NASA Seeks 'Citizen Scientists' to Listen to Space Noises (nasa.gov) 22
"Earth's magnetic environment is filled with a symphony of sound that we cannot hear," NASA wrote this month. When solar winds approach earth, "it causes the magnetic field lines and plasma around Earth to vibrate like the plucked strings of a harp, producing ultralow-frequency waves... a cacophonous operetta portraying the dramatic relationship between Earth and the Sun."
So NASA is now announcing "a new NASA-funded citizen science project called HARP — or Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas " that has "turned those once-unheard waves into audible whistles, crunches, and whooshes..." Or, as the Washington Post puts it, "NASA wants your help listening in on the universe."
From NASA's news release: In 2007, NASA launched five satellites to fly through Earth's magnetic "harp" — its magnetosphere — as part of the THEMIS mission (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms). Since then, THEMIS has been gathering a bounty of information about plasma waves across Earth's magnetosphere. "THEMIS can sample the whole harp," said Michael Hartinger, a heliophysicist at the Space Science Institute in Colorado. "And it's been out there a long time, so it has collected a lot of data."
The frequencies of the waves THEMIS measures are too low for our ears to hear, however. So the HARP team sped them up to convert them to sound waves. By using an interactive tool developed by the team, you can listen to these waves and pick out interesting features you hear in the sounds... Preliminary investigations with HARP have already started revealing unexpected features, such as what the team calls a "reverse harp" — frequencies changing in the opposite way than what scientists anticipated...
"Data sonification provides human beings with an opportunity to appreciate the naturally occurring music of the cosmos," said Robert Alexander, a HARP team member from Auralab Technologies in Michigan. "We're hearing sounds that are literally out of this world, and for me that's the next best thing to floating in a spacesuit."
To start exploring these sounds, visit the HARP website.
"Think listening to years' worth of wave patterns is a job for artificial intelligence? Think again," writes the Washington Post. In a news release, HARP team member Martin Archer of Imperial College London says humans are often better at listening than machines. "The human sense of hearing is an amazing tool," Archer says. "We're essentially trained from birth to recognize patterns and pick out different sound sources. We can innately do some pretty crazy analysis that outperforms even some of our most advanced computer algorithms."
So NASA is now announcing "a new NASA-funded citizen science project called HARP — or Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas " that has "turned those once-unheard waves into audible whistles, crunches, and whooshes..." Or, as the Washington Post puts it, "NASA wants your help listening in on the universe."
From NASA's news release: In 2007, NASA launched five satellites to fly through Earth's magnetic "harp" — its magnetosphere — as part of the THEMIS mission (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms). Since then, THEMIS has been gathering a bounty of information about plasma waves across Earth's magnetosphere. "THEMIS can sample the whole harp," said Michael Hartinger, a heliophysicist at the Space Science Institute in Colorado. "And it's been out there a long time, so it has collected a lot of data."
The frequencies of the waves THEMIS measures are too low for our ears to hear, however. So the HARP team sped them up to convert them to sound waves. By using an interactive tool developed by the team, you can listen to these waves and pick out interesting features you hear in the sounds... Preliminary investigations with HARP have already started revealing unexpected features, such as what the team calls a "reverse harp" — frequencies changing in the opposite way than what scientists anticipated...
"Data sonification provides human beings with an opportunity to appreciate the naturally occurring music of the cosmos," said Robert Alexander, a HARP team member from Auralab Technologies in Michigan. "We're hearing sounds that are literally out of this world, and for me that's the next best thing to floating in a spacesuit."
To start exploring these sounds, visit the HARP website.
"Think listening to years' worth of wave patterns is a job for artificial intelligence? Think again," writes the Washington Post. In a news release, HARP team member Martin Archer of Imperial College London says humans are often better at listening than machines. "The human sense of hearing is an amazing tool," Archer says. "We're essentially trained from birth to recognize patterns and pick out different sound sources. We can innately do some pretty crazy analysis that outperforms even some of our most advanced computer algorithms."
Remo Williams (Score:2)
Was I the only one who thought "Sinanju?" [youtube.com] When you heard HARP?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes
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Yes.
HAARP (Score:3)
Re:Remo Williams (Score:5, Informative)
Was I the only one who thought "Sinanju?" [youtube.com] When you heard HARP?
Yes, although any Remo Williams reference is always welcome.
I thought of Project HARP, the High Altitude Research Project [wikipedia.org]
There are many projects with the acronym HARP and even HAARP. Check out the HARP disambiguation page [wikipedia.org]
Sign Me Up. New Music Sucks. (Score:2)
I need a new radio station and this sounds promising. Can we call it the 'Early Jesus Warning System'? Asking for neighbor.
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I need a new radio station and this sounds promising. Can we call it the 'Early Jesus Warning System'? Asking for neighbor.
I prefer the Carrington cloister bell myself.
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Is that related to a cloister fuck?
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Does 'citizen scientist' mean (Score:2)
This will ... (Score:3)
First impressions (Score:2)
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In the training sound, I identified a short "boom", only for the software to show me that somebody had identified almost all of the available time interval as an area of interest
It’s not totally crazy, depending how it was actually done, to get several people to agree on interesting material. That way it’s of a step higher certainty (hopefully) when someone whose job it is listens.
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But won't you need (Score:3)
a BabelFish in your ear?
PBB (Score:2)
minimum wage (Score:2)
NASA is also among those who believe the minimum wage should be $0/hr.
Listen to Jupiter sing (Score:2)