[NetBehaviour] Interpretation of Blazar Flux Variations as Music.
marc
marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Thu Jan 25 23:24:03 CET 2007
Interpretation of Blazar Flux Variations as Music.
Dr. James R. Webb
Department of Physics
Florida International University.
Blazars are believed to be distant galaxies in the process of formation.
They emit electromagnetic radiation (light) over the entire
electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma-rays. The emission
varies with time in most frequency ranges and the causes for the
variation are yet to be adequately explained. Astronomers have been
monitoring these objects with optical telescopes for over 50 years now
and we have collected a large database of brightnesses over these fifty
years.
This paper presents some of these light curves, and adopts a
computational method to translate the brightness fluctuations into
musical tones. These tones are then converted to sound using a midi
synthesizer on a PC.
The music you are hearing is the converted light curve from Active
Galactic Nucleus 3C 120. This source is extremely energetic and variable
and is located about 1 billion parsecs from Earth.
http://www.fiu.edu/~webbj/blazarmus.html
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