Dark matter music
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What is 'dark matter music' and why is it significant?
I think the most starstruck I've ever been going into an interview might have been when I was about to talk to Bob Wilson, the scientist who discovered the first direct evidence of the Big Bang. And then when I finally talked to him, he was just so deadpan about the whole thing.
I didn't realize at the time how big it was, but I do now.
The reason I was so in awe of Bob wasn't just because of his discovery. It was the way he made it. He listened to space using this huge 50-foot microwave antenna shaped like a horn. And he heard this fuzz. That fuzz is the cosmic microwave background. It's the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. And I got kind of obsessed with this antenna. I'd always figured space and sound don't really mix. You know, space is a vacuum, so we can't hear any of it. But when I learned about the horn antenna, how it translated microwave radiation into stuff scientists could hear, I don't know, just the idea that you could listen to space and make a real discovery that helped solidify one of the most fundamental truths about the universe, that it had a beginning.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. And I kind of wanted to go see it for myself. But before I could, I talked to someone just as obsessed as I was, who made her own kind of pilgrimage.
When you read about something like the horn antenna, you think you're going to show up and there'll be security. And you don't imagine you just drive up and there it is, this incredible, gigantic sort of ear trumpet, open and free to anyone that wants to go and have a look. And when you say, okay, this picked up... The birth of the universe. Yeah, well, you believe it. It has that kind of presence to it. How are there not lines of people wanting to see it?
B.D. Wolfe is a composer and a kind of artist, jack of all trades.
I typically work across science and design and health and technology and the environment.
And a few years back, she was working on a new record when she found out the horn antenna was right nearby. So she reached out to Bob.
We were chatting and I said to him, hey, you know, you've used this to receive, but have you ever used it to transmit?
To send something out into space instead of just listening.
And he's like, well, no, not really. And I was like, well, in theory, could it transmit? And he's like, ah, yeah, but I don't think it would work because, you know, sound waves get to a point in the Earth's atmosphere and then stop.
But a few months went by and Bob got back to her.
He was all like... Beatty, I figured out how I can do it. I can do an update on the horn. So do you still want to do it? It's like, yeah, absolutely.
So BD and Bob and a couple other people, they met up at the horn. BD brought some music she'd been working on.
And we played the first part of it, pointing it down at the ground. We used it as a loudspeaker and it sounds... What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds fantastic.
Do you just plug into it? Does it just have like a quarter inch input? No, it does.
What? Yeah, yeah. It has like a directionality... So if you're outside of the beam of the horn, it's almost inaudible, which is crazy. So you have to be in the horn's beam. But it was the most thrilling experience to hear the record sent directly to you. That's just mind-blowingly cool. And then, say, 10 or so minutes in, we then pointed it up. And at that point, you can't hear anything. It was amazing. It felt like such a special, quiet moment that the five of us shared this kind of, hello, can you hear me?
BD's music shot out from the horn antenna toward the sky. And as it left Earth's atmosphere, it started to weaken.
How did Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno transmit music into space?
still strong enough to hear in orbit if you had an antenna to pick it up. But by the time the signal got to the moon, it was completely enveloped by the sound of the cosmic microwave background.
It merging with the afterglow of the Big Bang, I think is beautiful as well because it's just this idea of us being so small and able to see so little of the bigger picture. We are just part of something so much bigger than us.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is 'dark matter music' and why is it significant?
0:09–5:00
2
How did Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno transmit music into space?
5:00–10:57
3
What inspired Beatie Wolfe's journey to the horn antenna?
10:57–18:28
4
What does the term 'Liminal' signify in Beatie's albums?
18:28–26:48
5
How does music impact our understanding of the universe?
26:48–32:28