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June 09, 2004
Listen to the universe
Take the fluctuating interference in the cosmic microwave front, turn it into sound, and Mark Whittaker gives you...this.
'This plays the sound from the big bang forward for the first 100 million years (way past recombination, almost up to the formation of the first stars). The movie shows a graph of the atomic gas power spectrum (green) and the cold dark matter power spectrum (purple) evolving with time, with the correct sound playing at any given instant. The x-axis is LINEAR in frequency (arranged for the human range) but the y-axis is LOGARITHMIC (which for sound, matches the decibel scale). In this movie, the sound is played in such a way that as each second passes the "real" time interval increases by a factor of 10. This allows one to follow both very short time intervals at the beginning (eg alot happens in the first 10,000 years), but also when things slow down (eg things happen more slowly in the last 90 million years). One sees the atomic gas powerspectrum grow after recombination as the gas falls into the gravitational valleys generated by the dark matter.'
-- from Mark's downloads page
Posted by Michael at June 9, 2004 06:50 PM
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