh, how else are you gonna, how else are you gonna feel this?
3:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. We had, like I said, been working in 3D printing primarily. So translating data sets into three dimensions that we could 3D print whole or into tactile plates where you could kind of create like relief maps from the data. But then during the pandemic, that was just all kind of impossible. So I recalled a colleague that I had met at a visualization conference, Matt Russo. He's part of System Sounds and he and his partner Andrew Santaguida had been working in some cool areas of data sonification that I thought would be great to bring towards the Chander data. And so we started working together and we created a few sonifications and they were very well received. And I think I was very surprised at that. I thought it would be, you know, something we created for and with people who are blind or low vision.
3:48 Speaker 02 So I, I don't know why, I just didn't expect it to go beyond that community, but it, it really did. And it was, it was very lovely to, to witness that.
3:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Matt, I got an idea for her. You want to hear me, you want to hear my new idea? Okay. I'm listening. They started out with 3D printing, right? So that's your sense of touch. If you otherwise don't have a sense of sight. All right, and then COVID put a kibosh on that and they switched senses. Cause you got, we got five traditional ones, right? So why, why get stuck on one? So then you went to auditory data.
4:26 Speaker 02 Yep.
4:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I'm thinking, why not go to taste?
4:29 Speaker 02 But I'd stop there, like just I'm.
4:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, we can taste the data.
4:33 Matt Kirshen? Taste and smell?
4:34 Speaker 02 I don't know. I feel like the taste and the smells might be scary, like sulfur, iron. I don't know if I want any of that. Rotten eggs, no, thank you.
4:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We, yeah, hydrogen sulfide in the universe.
4:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh, this is a next, the next thing.
4:51 Speaker 02 No, I think we're good.
4:53 Matt Kirshen? So, so just so I can get a grasp on this, cause I think, I, obviously this is Neil's world, but this is, this is, you're, you've got a map or you've got these, you've, you've got these images that are coming through that are X-rays or radio waves or whatever, and you're converting them into sound waves.
5:09 Speaker 02 So yeah, what is happening, right? So all this data that we're capturing, say with Tundra, that's all, all X-ray light. So nothing that humans can naturally see, right? So humans do this amazing stuff where they build these crazy spacecraft that can capture that data and then write this awesome software that can translate that data. Because essentially astronomy like that is just numerical, right? So we're translating that into something we can see, that, that visual representation of the object. And then from there, the pipeline is to sound. So we essentially take all of those pixels that we get from that resulting image and we do a mathematical mapping from those pixels into something we can hear by using like assigning different kinds of sounds, either a synthetic sound or like an instrumental sound, for example.
5:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the whole picture though, is seen all at once, whereas sound has a beginning, middle and an end.
5:55 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you scanning left to right?
5:57 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Across the image and then it comes into quote auditory view, if I can borrow that word?
6:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's a great question.
6:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, is that how you do that?
6:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's a great question because it actually brings up some interesting things of why this has been such a fun project. So it depends on the data set is the short answer to your question. If it's a sort of landscape shaped image, if you will, then we'll scan from left to right. If it's like tall and skinny, then we usually scan either top to bottom or bottom to top, depending if we're trying to use stereo sound or whatever the data is showing. If it's an object like a supernova remnant that's got very sort of spherical structure, then we typically do center out or radial scan, right? So we let the data drive the process. They're all, it's a bespoke process still at this point, but it's really taking the science that's all tucked up inside those images and letting that drive the data sanitization to tell the story.
6:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That makes complete sense now that you say it.
6:50 Speaker 02 Oh, good. I'm glad. Thanks.
6:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if you have a spherically symmetric object, you want to sample that in a spherically symmetric path.
6:59 Speaker 02 Exactly.
6:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That makes complete sense. You want to match your geometry to the geometry of what it is you're presenting. But now, I got a bone to pick with you.
7:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
7:09 Speaker 02 What? Whoa.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Matt, I need, I need backup on this in case. In case she gives me a hard time here. You ready? Okay.
7:15 Matt Kirshen? Yep.
7:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You are leaving people with the impression that these objects in space are making sound.
7:23 Speaker 02 Yes, I see where you're going with this.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I know.
7:25 Speaker 02 So yes and no.
7:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I know.
7:27 Speaker 02 Yes and no.
7:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I saw the movie that in space, no one can hear you scream. I saw alien. That's how I knew. I didn't know before then, of course, but I.
7:35 Speaker 02 That was such a good movie. It was such a good movie. I love that movie.
7:38 Matt Kirshen? This is, this is why rockets don't have call.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Get out of the way.
7:43 Speaker 02 Exactly. Exactly.
7:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
7:45 Speaker 02 But yeah, that's a great point.
7:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so is there some housekeeping you have to do at the end of all of this to say, we're not actually hearing the universe?
7:56 Speaker 02 Yes, so I have two answers to that. And the simple one is yes, we, we always say we're not holding a microphone up to the sky. Right? We're not, we're not recording actual sounds. We're too far away from any of these objects, even if they were making sounds. However, there are objects in the universe that do create sound waves. And so one of the sanitizations that I think we're going to listen to on this show today is actually.
8:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you brought clips. Yes, I want to make sure.
8:19 Speaker 02 We have some clips. Yes.
8:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I will totally. Before we get, by the way, this is a cosmic query, so we just lay in some, some landscape here.
8:25 Speaker 02 Laying the, that's right. In our garden.
8:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the garden, yes.
8:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. So yeah, there is this idea that there is no sound in space, but that's not really true. You know, there are sound waves that are occurring in things like galaxy clusters, where there is all this super hot gas around things like supermassive black holes. And a supermassive black hole might have, like, say, a relativistic jet coming out of it. And if it's surrounded by all of that super hot gas, the jet is kind of like the drumstick and the hot gas is like the drum, right? And it can create sound waves. So we do have an example where we've taken a sound wave and re-sonified it up to something we can hear.
9:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, Dan, why did you... You just convinced me. I didn't want to be convinced. I wanted to argue with you about this.
9:08 Speaker 02 I love to argue, though. I argue this so much.
9:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn, she's right. Oh my gosh. Okay, what you're saying is wherever there's gas in the universe, which is in many places, it's reasonable to say, what is sound doing in that gas? Because the sound is moving through a medium.
9:23 Speaker 02 Right.
9:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the vacuum of intergalactic space, or wherever there is no gas, that brings in the...
9:30 Speaker 02 Exactly.
9:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's where you have the issue.
9:32 Speaker 02 And we're not going to hear anything here on Earth. We're too far, and these sounds are way too deep and all of that. But out there in outer space, there are places where there are sound waves occurring. And even like the early universe, you know, the sort of... That early archaeological history, if you will, you know, like the cosmic microwave background. Like when there was all of that, you know, dense, hot fog. They can translate that information into sound and kind of learn about things differently.
9:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Authentic sound, not just a conversion.
9:59 Speaker 02 Right.
10:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, an image conversion, yeah.
10:02 Matt Kirshen? So I know like, I know audio gearheads are always like trying to search for like the deeper basses, like the bigger and bigger subwoofers. Like how, how deep are these galaxy clusters getting?
10:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Matt, I'll ask...
10:13 Matt Kirshen? If one of them was mounted on the back of someone's Volkswagen Golf, like how...
10:16 Speaker 02 So I can tell you...
10:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, Matt, I'll ask that question, right?
10:18 Speaker 02 Okay.
10:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Kim, how deep can you go?
10:23 Speaker 02 You two have the perfect voice for that question.
10:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How, how, how deep can you go? You go.
10:28 Speaker 02 Very deep.
10:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, good, good.
10:29 Speaker 02 So, so, for example, the Perseus Galaxy Cluster, which is like a couple hundred million light years away from us, so pretty far, um, that black hole is singing out at a note that's about fifty-seven octaves below middle C. Um, and so that is, I think, one of the deepest. It's possible that M87 is also deeper, um, but it doesn't sing as well. Um, but so that is, as far as we are aware, at least one of the deepest notes in the universe.
10:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so now-
10:56 Speaker 02 Fifty-seven octaves below middle C, if you like.
10:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so all of these notes, even those that are not the deepest, still fall well outside of our twenty to twenty thousand hertz, you know, auditory range. So in order to hear these sounds, you have to, I don't wanna say fake it, but you have to boost it.
11:14 Speaker 02 Yes.
11:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Change, you have to put it in another octave where we can hear it.
11:18 Speaker 02 Exactly. We, yeah, exactly. So in the Sonification Project for that, we re-sonified it by bringing back up about fifty-seven and fifty-eight octaves so that we can hear it.
11:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like to re-sonify, you got your own vocabulary for this.
11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, we kind of have developed it. And I have to give such credit to my partners, Matt and Andrew, on this project because we've really thought hard about this stuff. And, and they've definitely tried to lay a lot of groundwork. It's, it's a very exciting thing. I, I love it.
11:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what's, so what's the first clip you have?
11:43 Speaker 02 Oh, I think the first thing that we're gonna listen to is kind of like a general introduction to what sonification is. And this is just translating an image into sound. There's no sound waves that we're capturing here, although this is a supermassive black hole, so there could be some. Um, but this is the inner, like, four hundred light years around Sagittarius A star, our supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And what's cool about this dataset is we've got three different kinds of light. We've got light from the Hubble Space Telescope, that's kind of like optical near-infrared. We've got Spitzer Space Telescope infrared data, and then we've got the Chandra data and X-ray, right? And so all three of those layers combined, it makes a beautiful image. It's red, yellow, and blue, um, respectively, from low to high energies. And it's very rich, but very dense.
12:27 Speaker 02 So, you know, the, the area around our supermassive black hole, it's like, it's like Times Square, right? There's a lot going on. It is, it is the downtown of our Milky Way region. There's just a lot happening. There's all kinds of exploding stars, large stars, lots of gas and dust, really cool stuff, but-
12:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stars getting eaten, probably.
12:45 Speaker 02 Stars getting eaten, asteroids getting snacked on, all sorts of great stuff, right?
12:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:49 Speaker 02 So the image itself is very- Busy and dense. And when we listen to it, what we've done is we've assigned each of the types of light a different sound. And so the lowest energy is a very soft piano. The medium energy from Hubble, that's like a plucky violin. And then the highest energy from Chandra, that's like this, you know, pringley little Glockenspiel sound. And so we're scanning across the image from left to right as you're hearing all those sounds.
13:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait a minute, you get to pick your own instruments?
13:16 Speaker 02 We do, yes.
13:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who, who, who put you, who put you orchestra instrument in chief person?
13:24 Speaker 02 We did, we, we self-selected, I guess, yeah. And I should say, I should say, to be fair, I'm a former band and chorus geek, so I have some music sort of theory under my back. Also, Matt is actually a musician today, like, he plays in a band. And he's also an astrophysicist. And then Andrew is like, an amazing musician and sound engineer, too.
13:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you have the right, you got the chops.
13:48 Speaker 02 So there is a nice mixture. I won't, yeah, exactly. So, we're self-selected.
13:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it seems to me, you could choose instruments differently, so that the center of the, the center of the galaxy feels kind of bluesy.
14:01 Speaker 02 Absolutely, yeah.
14:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or, or hard rock, you know, or, or country, right?
14:06 Speaker 02 How do you want your universe to sound like?
14:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or a slide whistle and a kazoo.
14:09 Speaker 02 Exactly, right, kazoo, that might.
14:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Matt, what did you say, a kazoo? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and a slide whistle. Slide whistle and kazoo, and an accordion, yeah, yeah, okay.
14:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, but yeah, sure, what do you want your universe to sound like? That is, that is a question, because we are absolutely picking instruments based on the science story that's in that data that we're trying to communicate, right? So we want the three layers to be distinct from each other, because that's one of the, the key things, particularly for people who are blind or low vision, they're accessing this data with their ears. They want to be able to hear all of that amazing sciencey goodness tucked inside.
14:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Kim, it seems to me, you have more information than just the sound, if you can listen to it in stereo, correct?
14:53 Speaker 02 Correct, exactly. You can get a sense of that positional information. And also what that helps do, I think, is make you sort of feel immersed in it, right? And I think that is sort of the gift of presenting it in this more musical sound-based way. You have That sort of gift of time across, but also that immersive sort of opening to it.
15:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, let's do it. In stereo, the center of the galaxy. Go for it.
16:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so the black hole in the center of the galaxy really fed that experience. But what about M87? That's one of the largest known galaxies in the universe, trillions of stars. It's got a mondo black hole in its center, one of the biggest known. It's got jets. And you tell me you worked on that one as well.
16:32 Speaker 02 Yes, we did actually create a sonification of M87, too, because that's another system that is supposedly also burping out into the surrounding gas. And from what I understand, the note might actually be pretty low, like 59 octaves below middle C.
16:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bam!
16:47 Speaker 02 But that sonification is a little bit simpler than the one that we just heard. It's more of a basic sound scrubbing across, left to right, mostly the jet features that you're seeing in different kinds of light.
17:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you've isolated the jet.
17:01 Speaker 02 Exactly.
17:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rather than all the downtown Times Square behavior going on in our own galaxy.
17:07 Speaker 02 Correct, yes.
17:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Got it, got it. So let's take a listen for that.
17:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cool. And so, and we have a third and final bit, but this is just a sampling of what is in your full portfolio. So we have the Chandra Deep Field. So what are we listening for here?
17:48 Speaker 02 This is one of my favorites because if you've ever seen the image, it's not the most exciting perhaps. It looks like you've taken a black canvas and just splattered some multicolored paint droplets on it, right? But the science of that dataset is really important. It's the deepest X-ray image we've ever taken. Chandra looked at a patch of the sky for a really long time. I want to say it was about 40 days and 40 nights. Very poetic sounding. And captured like this, this landscape, if you will, of black holes. So thousands of black holes or very bright galaxies with supermassive black holes at their cores. And if you look at the image, it doesn't always communicate that as easily, right, to a non-expert. But when we sonified it, this is using stereo sound again,
18:31 Speaker 02 we scrolled from the bottom of the image to the top. The image itself, the X-ray sources, they are shown by energy levels. The lowest energy sources in X-ray are red, up to the highest energy X-ray in blue. And we can play with that. So the sounds are synthesized sounds and you can hear the different energies of those X-rays as you scan.
18:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're telling me your acoustic map is better than the original data?
18:54 Speaker 02 It actually, it captures that a little bit, a little bit. It captures more of that science and goodness than I think the image actually can, which was a really cool project.
19:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so let's give it a listen.
19:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, we're going to pick up our Cosmic Queries theme with questions given to us from our Patreon membership when StarTalk returns.
20:07 Speaker 03 Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon, bringing the universe down to Earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
20:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries edition. We're talking about sonifying the universe. Oh, my gosh. And we've got one of the world's experts on that very topic, Kim Arkhan. Again, Kim, welcome back to StarTalk. And I got with me my co-host, Matt Kirshen. And so, Matt, you brought questions with you, didn't you?
20:48 Matt Kirshen? I do, yeah. And I'll try and get through as many of these Patreon questions as I can, because there's some really great ones. Some things you've already started to answer. So Malcolm Marfan from Trinidad and Tobago, you've already answered the first part of his question. But he also asked, how do you and your team decide which areas of the universe to study? And what factors go into making those decisions?
21:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a big universe, and you're handpicking, you're cherry picking it, right?
21:14 Speaker 02 It's a big universe out there. So first, I guess what Chandra looks at is decided by a committee of scientists, right? So anybody can propose for a time on Chandra. And those proposals are all put together and then sorted through and decided on what Chandra will actually look like. And then time is set to it, and Chandra's schedule is created and all that happens. So then when it comes to us to actually choose what we sonify, we're looking for objects that will sonify well, if that makes sense. So we're looking for things that will give us like a really nice landscape of something like the Galactic Center that we talked about earlier, a way to really get all of that really interesting science material translated into sound. Or we're looking at something like an exploded star
21:57 Speaker 02 that has a lot of detail in it that as you're like scanning across it, like a, you know, like a radar scan, if you will, really lets you get a sample for what that object is like. So we're, we're definitely cherry picking through the universe because this is more of a bespoke project. It's not an automated project that you can just scan everything with a push of a button. But what it does is it absolutely enables our, our friends and colleagues who are blind or low vision to be able to sample some of the most iconic and important data sets that we've got in our back pocket.
22:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's interesting because we, we make a selection at any time for, for what we want to know about first and second and third. So what you're doing is no different from that. You're, you're finding the, the, the parts of the universe that would be most interesting.
22:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, some of those really cool stories that need to be told through sound.
22:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm, mm hmm. And earlier you were talking about 3D printing. You have a book that just came out.
22:53 Speaker 02 Yes.
22:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The title, Stars in Your Hand, A Guide to 3D Printing the Cosmos.
23:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That sounds a little scary, you know? You don't want people printing black holes.
23:04 Speaker 02 It's true, it's true. Though I actually do have a, a 3D print of a black hole with me today. But indeed, indeed, it's just, it's a little guy right here.
23:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, cool.
23:12 Speaker 02 But yeah, it's, it's a, thank, thank you for asking about the book. It's fun. I, I, I like writing. I've been writing with my partner, Megan Watzke, for a while because I don't know, I just, I love books. And I know other people do as well. And, and this book was just kind of like-
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's so old fashioned of you.
23:26 Speaker 02 I know, it is. I will take books over like TikTok any day.
23:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Books, books don't even require batteries. I mean, what's wrong with you, you know?
23:34 Speaker 02 I know, I'm very old fashioned. Vintage, I think they call it now. Right? That's what they use. But yeah, I, I love books. And so for me, it was a great way to concatenate all of these cool 3D printable data sets of our cosmos into one place. It's just like a quick guide, if you will, to some of the cool sights to feel, I guess, versus the sights to see. So things like exploding stars, galaxies, some constellations. I worked with a bunch of colleagues around the world and gathered a bunch of data sets into one place.
24:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, excellent. And it's out now?
24:08 Speaker 02 It is, it's out now, and it's meant to be a very gentle introduction. So even if you don't have a ton of experience with 3D printing or with the universe, it's a very gentle sort of workbook-style feel to it to kind of give you a little intro.
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Congratulations on that.
24:23 Speaker 02 Thanks.
24:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what else you got for us? Matt?
24:27 Matt Kirshen? So I like this question a lot. This is from Torina from San Francisco, who says, "I work with visually impaired people, and we use lots of technology using sound waves to detect obstacles. Beeping gets louder when the device gets closer to the object, for example. Does the same thing happen in space, or do we need an atmosphere for this? Do radio waves bounce off objects? Is that one way to measure and/or detect unseen objects?"
24:48 Speaker 02 Oh, that's an interesting one. Neil, do you want to take that one?
24:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I know, so it turns out there are not many telescopes in the world that have that dual capability. We had one, it was the Arcebo Telescope, which collapsed out of misuse. But it was a huge radio telescope that can receive radio waves but can also transmit. And so it's the transmitting that allows you to beam it at a thing that you can't otherwise detect, and record the signal that comes back to you and make a map of it.
25:24 Matt Kirshen? So this is like sonar, like a bat or dolphins?
25:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Precisely. It's sonar but not with sound. It's like sonar but with radio waves. I guess they call it radar.
25:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Radio detection and ranging.
25:36 Matt Kirshen? You should trademark that idea.
25:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a cool acronym right there. So for many asteroids that are just so small that a regular telescope can't really reveal what their surface looks like, then you have these radio wave topography, topographic maps, that you can create with them. So in a way, technically, you can measure how fast they're going, give them a speeding ticket, because that's what the cops do with their radar gun, using microwaves. They beam microwaves at you and time the signal as it returns and... invoke the speed of light and they get exactly how fast you're moving. So there are things you can determine about these objects. But only in our solar system.
26:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Far away, it'll take years for the signal to get there. And by the time the signal comes back, you're not interested anymore. This idea of bouncing signals off of things, the best you can do is at the speed of light. And at distances in the universe, it's not a very practical solution for getting the distances to things. Or even for giving them speeding tickets.
26:46 Matt Kirshen? I I had no idea traffic cops were invoking the speed of light.
26:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, they were.
26:50 Matt Kirshen? Smarter than I think.
26:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, they are. Yes.
26:54 Matt Kirshen? So so Gavin Bamber, this is sort of like the reverse of what you're doing. So Gavin Bamber from North Vancouver says, please visit. And my question might be arcane for Arcand. I see what you did there, Gavin.
27:05 Speaker 02 Very clever.
27:07 Matt Kirshen? But Neil, maybe Neil and Matt can provide assistance. Uh, that's I don't think so. I think the Neil part, but various wavelengths of light can be explained to a blind person in terms of varying levels of heat. But how can we translate the sound of the universe for deaf people to understand? So I guess this is sort of the reverse of you're converting signals into sound. How do we convert sounds into other signals for deaf?
27:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's it. Because, yeah, because because Kim, you're focusing on sight impaired.
27:36 Speaker 02 Yes.
27:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what about the hearing impaired?
27:38 Speaker 02 Well, so for the most part, what we're doing is we're translating an image that already exists into sound. So for people who are hearing impaired, they do have access to that original image. But what we also do is we provide like a description of what the sonification is. So it gives a loose sense of what's included in that translation. But yes, things are going to be lost in translation. You can't really get the essence of the feeling of music through just words. But we do add that as a layer of accessibility to our products.
28:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I would add, if you have sight but not hearing. People with sight were not saying to themselves, gee, I wish I could hear the universe to understand it better.
28:17 Speaker 02 Right.
28:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They can see it.
28:19 Speaker 02 Right.
28:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
28:19 Speaker 02 Right, yes. So this whole project actually came about for two things in a way. So one, all the sonification work that I've ever done has been inspired by my friend Wanda Diaz. She's an astronomer and a computer scientist who's been blind since she was a teenager. And she uses sonification to actually study stars. She had, her whole PhD thesis kind of showed that scientists, humans, can become better listeners, right? And so that, that has always been kind of the inspiration point. But also, my, my friend and colleague Christine Malek, she's been blind since birth. And so she's never seen the night sky. She's never seen any of these images. And for her, she's remarked to me that these sonifications, they're,
29:00 Speaker 02 they're like a main meal where she gets her nutritional, you know, stuff from. Versus somebody who's sighted, who can access the images, that the sound is like a dessert, right? It's delicious and it's another layer and you like it. But for her, the main meal is adding like the nutrition that she needs. And I, I love that way of thinking about it because it does provide that, you know, everybody has different access points into stuff, right?
29:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Kim, this is personal for you. I mean, you have close friends.
29:26 Speaker 02 It's very personal for me, honestly. And my, so I'm like a super, super shy person and at least I've always been super shy. And when I was a kid, I had a very hard time making friends. My very first friend in kindergarten was a little girl who was partially deaf. And she like came up to me and she made me her friend. And she, like in her, her helper, started teaching me sign language and all these things. And you know, that's something that I have never, I know it sounds corny. I know it does. But that is something that like I've never forgotten. Like I've never forgotten that someone helped me in those early days when I could like barely move from behind my mother, right? And so, I don't know, there's just this part of me that like wants to look at the world like that. Do you know what I mean?
30:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes, yes, yes. No, it opens up a box that we don't even know we're in.
30:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, to, to, to how to see.
30:12 Matt Kirshen? Just how many potentially brilliant scientists were kept away from the work that they could be doing because it wasn't as accessible to them.
30:19 Speaker 02 100%, yeah. If there's anything that I hope comes out of this project, it's that. It's that I hope other people can sort of see themselves or picture themselves, envision themselves, hope for themselves to be scientists or just part of the science community, you know?
30:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's just part of the inclusion movement. I mean, really, I mean, if you want to think of it. More holistically.
30:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Than that, yeah, yeah. All right, Matt, give me some more.
30:41 Matt Kirshen? All right, so Connor Holm from Sequim in Washington. There's a pronunciation guide, I appreciate that.
30:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sequim, that's a place in Washington?
30:48 Matt Kirshen? Sequim, it spells S-E-Q-U-I-M, but then there is a pronunciation in brackets afterwards.
30:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thanks, I'm glad, because I never heard of the town. All right, cool.
30:58 Matt Kirshen? Never knew, but Connor says, really love the show. What is the most active electromagnetic wavelength in the universe? Also, are all wavelengths found everywhere in the universe?
31:08 Speaker 02 That's a great question. I mean, Neil, I'm sure you have better answers for these things, because I love the way your mind works. But, you know, the more energetic you get, obviously, it's going to be very, very active. So that's how I'm thinking of active. So I would say things like gamma rays and X-rays are going to be the most energetic regions of the universe, and hence the most active, sort of. But there are less X-ray photons in the universe overall. So maybe that's not the perfect sort of way to think about things.
31:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like that. I like that distinction you're making. Yes, so there are places that have very high energy output, all right? In X-rays and gamma rays, those are the highest energy variance of photons of light. But if you're in another place where it's giving out mostly infrared, but boatloads of infrared.
31:53 Speaker 02 Right.
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then the total energy budget might be higher there than where your single high-energy photons might be found.
32:02 Speaker 02 So which one?
32:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an excellent distinction to make. But the whole electromagnetic spectrum, as we've discussed in StarTalk Explainers before, it's a full range. You go from radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. And that sequence is a sequence from low energy to high energy. And not all parts of the universe give equal amounts of those bands. And in fact, we didn't know. That the universe was talking to us in bands outside of visible light until we discovered invisible light. And they say, well, wait a minute, you know, our eyes aren't every, I
32:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? mean, think about if you're religious, you know, why would God give you eyes that can't see everything you want to see, right? That people had to like, figure this out. What does it mean that there's stuff going on that our, our bio physiology has no access to? And so it took the methods and tools of science to discover ways to, to discover and detect and figure out ways to detect infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays. And we've exploited them all in our modern civilization, which is a great triumph of 20th century physics, I would say. But yeah, so x-rays enabled us to see black holes, to discover the vicinity of black holes. Gamma rays, we found bursts of gamma rays
33:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? in the universe. We didn't know they were there. Infrared, we find deep gas clouds that are birthing stars. Each of these bands is a different, is a different window to this universe in which we're immersed. And so, yeah, and now, Kim, with what you're doing, you're opening up windows of access to those windows that are otherwise invisible.
33:50 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah, right. Because what are we doing when we're studying x-ray astronomy? We're transcending human vision, right? And, and so then that we can take the data and translate it into some other way of knowing, some other way of making meaning through sound, or perhaps taste or scent, though I still object, you know, but it is.
34:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was waiting for that. You call me, okay?
34:11 Matt Kirshen? I mean, I've read comic strips. I know smell has weight.
34:15 Speaker 02 I know. I'm kind of picturing those like 1980s, 1990s, like scratch and sniff stickers or something like, is that, is that what's in my future? Or is that what you're saying? I don't know. I don't think so.
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's next. It's next. Matt, let's slip in one more question before we take our final break.
34:31 Matt Kirshen? Okay. Well, this is, this is sort of connected. And by the way, this is, I'm filling in for Chuck. And this, this Patreon patron says, Chuck, you're the only person to pronounce my last name correctly on first attempt. So.
34:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow. We gotta tell Chuck that. We'll tell Chuck that.
34:43 Matt Kirshen? Let's give this a go. I'm gonna go with Colby LaPrazi from South Carolina. Sorry if it's LaPrazi or, or anything else. But it says, I'm wondering why a pulsar is best seen in x-ray and radio wave. Seems contrary. Thanks. Love the show.
34:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, cool. In fact, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back to that very question. X-rays and radio waves, they do seem contradictory. Uh, we're here with the world's expert on sonifying the universe when we come back.
35:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Buries. But Matt, what do we call this edition? Sonifying the universe? Not per sonifying it, but sonifying.
35:40 Matt Kirshen? Generally sonifying, not just for you, it's for everyone.
35:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Not per sonifying. Sonifying the universe is for everyone. Kim Arcan, delighted to have you back as our guest on this fascinating subject that we're learning that it goes deep with you, not only personally in your life experience, but as a child, but with friendships that you've carried throughout your life.
36:02 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
36:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so, we left off, Matt, read that question one more time.
36:06 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, why is a pulsar best seen in X-ray and radio wave? Seems contrary.
36:11 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I can add that, you know, pulsars are really fascinating objects because they're like the leftover cores of stars that have passed on, exploded, if you will. Exploded their guts out all over the universe. And so all of that, that material that's packed in there, it's super heated, it's super exciting, great for X-rays. Um, but it is always interesting to me how well X-ray information and radio information do complement each other, not just for things like pulsars, but things like, um, galaxies, things like supernova remnants. And Neil, I would love for you to talk to us about that.
36:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, this is great. This is, I mean, you, it's a brilliant answer. Uh, the, when you have a place like a pulsar, which is extremely hot, uh, anytime you have very high temperatures in the universe, things happen that give you high-energy photons, so, uh, X-rays and occasionally gamma rays in the most extreme case. But also, a pulsar has a magnetic field.
37:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And a magnetic field, when it interacts with some of the particles in its vicinity, will generate radio waves. And so, so for example Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field and a strong radio waves that emit, that it emits. So, in fact, Akim, have you thought of acoustically representing the planets? Those that have sort of radio wave emissions?
37:38 Speaker 02 Yes, so.
37:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or you just badass things out in the far reaches of the universe?
37:43 Speaker 02 I do, I do like the higher energy work, I won't lie. But, so there is actually some really cool data sonification work on some of the planets that Matt and Andrew have done at System Sounds and we are actually working on some related stuff right now. Yep.
37:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, yeah, very good, very good. So, no, no part of the universe is, is out of your purview?
38:02 Speaker 02 Nope.
38:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's very good. So, so pulsars gives you both ends of the spectrum there because it's doing more than one thing. And we have magnetic fields, you tend to have radio wave emissions and high, high temperatures, you'll get higher energy light. So that's all, that's all that's happening there. It's not magic or anything.
38:22 Speaker 02 It's a great question.
38:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
38:24 Speaker 02 And they do complement them so well.
38:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Indeed, and it makes for more interesting sonification projects.
38:29 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly, yeah, and we have actually sonified the Crab Nebula pulsar, so that might be one that your listener might want to take a listen to.
38:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was the very first pulsar, the one in the center of the Crab Nebula, first known.
38:41 Speaker 02 Gorgeous.
38:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, in fact, there was giving us pulses and what else can you think? If nothing in the universe ever gave you such regular signals, such reliable, repeated signals, and we were sure it was little green men.
38:56 Speaker 02 I know, it, it did seem suspicious.
39:01 Speaker 02 But fortunately not, fortunately not.
39:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, nature, nature can do that, it turns out. All right, Matt, keep going.
39:08 Matt Kirshen? All right, I'm gonna combine a couple because we've got a lot to fit in. So Daniel Johansson. Wants to know what other wavelengths or types of telescopes could bring us new views on the universe in the future. And Birin Amin from Florida says if you had to design any instrument to begin answering more complex questions, what would be the ideal properties it would have?
39:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, well, let me lead off and then Kim, you pick up the baton here. So two, a new telescope that came online within the last six years is LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. It's discovering gravitational waves from colliding black holes that have been moving through the universe for billions of years. And that's, so Kim, that sounds like a natural to turn that into sound. What do you think?
39:54 Speaker 02 Yes, and actually, I'm pretty sure that someone has done that work, and I forget who it was, but I'm pretty sure someone has done that already. So.
40:02 Matt Kirshen? I think this might, this is me jumping. I'll take this one, guys.
40:05 Speaker 02 Oh, great.
40:06 Matt Kirshen? But I seem to remember on this, on this show, when I, when we're here with Jan Eleven, who is all about black holes and
40:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:16 Matt Kirshen? and radio waves, and, sorry, and gravitational waves, rather, she played an audio representation of two black holes colliding, which actually, one of our Patreon patrons asks about, this is Troy from the DMV area, asked about, said it sounded like a drop of water. And does, does the universe sound like water because of all the waves floating around?
40:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Matt, in fact, we have that sound right now. Check it out.
40:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so Kim, how'd they do?
40:58 Speaker 02 I think they did pretty well, though I'm, of course, partial to our own technique. I think it's a really interesting way to represent data. And anytime you can open up access like that, it's an absolutely worthy endeavor. So yeah, A+.
41:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, excellent, excellent. And another kind of telescope, we don't quite have yet. We have detectors, but not really telescopes. You can detect something, but not know anything about the object. You just know that you detected something. So that's the difference between a telescope and just a bare ass detector sitting out there. Neutrinos are, are not light, they're not gravitational waves, but it's another thing in the universe, moving through the universe, that comes from some places and not others. We have neutrino detectors, but not really neutrino telescopes. So that'd be another frontier that we can put on the docket. Uh, the day we have a telescope, uh, Kim, I want to see you lined up right at the door.
41:51 Speaker 02 For sure. And if I could just add, it's kind of a cheat, but I also would love to have access to a next generation Chandra. Chandra is almost 25 years old. It celebrates 25 years next year. And yeah, it, I, it, we could definitely use for like a bigger, more powerful version than next generation.
42:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just, just tell Congress and get the $10 billion, that's all.
42:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, right. James Webb, but in x-rays, please. Could someone deliver that? That would be great.
42:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, that's the helpful reference point. Yes. James Webb, but in x-rays. You got it. Okay. I'll, I'll write that check.
42:24 Speaker 02 Small, small, little one.
42:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Matt, what do you got?
42:27 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, well, you've, you've just answered Nick R. from Texas's question right there. So I'm going to jump on to Kenneth Von Smelsmore of the Atlanta Von Smelsmores, who says.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We all know the Atlanta Von Smelsmore's, of course.
42:38 Speaker 02 Very official.
42:40 Matt Kirshen? Who says, uh, sight and hearing are senses we developed here on earth using the physics of our environment. We know other animals can sense other phenomena like magnetic fields. How might an extraplanetary being's sense of communicate? Would a four dimensional space whale sing via gamma rays? Could they feel via gravitational waves?
43:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love that. Kim, Kim, Kim Arcand, how much effort do you put in to thinking about alien sensory systems? Or are you boxed into being human?
43:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I was all proud of ourselves for like transcending human vision.
43:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You just called, you just got called out. You, you just got busted.
43:20 Speaker 02 I feel so boring and vanilla right now after that question. That's pretty intense.
43:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's, so I, I can address that. I can't answer it, but I can toss some words in that direction. And I can say that in science, we've known maybe for 300 years that our five senses are not telling us everything that's out there. And when we first discovered infrared, we said, well, could there be even more than infrared? And then that's how we start filling out.
43:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our ability to know the world in which we're immersed. I can say without hesitation that the methods and tools of science have developed at least a dozen senses. Right, whether it could be magnetic fields, gravitational vectoring, polarization of light. These are things you cannot see, you cannot experience. We don't have the means of experiencing it, but our methods and tools of science can. So I say to myself, if an alien has extra senses, why wouldn't they just be drawn from what we already know we can determine by science? Just because our physiology doesn't get it, our science can. Which means when someone walks out, and Kim, I don't know if you feel this, someone says,
44:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? you know, I have a sixth sense. And I say, I'm not impressed, I have 12 senses.
44:44 Speaker 02 Right.
44:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come into my lab, you'll see every sense that we've got. So, yeah, it would be fun to just think about, just broaden what it is you've done. Yes, a lot to be proud of, but maybe that's just the beginning.
44:59 Speaker 02 That's it. I love when people think big, right? And I love when you're thinking outside of the box. Because, you know, even with this project, there were people that were sort of like doubting, is adding sound really worth it? Or with 3D printing, is like that really necessary? And each time we've tried one of these projects that just goes a little bit, you know, into a strangely new place, we keep getting rewarded for it. So, yeah, thinking creatively, thinking big, it's, I don't know, it's really worth it.
45:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love it. Love it, love it. All right, Matt, give me some more.
45:28 Matt Kirshen? Well, Joey Santos also asks, is there any medium that sound can potentially travel through in space? Like a dust cloud or trapped particles, which I think you answered a bit in the area around black holes, but.
45:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, any of that, exactly, exactly.
45:41 Speaker 02 Dusty particles around stars.
45:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is her total.
45:45 Speaker 02 Yes.
45:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's your palette, yes, I love it.
45:48 Matt Kirshen? Sam Pennington from Texas says.
45:52 Matt Kirshen? I've been listening to audio files that say this is what Jupiter sounds like. Is that really what Jupiter sounds like? Or is that a compression of the spectrum into audio form?
45:59 Speaker 02 So I don't know what he's listening to or what that person is listening to. But I know there is a scientist, Bill Kirth, I think his name is, that does a lot of interesting stuff with planetary data. He's using things like radio emissions of auroras from Saturn, perhaps from Jupiter too, plasma oscillations.
46:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you just blew by that. So Saturn has aurora borealis just the way we do. You just blew through that. Pause on that. Okay, yeah, Earth is not the only planet in town with the northern lights and the southern lights.
46:31 Matt Kirshen? That's good to know because it's expensive to get to Iceland right now.
46:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, if you have a magnetic field as we do and an atmosphere and the sun has its charged particles, it'll render your atmosphere a glow. And that itself generates radio waves. So that's where you just blew right past that.
46:50 Speaker 02 But there are great sonifications of those. So it's possible that that's what they've listened to. That's a guess at least.
46:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, cool.
46:57 Matt Kirshen? All right, Dr. Edwin Florence from West Lynn, Oregon, says, "Since the James Webb has provided very fascinating data from the infrared part of the spectrum, what data do you hypothesize the Chander project will provide from the shortest wavelengths of the spectrum?"
47:11 Speaker 02 So I think, well, Chander has been providing fantastic data of things like exploding stars, things like colliding galaxies, merging black holes, pulsars, you name it. I mean, you find a lot of X-ray data, more than I ever would have expected. And what's actually pretty cool about it is Chander data and Webb data complement each other very, very well. So we're actually in the process of working on a sonification right now. That combines James Webb data and Chander data of the Stephans Quintet. And actually, I think that should be out in like another week or so.
47:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, Stephans Quintet is one of the first images released by the James Webb Telescope.
47:45 Speaker 02 Exactly.
47:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The five-galaxy interaction image.
47:48 Speaker 02 And there's like these beautiful pockets where the X-ray data just kind of fills in like a bridge in between some of those interacting galaxies. And it's a really lovely way to experience the data. So yes, more on that soon.
47:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, you say this casually, but I want to emphasize that when you have two completely different telescopes observing the same object. They're going to reveal different things to you, but maybe those two different things connect in some way, physically, in terms of what a phenomenon going on inside. And so this is extraordinary vision to bring to bear on these objects when you have completely different telescopes looking in the same direction, especially at the same time.
48:30 Speaker 02 Yep, it's powerful.
48:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very cool, yeah. All right, Matt, one more question.
48:34 Matt Kirshen? So, last question, we'll squeeze this in. Bill Bailey from Ohio says, speaking of hearing the universe, will we know the difference between the sounds or gravitational waves created by the Big Bang and those created by ultra slash supermassive black holes?
48:48 Speaker 02 So like more than just the cosmic wave background kind of thing?
48:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, no, no, no, you know, we're talking about the Big Bang itself.
48:55 Speaker 02 Big Bang, so like the earliest.
48:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Would be responsible for, yeah, even before the cosmic background. Yeah, it seems to me that'd be, if we do the calculation right, it should look different. It's a different phenomenon. If you want to blow the universe into existence, it seems to me that would have a different signal, signature from two colliding black holes.
49:16 Speaker 02 Right, right.
49:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Would you agree with that, Kim?
49:19 Speaker 02 That would be great to hear. So yeah, let's do it. Let's capture that.
49:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what would that be? That would be like the ending bombastic finale to a classical symphony?
49:27 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly, exactly. And yes, actually, thanks for queuing that because I can say one of the really interesting like extensions of this project has been whenever we talk about sonifications, there are musicians in the audience and they want to play the sounds, they want to play the data. And so we're actually working on that. I'm working with a young composer who's very talented and she's transcribing, translating the sonifications into stuff that's playable by humans with their instruments, such as flutes, violins, all of that.
49:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I think for the Big Bang, every instrument has to be playing simultaneously at its loudest.
50:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
50:03 Matt Kirshen? I'm still going to put a pitch in for my original slide whistle.
50:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Lots of percussion.
50:07 Speaker 02 I don't know, I'm on a slide whistle.
50:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is not the time to hold back.
50:12 Speaker 02 All right, all right, fine. Every instrument ever known to humans, bring it in.
50:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At full volume, there's the Big Bang for you. We got it, we don't even have to.
50:20 Speaker 02 That might be pretty cool.
50:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it would be totally cool.
50:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. Well, Kimberly, it's been a delight to have you back. This is your second appearance on StarTalk.
50:29 Speaker 02 Thanks.
50:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's great to check in with you and you have this new book out, 3D Printing of the Universe, and the original, the full title is?
50:36 Speaker 02 Stars in your hand.
50:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stars in your hand.
50:38 Speaker 02 Which I think is kind of fun.
50:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very poetic.
50:41 Speaker 02 Thank you.
50:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We love it. Matt, thanks for being with us here. Thanks. And Kim, where do we find you on social media? What's your footprint?
50:48 Speaker 02 I'm on Twitter and Instagram, I think, @KimberlyKowal for both.
50:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Kimberly.
50:54 Speaker 02 K O W A L. It's from when I had my maiden name a long time ago.
50:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, it's leftover.
50:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's leftover from ages ago.
51:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Leftover, okay.
51:03 Speaker 02 And then my website is kimarkand.com.
51:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Kimarkand.com. All right, we can totally find you that way. All right. All right, thanks again, thanks for being on StarTalk. Matt, always good to have you here, man. Always good to be here. All right, this has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. What the universe sounds like to us all, but especially to Kim Arcand. Until next time, Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Keep looking.
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