The Sounds of Science

Here's a very cool NY Times article on the what the early cosmos may have sounded like. Prof. Mark Whittle used ripples in the cosmic microwave background to discern what songs were played in the earliest moments of time:

The cosmic sound waves stretched 20,000 light-years, moved at half the speed of light, and were about 50 octaves below what people can hear. Dr. Whittle shifted the sounds to the human audible range, producing a chord like the sound of a jet engine. He used computer models to generate the cosmic chords from creation for the first million years and condensed them to five seconds.

The Big Bang actually erupted in complete silence. In the first instant, the mass of the universe was spread out completely evenly. No pressure differences, no sound.

But after that, the quiet vanished.

''For the first 400,000 years,'' Dr. Whittle said, ''it sounds like a descending scream falling into a dull roar.''

Over the first million years, Dr. Whittle said, the music of the cosmos also shifted from a pleasant major chord to a more somber minor one.

Whittle made wave files of his findings, which you can listen to here.