Guitar Playing Astrophysicist Explains How the Foundations of Music Are Correlated to the Universe

Musician and astrophysicist Matt Russo did a TED talk at the University of Toronto about how the basic foundations of music are directly correlated with those of the universe and how the pitch and tone of the stars can be musically interpreted.

In 2017, Russo was part of the team that created “Trappist Sounds”, music made from an interpretation of the resonant harmonics that arose from a numerical simulation of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, a project he demonstrated during his presentation.

Something even more exciting about this system especially for me, and that’s the Trappist One is a resonant chain and so that means for every two orbits of the outer planet, the next one in orbits three times and the next one in 4 and then 6 9 15 and 24. So you see a lot of very simple ratios among the orbits of these planets. Clearly if you speed up their motion you can get rhythms right. One beat say for every time a planet goes around. But now we know if you speed that motion up even more you’ll actually produce musical pitches and in this case alone those pictures will work together making harmonious even human-like harmony.