(Devotional #643)

1 Chronicles 16:13: Sing to the LORD, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day.

I don’t know if you listen to broadcasts originating from the glass-enclosed-nerve center of WTOP, 103.5-FM. I do when I driving around, and sometimes I think it’s so I can be glad I’m not driving on the Beltway as I listen to the traffic reports on the eights.
Another feature I enjoy is the Osgood Report, by radio journalist Charles Osgood. Last week he had a story on music from space. Well, sort of.

There are some people who use the sounds from a radio telescope…as a basis for tunes made by humans…

Astrophysics graduate student Wanda Diaz-Merced has lost much of her eyesight to diabetes, but she’s still able to take in the universe.

She relies on her hearing to listen to the hisses and pops of signals collected by radio telescopes. She began hearing patterns – rhythms that could be put to music.

Data from space, converted to synthesized musical sounds by a process called “sonification” – makes it easier for us humans to distinguish sounds and pitch.

Take that one step further by adding instrumentation…and you have music you could say was actually made in heaven.

Diaz-Merced has teamed up with another researcher who’s a musician – Gerhard Sonnert – and they’re now making beautiful space music together. Here’s a link to  a page with both “sonified” data and music created from those sounds: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/sed/projects/star_songs/pages/soundtomusic.html

There’s no sound in the vacuum of space, of course – but there is a lot of information out there – and now some of it’s being made into music we Earthlings can enjoy.

The universe, spoken into existence by God, does ring with the music of the spheres. Praise God for his wonderful and musical creation!