The sounds of Saturn, dancing particles, distracted funding agency

By Hamish Johnston

Astronomy can be a highly visual science and therefore developing ways of sharing data with visually impaired colleagues – and the public – is an important challenge. Sound offers one way forward, as astrophysicist Wanda Diaz Merced explains in “The sounds of science”. Now, fellow astrophysicists Matt Russo and Dan Tamayo at the University of Toronto have converted the motions of the rings and moons of Saturn into two musical compositions. You can listen to a composition based on the orbital frequencies of moons and rings by playing the video above. The second piece is called “Resonances of Janus translated into music”.

Moving from music to dance, a chance meeting of the CERN particle physicist Andrea Latina and the Iranian dancer and choreographer Sahar Dehghan has led to the creation of a new show called Whirl Quantum Dance. The performance incorporates ideas from quantum chromodynamics, quantum entanglement and other aspects of physics.

“I am not a scientific expert in anything so I am not trying to teach anyone,” says Dehghan. “What I want to do with this show is open some doors for the audience to go out there and search for more and learn about not just about quantum and particle physics, but also go out there and physically experiment and see how we’re all connected.”

Dancing particles: the show premieres this month. (Courtesy: Sahar Dehghan Dance)

The show premieres on 22 September at the Mexican Heritage Plaza of the School of Arts and Culture in San Jose, California. You can read more about the show in “The dance of the particles”.

Unless you have spent the past few weeks in an Internet-free bubble (lucky you), you will be familiar with the “distracted boyfriend meme”. Now, cosmologist and blogger Peter Coles has come up with a hilarious version of the meme that’s out of this world.