High
resolution observations of Saturn's radio emissions have just been made public
by NASA; these observations were made with the radio and plasma wave instrument
aboard the Cassini spacecraft.
The short sound sample released on NASA's website was
compressed, so the twenty-seven minute recording plays back in just
seventy-three seconds. The frequencies of these emissions are outside the human
audio frequency range and have been shifted downward by a factor of 44 (see diagram at right).
Take a moment to go to NASA's
Saturn radio emissions page; select the "click here" link at the
start of the article on their page to listen to the short sound clip.
Now, listen to the first few moments of this short excerpt
from the classic 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet (click here.).
The similarities are startling.
The soundtrack for the movie was created by Louis and Bebe
Barron. The film represents the first instance in which a movie was scored
entirely with electronic music. Louis Barron constructed electronic circuits
that generated the sounds; most of the tonalities were generated using a ring
modulator. In creating the electronic circuits, Barron used the equations in Norbert
Weiner's 1948 book Cybernetics: Or, Control
and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
If you are interested in other musical interpretations of
solar system phenomena, read about Solar
Ultrasound – Bass Note In Music Of The Spheres.
If you enjoy poster art, you might want to compare the
classic 1956 poster art of Forbidden Planet with NASA's cutting edge Sounds
from Saturn poster – click here.
Listen to more sounds of Saturn at NASA.
Listen to more sounds of Forbidden Planet by checking out the soundtrack
available at Amazon; click here and then scroll down to listen to excerpts.
(This Science Fiction in the News story used with
permission of Technovelgy.com – where
science meets fiction
advertisement
