-
- Hello and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast.
I'm Andrew Gluster, and you might be thinking, hang on,
isn't that a new jingle?
Of course you are. Right.
And later in the podcast we'll be hearing about the physics
behind it and how it was created by Professor Philip Morty.
But first, you may have heard in the news
about Taylor Swift fans causing seismic activity at concerts
during her era tour.
Here's Jackie Kaplan ach.
- I am a professor
of geophysics at Western Washington University.
Um, I'm sort of a seism, I'm a seismologist by trade,
so I mostly study earthquakes.
Um, the earthquakes I study are usually in volcanic systems,
so I'm sort of a volcano seismologist.
And then a lot of what I do in my research is, you know,
earthquakes in some respects are sort of a type of sound,
but we also listen to, to genuinely
to sound in these systems.
So I do acoustics as well of volcanic systems.
So listening to volcanoes, listening
to the sounds they make, um,
and trying to understand what they did.
- We're gonna get onto music,
but I'm, you've made me interested in that now.
So what what,
what can we learn from the sound of volcanoes?
- So let's start with earthquakes.
'cause as I said, they are a type of sound.
Um, in some of the waves in earthquakes are, you know,
compressional waves that, that are
very much like sound waves.
Um, and just
whenever there's something that, that moves in the earth,
it can generate those waves.
And so usually in earthquakes,
or excuse me, in volcanic systems, that would be
magma moving underground and rising toward the surface.
So their precursory to an eruption,
we see these earthquakes.
Um, it might be flowing, it might be, you know,
while the magmas flowing as opposed to cracking rock,
it might be gases moving in the system, all
of which just cause the ground to shake.
Those can also though act into the air.
So, for example, when a volcano is actively erupting, it
of course generates sound.
Sometimes we cannot see, um, erupting volcanoes.
They may be in very remote areas,
so hearing them might be our best
indication of what they're doing.
I study, um, some
of the volcanoes I study are submarine volcanoes.
They're under the oceans, so we don't know if they're
erupting at all because we can't see them,
and there's nobody anywhere close to them.
We don't have instruments on most of them,
but sound travels really, really effectively in the oceans.
And so consequently, we can listen to, um,
to these eruptions around from all over the oceans
and just get a sense, even for as simple a question as
how often do they erupt?
Where do they erupt, where are there active eruptions?
And what are those eruptions like?
A lot of that we can get from sound.
- Brilliant. And the other thing
that you've been doing some research into is, uh,
Taylor Swift concerts. Why, how,
- Why, why and how is a really good question.
Um, not the direction I saw my research going at all.
Um, it actually starts not with something I did.
The story starts actually quite a bit of, um,
a while ago in 2011, during a football game,
American football game, right at, uh, in Seattle
during a very exciting play, um, where the, uh, um,
the, you know, the, the Seattle team Seahawks were playing
against the New Orleans Saints
and the running back who we refer to as Beast Mode.
Marshawn Lynch broke through the defensive line,
scored a touchdown, and the crowd went so nuts
that it was recorded by a local seismometer,
and we refer to that as the beast quake.
So it was just the crowd being so excited.
This was noticed by a seismologist in Seattle at the time.
And to be fair,
there's a seismometer very close to that stadium.
So anytime something happens at the stadium,
the seismometer does pick it up.
And so fast forward to 2023, somebody, I,
I'm a moderator in a Facebook group for people
who are interested in earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.
And, uh, somebody wrote in
and said, Hey, you know, is,
is Taylor Swift concert making a beast quake right now?
You know, and I thought, well,
that's an interesting question.
We haven't looked at concerts
before, uh, at least I hadn't, turns out other people had.
So I went, you know, the, the data are freely available
to anybody who wants to look at them.
So I went ahead and downloaded them and,
and boom, I mean, there was a huge signal from this concert.
Um, not only that,
this was actually the second night she played two concerts.
And so I downloaded both of 'em.
And what was immediately obvious is
that they were absolutely identical.
The way the ground shook. It was a really interesting thing
because we don't really know why the ground, we haven't,
at least in the past, known why the
ground shakes during these.
Is it the crowd jumping up and down?
Is it the stadium resonating
because of their behavior in this case?
Was it the amplified music? Was it the bass?
Was it the drums?
Um, so that was sort of the first piece of the puzzle is,
well, what's identical on the two nights?
So I found that intriguing and kept looking,
- Presumably with the American football,
there's no amplification there,
right? That's just the people.
- Correct. So we knew in that case, okay,
that was obviously the crowd.
And truly one of the reasons
that I started looking at this was there are some
bragging rights involved here.
You know, who shook the ground more?
And when I first said, you know, wow,
the ground's shaking way more in this concert than it did in
the beast quake, there was a little bit of, um,
unhappiness on the part of some of the football fans
who said, yeah, well, we didn't have amplified music,
we didn't have all these electronics.
Obviously that's, you know, that's,
that's why the Taylor Swift concert was louder.
So that was a part of why I was interested in looking at it.
Who wins, you know, and are they right? Um, yes and no.
So they're absolutely right that they didn't have
amplified sound.
Um, but it turns out
that when you dive into the signal a little bit more
for the concerts, there's really two different signals
that we're seeing in terms of the seismology.
So when we look at earthquake waves or when we look,
'cause these are earthquake waves, right?
These are seismic waves. The ground is shaking.
Um, we look at the different frequencies
at which the ground shakes.
And what we could see really clearly during the concert was
that there was very, very,
very strong low frequency shaking.
And what I mean by that is somewhere between about one
and five or one
and eight hertz, there was also a lot of signal
that was much higher around, say, 30 to 80 hertz.
This particular in instrument is only recording data up
to 100 hertz.
So really this is the very lowest frequencies
that humans can hear.
You know, we, we say humans can hear 20 to 20,000.
It's probably more like 50 to 15, you know,
but this would be base, if anything
or, so it's not, we're not hearing Taylor Swift's voice,
but potentially, of course there are low frequency signals
that come in the bass and the drum,
and of course in all the, all the, um, the music.
But again, we had these two really specific categories.
The thing that was really interesting right off the bat was
that if I looked at those very, very low frequencies,
they change their, they,
they stay at a very constant frequency for about three
to four minutes at a time.
And then it shifts to another low frequency, uh,
different frequency for three to four minutes at a time.
And that went of course, throughout the concert.
So three to four minutes being the duration
of your average pop song, that was kind of a nice hint
that this had to do with the music.
Further, if we look at the frequency at which we saw the
ground shaking and compared it to published tempos
of these songs, you could see that it matched identically,
which, what the tempo of the song was.
So, you know, for example, there's the song ready for it,
which turns out to have, um, you know, the number
of beats per minute is somewhere
around about 160 beats per minute.
And when we look at the frequency of ground shaking,
the strongest signal is about 2.6 hertz,
which is consistent with that rhythm.
We've got other songs, you know, don't blame me,
136 beats per minute.
And sure enough, the strongest signal we see is 2.2 hertz,
which is that consistent with that.
So that's clearly the song.
Now that doesn't tell us if it's the crowd dancing
or if it's the music still.
However, we had two ways we could look at this.
There was a portion of each concert
where Taylor Swift plays, um, what she calls surprise songs.
And at this point, the band leaves the stage
and it's just Taylor Swift with a guitar or a piano.
So we no longer have, you know, it, you know,
the, the bass and the drum.
And in fact, she comes out
and says, welcome to the acoustic part of the evening.
So we know we're in the acoustic part where we simply have,
I mean, of course it's amplified, but it's not electronic.
And at that point, uh, we can test, right?
Is are those low frequencies still there?
And in some cases, absolutely, yes.
If it's a danceable song that she is playing acoustically,
there are still low frequencies.
There are other songs that are just not danceable songs.
There's, they're ballads, right?
They're things that people may be sort of swaying
to or singing along.
And whether the band is out there
or not, we just don't see those low frequencies.
Finally, there are some songs
where we see a very dramatic change in the amplitude
of those low frequency signals.
I was very lucky to be handed an enormous amount of data
by very enthusiastic concertgoers swifties.
It turns out we'll just do anything for Taylor Swift,
and particularly for Taylor Swift Science.
And I was inundated
with emails from people saying, how can I help?
Do you want my videos? Do you want my photos?
And if I take these videos
that these incredibly generous people gave to me,
I can see right when the seismic signal gets stronger,
I can see the crowd dancing more, dancing more dramatically.
You can see them tire over time and taper,
and sure enough, the amplitude drops
and then another chorus happens
and it jumps into they jump again.
And sure enough, the seismic signal cranks up.
So pretty clear sign that that's the crowd.
Now we also have this 30 to 80 hertz stuff, right,
that we think, again,
with changes in character every three to four minutes.
So also likely related to this stuff,
when we go into the acoustic section, that stuff goes away.
So that makes it pretty clear that that is the music
that is the band.
So back to that original question of is it the crowd?
Do, is there an amplified system?
Yes, that amplified music is detected,
but the strongest signal we see is the crowd dancing.
So I, I would give it to the crowd right there.
- Okay, brilliant. Sorry about that.
American football fans, it's, uh,
- .
Well, there is one other thing to point out though.
When you have a rhythm like this, you dance
and sync everyone dances together.
When you have a crowd jumping randomly stochastic motion,
you don't have these synchronized, um, beats
that are pushed into the ground at the same time, right?
You've got really kind of chaotic motion.
So no real surprise
that the amplitudes are weaker when people are
spontaneously jumping up and down.
And in fact, there was a study by another,
a Seattle seismologist.
Um, the first was by John Vidal who found the Beast Quake,
and then his colleague Steve Malone
continued looking at football games
and noticed that there is a chant,
people will do defense, defense.
And at that point you actually see a very strong
rhythmic signal from the crowd.
So I'm quite certain if you ask the football fans
to jump in sync as we do on that short one, that
that short little chant,
I'm quite certain they could give the
swifties a run for their money. Okay.
- Okay. I'm sort of picking up
that you're a American football fan, is that right?
- I'm huge football fan. Right, okay. I love the sport.
- Okay. Um,
but would you say that you now know Taylor Swift
music all too well?
- Um, that's a fair statement.
Yeah, there's a few songs that I know extremely well
because they make really the,
the most intriguing seismic signals.
Usually people have asked me, oh,
were you a swifty before this?
And the answer is no. Am I a swifty?
Now I have an appreciation for her music,
but it's an unusual appreciation.
I appreciate the wiggles that it makes.
I appreciate the seismograms.
You know, I usually describe myself as much more of a sort
of punk and bluegrass type of gal, so I'm waiting
for other concerts to come to Lumen Field.
- Did you get many bluegrass acts playing in the arenas?
- Probably not at this big arena.
I might, you know, have to see if I can find myself an
instrument to stick down to some smaller club.
Um, but I will say that I am really interested to see how,
how different bands, uh, shape the ground.
And so with that in mind, um, I requested,
I wrote a proposal and my university was kind enough
to meet it, uh, to get tickets
to the Beyonce concert when she came to town.
So my students and I, shortly
after the Taylor Swift concert, went back to the stadium
and saw Beyonce play.
And that is another equally enthusiastic crowd,
equally fond of the Queen Bee.
So I was really intrigued to see which
of those was gonna be stronger.
And what we found is that the strength
of the ground shaking, the dancing was much greater
during the Taylor Swift concert,
but the strength of those high frequencies,
the music was much stronger during the Beyonce concert.
And so, you know, my hypothesis is that
it really is a question of how do you dance?
You dance very differently
to pop music than you do to r and b.
There's a lot, you know, sort of more swaying to r and b
and less kind of pogo stick jumping up and down.
And the way it impacts the ground
and couples in is quite different.
So I actually had a student who's doing her senior thesis on
studying the differences in these two.
Uh, and you know, in concert seismology,
looking at the differences in
how these acts impact the ground,
- That's a pretty good bit of research to be doing.
- It's pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. - Oh,
- Amazing.
One of the really fun things about this has been sharing
with people that science is not just done in a lab,
and it's not just done at a computer that really,
anytime you're asking a question about how something behaves
and you're making observations, you're collecting data
and you're trying to answer questions, you're doing science.
And, and so I had so much data from Swifties
who did this at Con at the concerts,
and in fact, my co-authors on some
of my co-authors on my presentation at the American
Geophysical Union, um, were my 13-year-old neighbors
who gave me their data, who shared
with me their photos and their videos.
And I was incredibly impressed with the detail
that they were able to provide about things.
And you know, sometimes we make science so sterile
and we act as if it's distinct from the
normal things that we do.
And it isn't, it doesn't have to be,
it can be just questions about things that interest us.
And I sort of like that demystification that this has
provided, and I hope that it allows some people to sort
of say, that's an interesting thing. I can do that.
- Yeah. I I don't suppose Taylor West
been in touch with you at all.
- She has not, no. She's got much bigger fish to fry, so,
no, I I have not been in touch
with her. Okay. Well,
- I I'm actually going to see her, uh, concert,
I believe it's called the Era Tour.
I say that like, I don't know,
I have a 12-year-old daughter I've been talked to about it
at length for .
Yes. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take your paper
with me and I'm gonna read it whilst I'm in
that concert. Perfect.
- Yeah, that's perfect.
And you will know what rhythm to dance at .
You'll know, you know, at what points to look around and,
and see if everybody's moving in sync together and Yeah.
You know, I'll tell you one other really fun thing.
At the Beyonce concert, she has a song where in the middle
of it, she does this, everybody go mute
and the whole audience stops and is still,
and we can see that in the data too.
Oh, that's funny. So anytime there's something kind of cool
that happens, it's fun to look for, for us to look
and see, oh, what went on there?
- I kind of feel like it's a shame for you that you've,
did you it on totally swift first
because, you know, you've now got an option
to get free tickets for stuff, right.
Or at least get tickets for stuff.
And that would've been an easy, a, a more difficult one
to get tickets for than others.
- True. I did hear that the Rolling Stones are coming here,
and I think that would be kind of fun.
Yeah. You know, 'cause that's more my era, to be honest.
Um, I mean, I saw the Rolling Stones in 1982,
so it might be interesting
to see them 40 years later. ,
- You didn't have a, a seismometer
with you in 1982. Presumably
- In 1982, I was sadly unaware the
seismometers were a thing. So yeah. Why
- Is there one outside that arena? What
- It's not there for the arena.
Um, it happens that lumen field is built on a part
of Seattle that is, um, pretty mushy subsurface geology.
I mean, you wouldn't know it walking around,
but geologically it's built on this sort
of alluvial deposits, these clays, these silts, these sands.
Um, and that's stuff that shakes a lot during earthquakes.
And so trying to understand how to build safely, um,
requires that we understand how the ground shakes.
So we have seismometers kind of all over the place just
to say, Hey, in these circumstances, here's
how much this area will shake.
And then it helps, um, inform building codes.
So it happens that this is a good area to understand,
- And I don't know how we can arrange this,
but I'd like to know what happens if Taylor
Swift scores a touchdown.
- I mean, really what we're waiting
for is a Kansas City Chiefs to play here,
because of course,
her sweetheart routinely scores touchdowns
or had we had a seismometer for the Super Bowl
because of course he scored touchdowns in that.
Um, it does seem to kind of mesh everything together.
I kind of felt like the, the merging of football
and Taylor Swift stuff, we kind of kicked into gear way
before Travis Kelsey reached out to her.
So I kind of feel like we deserve some credit
for discussing them in the same paper.
- I quite like the idea of physics world fans exchanging
science papers at the ERA'S tour,
but whether it takes off in the way
that Taylor Swift fans exchanging friendship bracelets has
remains to be seen.
Let's turn now to our new jingle.
And Professor Philip Moriarty,
- A professor of physics at the University of Nottingham,
been at Nottingham for a very, very long time.
Almost 30 years, no, over 30 years now.
And, um, massive interest in the science
of the ultra small quantum mechanics.
We work with scanning probe microscopes,
we manipulate individual atoms.
But as a, um, hobby, I like to explore
the relationships between maths, physics and music.
Uh, so last year on the lateral thoughts page
of physics world, the back page of physics world,
which is always, um, uh, my contribution's notwithstanding,
is always very entertaining.
And, uh, last year the
I contributed a lateral thoughts piece on the
writing a song, a heavy metal song called Shut Up
and Calculate, which took fundamental, constant
and fundamental relationships in physics.
Uh, encoded them in different riffs and in rhythms
and in lyrics of course, and wrote a song about that.
So that I guess, piqued physics, world's interest.
They got in touch and asked,
what are I interested in doing something
for a new physics world podcast jingle?
And of course I said, yes, jumped at the chance.
- Yeah. Brilliant. And so you have done that.
People listening to this podcast now will have heard at
least a part of that, the start of it.
But can you ta just talk me through the process
of creating something like that?
- So obviously it's for physics world, obviously we want
to have a strong connection to the, the, to
physical constants or physics in general
and embedding them in the music.
So I thought long
and hard about having played around
with different physical consonants, like planks constant
and the golden ratio in the past,
and made quite heavy rock and heavy metal songs outta those.
I thought, well, maybe metal's not gonna go down as
as, as universally with the entire physics world audience
as other forms of music.
Let's put it that way. We might have people running
to the Hills .
So let's, let's, let's think about, um, perhaps a more,
a slightly gentler genre
and looked up when physics world started
and actually started in the eighties.
So I thought, ah, okay, maybe we'll go
for some eighties synth pop.
Everybody loves eighties synth pop,
everybody loves the Human League and Gary Newman
and all those wonderful bands from the eighties
and all those wonderful earworms.
So that's, that was the starting position.
And then went, uh, online
and was absolutely delighted to find that all the samples
and all the type of synth sounds
and sequences that were used by those bands in the eighties,
they're essentially completely free plugins now.
So things called Lin drums, for example, that
that particularly, you know, think about the start of, um,
uh, oh, that classic Human League song.
Uh, don't You Want Me, you think about the start start of
that, that drum sound, that sort of arpeggiated,
um, synth sound.
All of that is those type of sounds are available online.
So that, that's the type of feel I was I was going for.
And that's the music side.
On the physics side, let's choose a number that's really
universal and let's choose a number that is dimensionless.
There's a dimension constant.
So it's, it's independent of any unit, uh, we have in
that if an alien civilization were to get in contact
as alongside Pi
and e, this might be one of the numbers they, they'd send us
to say, we're out here.
So, and that number is the fine structure constant,
something called Alpha or indeed one over Alpha.
And that is a number that is roughly
137 ply.
For example, Wolfgang Ply was absolutely obsessed by
that number and spent an awful lot of life.
And for somebody who was very cynical, very caustic,
and in many ways incredibly rational,
it's really interesting to see how Mystic he was about this.
Number 1, 3, 7. There's a book, um,
by a guy called Arthur Miller called 1 3 7,
which I was about to say, I recommend physics.
Anybody listening to this podcast gives it a read.
I, it's a good, it's a good read and it's an important read.
And it talks about Powerly and his relationship with young,
but there's an awful lot of woo
and there's an awful lot of numerology in it.
I found it quite hard going at times,
but it's certainly in terms
of an insight into ply, it's, it's great.
And as a wonderful coincidence, Parly the room
that he died in, the hospital room that he died in,
the number was 1 3 7.
Are you kidding? play the Twilight Zone music
in the background, .
Um, so yeah, it doesn't get better than that.
You couldn't script that that would be kicked out
of a Hollywood blockbuster for being too unrealistic.
So, um, so he was absolutely fascinated by this number.
Feynman of course, said it was one of the great mysteries
of the universe, a magic number.
We have no clue where it is, where it comes from,
and it still remains a mystery.
Why is it 1 3 7?
And it's not quite exactly 1, 3, 7,
it's a little bit more than 1 3 7,
or the inverse of this number is a little bit,
I should say is a little bit more than 1 3 7.
So, but let's take that 1, 3, 7.
And what we'll do is we'll
map those numbers onto a scale, so us onto a musical scale.
So usually my go-to scale is something called the Harmonic
Miner, which is quite a spooky sounding scale,
which is used a lot in heavy metal,
but I thought, let's not use the harmonic miner,
we'll use a natural miner.
And then it's a question of, oh,
hopefully this will, will pick this up.
Um, it's, it's a really simple question
of just mapping those numbers onto a scale.
So I'm gonna go, um, up the scale, we're gonna start
with zero, which is this note, then we're gonna go for one,
Two, okay, I'll play the scale
and then I'll count the numbers.
So that's 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
And all we're doing is gonna take the, the, the note
that represents one, which is a d, the note
that represents three, which is an F,
and the note that represents seven, which is a C.
And we get this, which hopefully
that's what started off this week's podcast.
And the good thing about, uh, notes like this is that they,
they wrap round, so it's essentially modular seven.
So, um, the first note of the scale,
which were liberal at zero was the same as the seventh.
So 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 7.
If I play them together, or the same, the same note in the,
in the sense that, uh, one is an octave above the other, so
to the same note, just separated by an octave.
So that means we can also play our, um,
scale up here or we can go up an octave
and it just wraps around.
The numbers are circular in that sense,
which is very helpful in terms of composing stuff.
Um, so yeah, so that's the core,
that's the core of the, of the piece of music.
And that 1, 3 7 theme keeps repeating over and over. Um,
- Yeah, can I do right?
So if it, if when you'd played that,
or did you already know this, but when, if you'd,
when you played that it didn't sound good,
would you have just gone with it anyway or would you have
- No, no, I'd have chosen another scale.
Okay. . So in that sense,
it's a little bit arbitrary.
Um, in terms of, of what we're doing.
There is a, there's obviously a link there between the maths
and the numbers and the, the physical concept.
But it does depend on which scale we choose,
at least in this case, it is a dimensionless constant.
So at least there aren't units to worry about.
'cause you could argue you take one of these numbers,
just change the unit, you get a completely different number.
But, um, again, if it were an alien civilization getting in
contact, you know, that kind of combination of notes
or that relationship between the notes is fixed at least.
So you, you never know ,
- We'll go back to the music in a minute,
but this alien civilization getting in touch with this.
If we, if we just said to them 1, 3, 7
or played them those notes, why would they know that?
- Well, it's a question of the relationship
between the frequencies of those notes.
So if they could work back, I guess, of course we have,
we're very used in Western culture to thinking
of particular, um, scales.
So it's a question of what the,
that alien culture might have developed in terms
of musical scales.
Would it be exactly obvious that it was 1 3 7? Perhaps not.
Could they just send us those numbers 1, 3, 7, just
as duh duh duh duh duh or whatever.
It's just as simple tones.
We might, um, understand that a little bit, um, more easily.
Having said that, uh, a jingle
that comprised just the same tone repeated 1, 3, 7 times
for five minutes might not be the most interesting thing
to listen to .
- No, absolutely not.
But, uh, what you have done is change it up a bit
and there's something which at least you've described
as a squelchy phasey effect.
Now, last time we spoke was a long time ago,
and, um, this regular listeners in the podcast will remember
that we went off on one about rush at one,
- We did .
- Um, is there any influence of rush in this at all, you
- Think?
Well, Yeah,
there's always an influence of rush somewhere.
So the Fay the Fay thing, so one
of Russia's classic songs is called
something called Spirit of Radio.
And that starts off with a,
a very much f flanged phased guitar motif that that is,
is spinning, sort of circling
and spinning around, which is, um, and very looped
and very repetitive, and it's somewhat the same idea.
There's always a bit of a rush influence somewhere.
But that particular, um, sound that phased,
sweeping sound is, uh,
taken directly from a simulation of
the evolution of, uh, wave function
in the particle in a box model.
The infinite potential, well that everybody does
as a physics undergrad at least four times over
and, um, took the output from that simulation
and transpose it into the audio range.
So what you're hearing is a real simulation
and the dynamics of
that evolving quantum state translated into sound.
- That's a lovely thing.
Um, you've, there's also a link to 1984.
- The choice of the musical genre was
definitely informed by the eighties.
And, um, you know,
it's 20, 24, 40 years ago the Nobel Prize was awarded.
Um, in terms of, um, fundamental, um,
coupling constants, let's, let's put it that way in terms
of the weak force, but actually 1 3 7, the,
the fine structure constant, I keep saying 1 3 7,
it's actually one over 1 3 7
or approximately one over 1 3 7 is the actual
fine structure constant.
What that is, is a measure of the coupling
of charged particles with the electromagnetic field.
And um, the other thing that's buried in there
is some bongos.
And you, if you listen carefully, you can hear the bongos.
I hope for a physics audience that I don't have
to explain a camera cameo periods of, of bongos .
But if you do, if you need, if you need some more hints,
then perhaps go go along to Oppenheim
or find where Oppenheimer is playing or somehow download it
or stream it and um, watch it again and,
and look out for the bongos.
Um, and of course there is another meta link there in
that, that particular physicist who was particularly famous
for playing the bongos won the Nobel Prize
for Electrodynamics quantum electrodynamics.
And this 1 3 7 alpha,
the fine structure constant is absolutely at the core
of quantum electrodynamics and fineman diagrams, oh, sorry,
- , give ruined it now everyone.
- I've ruined it. - .
So, okay, that's, that's everything I think up
to a certain point in the jingle.
Then we're starting to get some drums. Hi hats.
- Oh yeah, we are, um, the open hi hats are sort
of syncopated at one point.
And again, that's happening on the first
third, seventh beat.
There's actually, there's 16th for the drummers out there,
there's 16th node.
So it's first, so imagine it does two sets of eight notes,
and on each set of eight notes, you get a one, three
and a seven that you accent.
Um, so 1, 3, 7, 1 3, 7, 1 3 7, et cetera.
So yeah, that was an easy one to do.
And being a big rush
and Neil Pert fan, that's the type of thing
that Neil Pert used to do a lot,
including a song called YYZ, which is most cool
for YYZ translated to drums. Oh,
- Lovely.
Um, then we have, well from about one 13.
- Okay, so this is one over 1 37
and that's a different wave, but it's exactly the same idea,
same scale, just matching the, the notes.
So it's like 0.00729.
I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head again.
So matching those, and that's a bit funkier
and that's driven by the bass dominated
by the music rather than the physics, I would say.
Although those notes are matched to the inverse of the of
of 1 3 7, the, the rhythm has nothing to do with that.
The rhythm, that sort of driving rhythm at that point is
because I wanted to lift the song a little bit.
There's something that kicks in, I can't remember,
it's about midway through, I dunno, two, two minute,
two minute 30 mark, something like that,
which is called a shepherd scale.
And this is, this is amazing.
It's, um, an audio equivalent essentially
of those Escher paintings, you know, the Escher paintings
with the, the monks walking up the, the staircase
and the, the walking up.
But then they're also walking down
and it's like this infinite loop
or indeed penals Roger Penals on his father, um,
had these infinite staircases which inspired
that Escher painting apparently.
Um, so I, there's an audio equivalent of
that called the Shepherd Scale, whereby you,
you have an octave rising
and as it's rising its volume is also increasing,
but then you also have another octave,
or more than one octave, um,
whereby the notes are, um, falling in volume
as the pitch goes up
and you get this interplay of rising notes, um,
with the volume increasing
and also another set of notes
with which are rising in pitch,
but their volume is decreasing.
And the combined experience is that you hear this note
that seems to be rising and rising and rising
and never stops.
So rising to infinity
and physicists love dealing with infinities.
Every furry interval is full of infinities.
So, um, I thought again, that was a, a nice, um,
parallel with, uh, physics.
- Yeah, I mean it's a funny old thing, the brain, isn't it
that something that isn't happening.
We hear it as if it is,
- It is, there are some fantastic examples of how
what we perceive is much more than just the physics
of the notes and the furrier coefficients
and the, the, the, the furrier components of the sound.
The IE the way that a physicist would treated a great deal
of it is, is due to our psychology and her perception.
And there are some really wonderful examples at, um,
the Franklin Institute, uh, website in, uh,
Franklin Institute is in Philadelphia.
It's a science museum.
And let's see if these are gonna work.
'cause I think these are amazing in terms of,
I'm gonna play you something now, Andrew, um,
and tell me what you think it is,
- Lady.
- Any idea what that was? - No, not a clue.
- Okay, let's try it again. I'll play it one more time,
- Lady.
- Now you're gonna hear what the actual message was followed
by exactly the same piece of garbled audio
and suddenly all will become clear.
- There's coffee on that seat. - Whoa.
- And what this goes to show is just
how important prior information is in terms of
how we perceive and how we interpret
information for our senses.
There's another interesting analog here.
We talked before Andrew, about machine learning and training
and just the incredible advances in artificial intelligence
and of course chat.
GPT-4 O was released just a couple of days ago.
And again, that's about training
and network, a neural network in that case,
an artificial neural network rather than the organic neural
network between our ears.
But it is about prior information, how it learns.
And here we see exactly that in terms of our brains
working out interpreting data in terms of prior information,
the training set essentially that we've been given.
Mm. One more example.
- Okay, brilliant. No,
absolutely no idea.
Again, go on enlighten me. The
- Constitution center is at the next stop.
- Whoa. It's just brilliant, isn't it?
But let's just go back to the music a second
because at the end we get the violins.
- Yeah. So the violins, again are just repeating
that 1, 3, 7 idea.
Um, and then they fade out
and are replaced by, again, coming back
to the science first looping round to where we almost,
where we started coming back to the sort
of science fiction scenario
where there's an alien civilization trying
to get in contact with us .
And again, it's a very heavily affected bass guitar playing
harmonics based on those 1 3 7 pitches.
And that fades out to, uh, infinity as it were.
- What a lovely thing it is.
Um, thank you so much for doing it.
I, I have to ask this question, right,
because you, you have the violins there.
Um, would you all be interested in those violins
being actual violins?
- Oh, I would love that. Oh, that'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Because they're obviously sampled
and, um, there's a lot I'll,
I'll be writing a blog post about this
and there are a number of free plugins
and there are a number of, um, effects that I use a lot,
including those by somebody called,
I hope I get the pronunciation.
I garant Luff who, uh, it's amazing, these incredible
effects that have been developed as plugins for the,
the digital audio workspaces.
And I use something called Reaper
and for completely for free.
It's amazing. Other places would charge hundreds
if not thousands for this.
And this guy's just decided to put them online.
Uh, it's, it's, it's really nice in terms
of the music community, just what, what level
of community there is
and how, you know, the, the level of interaction there is.
- It is a very lovely thing.
And what I, i dunno whether it's gonna be possible or not,
but I am happily married to a rather wonderful violinist.
- Oh my. Oh, that would be amazing. So,
- Yeah, I wonder what would you want from
that violinist if we were going to
- Oh, I can, so what I can do is just send a track
with just exactly the notes that are required
and stripped of everything else.
Okay. That would be great. And then I could mix it back in.
That would be great. Yeah. Oh wow. Let's try that.
- Thank you. Let's try that.
- In terms of stringed instruments,
that's quantum mechanics 1 0 1, that's
where we start particle in a box.
It's resonances on a string.
You've got something that's clamped at both ends. Freedom.
You've got nodes at both ends.
What standing waves conform. It's all physics
- .
It's, it's, it's a lovely thing, isn't it?
Well, I, I am wondering whether,
because, you know, we've got this lovely piece of music now,
um, it,
it's gonna be used in the podcast in various different ways.
It is the jingle at the start.
We're gonna bring it in occasionally within
the podcast as well.
But I wonder whether we might give listeners a treat
and play one of your other pieces of music that has to do
with physics on this particular
- Episode.
Oh, that, that would be great. Thank you.
Yes, I can certainly, yeah. That, that would be wonderful.
Thank you, .
- Well hopefully that'll be thanking
'cause And, uh, which one should we play
- Then?
Oh, we, we play something very metal called Shut Up
and Calculate if , let's see
how that goes down .
It's slightly different genre rise to the jingle.
- Amazing. Well, hopefully they won't run for their lives.
And here we go.
- The
the,
- In this way we see
that such a drastic departure from ordinary ideas
as the assumption of superposition relationships
between the states is possible only on account
of the recognition of the importance
of the disturbance upon observation
and of the con indeterminacy
and the result of the observation.
When an observation is made on atomic systems
that is in given state in general,
the result will not be determinate.
- We'll,
- That's shut up and calculate by Philip Moriarty.
And you're listening to the Physics World Stories podcast.
Thank you so much to Jackie and Philip for talking to me.
And thank you very much indeed to Jenny g Lester
for providing the violin for our new jingle,
which I hope you as listeners are enjoying.
We'll be back next month
with something else from this wonderful world of physics
and thank you very much for listening.