The Music of Colliding Black Holes - Video

Gravitational waves emanating from the merger of two black holes

Music, video and words by Ha Chi Ming

“Just as from a single lump of clay, dear boy,
one would know about everything made from clay,
the difference being a mere verbal distinction, a name,
the reality is only clay.”

~ Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.4

Art has the power to unify perceived duality. By means of an artist’s context and composition everything experienced can be regarded as art, and in that sense, seamlessly interconnected.

The sounds in this composition derive entirely from the audio representation of the recently detected Gravitational Waves. Other than being composed into a musical arrangement, only very basic audio effects and processes have been applied to the raw data – delay, reverb and pitch.

The original sounds were produced by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in February 2016. They provide the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

The sounds are what two black holes colliding sound like. The ‘chirps’ are gravitational waves converted to audible sounds. The faint ‘thump’ matches the gravitational waves’ frequencies. The louder ‘chirp’ is a higher frequency better suited to human ears.

Even noises from the farthest reaches of the universe can be sculpted into something familiar and creative here on earth. Magically, this soundtrack is born from a tremendous energetic dance a billion light-years away. This piece aims, therefore, to show how a black hole merger can produce new manifestations of energy and how it can meet and merge with the human paradigm.

The raw sounds and more information can be found here nytimes.com

VIDEO: The Music of Colliding Black Holes