Professor Don Kurtz has given a public lecture on Songs of the Stars: the Real Music of the Spheres at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics on the 2nd May 2012.
The Pythagoreans 2500 years ago believed in a celestial “music of the spheres“, an idea that reverberated down the millennia in Western music, literature, art and science. Now, through asteroseismology (the study of the internal structure of pulsating stars), we know that there is a real music of the spheres. The stars have sounds in them that we use to see right to their very cores. This multi-media lecture looks at the relationship of music to stellar sounds.
The audience heard the real sounds of the stars and heard musical compositions where every member of the orchestra was a real (astronomical) star! They also learnt about some of the latest discoveries from the Kepler Space Mission that lets us “hear” the stars 100 times better than with telescopes on the ground.
The 600 seat lecture was sold out within minutes of tickets becoming available.
The Perimeter Institute brings great thinkers from around the world to Canada to share their ideas on a wide variety of interesting and topical subjects. Each event is tailored for the general public and everyone is welcome to attend.