This really cool. When I clicked on the play buttons to hear the audio I had a little shudder in case it was Rig Ved or something similar..... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm> The process of converting scientific data into sounds is called sonification. "When you are hearing what the sonifications do you really are hearing the data. It's true to the data, and it's telling you something about the data that you couldn't know in any other way," said Archer Endrich, a software engineer working on the project. The aim is to give physicists at the LHC another way to analyse their data. The sonification team believes that ears are better suited than eyes to pick out the subtle changes that might indicate the detection of a new particle. "We can hear clear structures in the sound, almost as if they had been composed. They seem to tell a little story all to themselves. They're so dynamic and shifting all the time, it does sound like a lot of the music that you hear in contemporary composition," he explained. Although the project's aim is to provide particle physicists with a new analysis tool, Archer Endrich believes that it may also enable us to eavesdrop on the harmonious background sound of the Universe. He said he hoped the particle collisions at Cern would "reveal something new and something important about the nature of the Universe". And Mr Endrich says that those who have been involved in the project have felt something akin to a religious experience while listening to the sounds. "You feel closer to the mystery of Nature which I think a lot of scientists do when they get deep into these matters," he said. "Its so intriguing and there's so much mystery and so much to learn. The deeper you go, the more of a pattern you find and it's fascinating and it's uplifting."
