Courtesy of the BBC News Service:
Mark Whittle of the University of Virginia has analysed the so-called background radiation that was born 400,000 years after the Big Bang.
Ripples in the radiation are like sound waves bouncing through the cosmos.
Over the first million years the music of the cosmos changed from a bright major chord to a sombre minor one.
“It really is a very obvious thing to do,” Professor Whittle told BBC News Online, “I was a little surprised that someone had not done it before.”
He took the latest data about the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which comes from an era just after the Big Bang.
They show ripples in the CMB which are subtle variations in the density of matter which can, in one sense, be thought of as sound waves.
These cosmic sound waves are 30,000 light-years wide and are 55 octaves below what humans can hear.
But when they are shifted to regions of the audible spectrum, the cry from the birth of the cosmos can be heard.
Courtesy of J.R.R. Tolkien:
There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad.
[...]
But when they were come into the Void, Ilúvatar said to them: ‘Behold your Music!’ And he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; arid they saw a new World made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but it was not of it. And as they looked and wondered this World began to unfold its history, and it seemed to them that it lived and grew. And when the Ainur had gazed for a while and were silent, Ilúvatar said again: ‘Behold your Music! This is your minstrelsy.’
[...]
‘Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be.’
