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Tag archives: music
Spacecraft duets, suprise supernovae, the dark side of physics and more
By Tushna Commissariat
While you would not actually be able to hear the uplifting notes of the music in the vast emptiness of space, a newly composed string and piano orchestral piece has unexpected ties to the cosmos. That’s because it is based on 36 years’ worth of data from NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Domenico Vicinanza, a trained musician with a PhD in physics who works at GÉANT, a European data-network company, says that he “wanted to compose a musical piece celebrating Voyager 1 and 2 together, so I used the same measurements (proton counts from the cosmic-ray detector over the last 37 years) from both spacecrafts, at the exactly same point in time, but at several billions of kilometres of distance [of] one from the other”. The result of this “data sonification” is a rather beautiful piece of music – one of the best examples of physics and the arts coming together that we have heard. Of course, the story garnered considerable interest…you can read more about on the Wired and Guardian websites.
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Fuel cell powers rock guitarist
By Matin Durrani
Running on hydrogen and oxygen and producing just electricity without any nasty emissions, fuel cells have over the years been used to power everything from bikes and buses to cars and even planes.
But last week saw the debut of a fuel cell at Imperial College London that was used to power a rock band. The fuel cell was unveiled at a summer barbeque organized by the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (H2FC) Supergen Hub – a scheme funded by the UK’s research councils to boost interest in fuel cells among UK universities and businesses.
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