Robert Alexander uses solar sonification to mine old data for new insight. As a Design Science PhD candidate at the University of Michigan he builds different processing software to take space data and turn it into sounds.
In March 2012 Alexander processed data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Around 90 hours of information was transformed into an audio wave. Using a sampling rate of 44,100 hertz the entire data set can play back in a quarter of a second.
Sonifying the data allows the user to control the time span. Further algorithms were built to find the right playback speed to get the most useful information. UofM’s Solar and Heliospheric Research Group are working with Alexander to find patterns in the solar information.
The Astrophysical Journal published Alexander’s article Carbon Ionization Stages as a Diagnostic of the Solar Wind on December 19, 2011. The paper showed that some carbon ion ratios were sensitive to the variations in solar wind, and used auditory measurements to document their discoveries.
Alexander and his projects were featured yesterday on Michigan Radio and I was lucky enough to hear the piece while driving home. Robert has an infectious passion for his work, not just space and signal processing but also the marriage of science, engineering and music.
One of the most interesting parts of the project is the journey that was taken from raw data to musical entertainment. As a composer Alexander was asked to take the data that he says at first sounded like listening to a sine wave and transform it into an emotional piece.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Magnificent_CME_Erupts_on_the_Sun_-_August_31.jpg
