Listening to the Big Bang

Listening to the Big Bang — in high fidelity audio

April 8, 2013

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The Planck satellite mission mapped light temperature differences on the oldest surface known — the background sky left billions of years ago when our universe first became transparent to light. Those differences helped to recreate the sound of the Big Bang. (Credit: European Space Agency/Planck Collaboration)

A decade ago, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago.

Now, armed with more sophisticated data from a satellite mission observing the cosmic microwave background — a faint glow in the universe that acts as sort of a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang — Cramer has producednew recordings that fill in higher frequencies to create a fuller and richer sound. (The sound files run from 20 seconds to a little longer than 8 minutes.)

The effect is similar to what seismologists describe as a magnitude 9 earthquake causing the entire planet to actually ring. In this case, however, the ringing covered the entire universe — before it grew to such gargantuan proportions.

“Space-time itself is ringing when the universe is sufficiently small,” Cramer said./.../

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound_2013.html