The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, commonly known as NASA, is the US government agency responsible for the civil space program, as well as aeronautics and space research.
One of the most ambitious projects undertaken by the famous space agency is the HARP project, which is closely studied by some scientists and researchers in the field of weather and climate.
This project consists of 180 antennas working together and emitting 1 gigawatt = 1,000,000,000 watts, that is, a trillion high-frequency radio waves that penetrate the lower atmosphere and interact with the electro-acoustic jet stream, with the goal of translating spatial noise into data that scientists use.
according to According to NASA, the magnetic environment surrounding the Earth is filled with a symphony of sound that we cannot hear. Across our planet, extremely low-frequency waves form a cacophonous operetta depicting the dramatic relationship between Earth and the Sun.
HARP, or Audit Heliophysics, has transformed waves inaudible to humans into sounds, hissing, and crackling.
“What excites me most about the HARP project is the ability of citizen scientists to make new discoveries in heliophysics research through acoustic analysis. “We need your help to understand the complex patterns in the near-Earth space environment,” He said The project's principal investigator, Michael Hartinger, is a solar physicist at the Colorado Space Science Institute.
The space between Earth and the Sun is full of particles called plasma, which is material from our solar system's star.
The plasma generates a constant stream called the solar wind, which is intermittently expelled by solar flares. When this solar plasma hits the Earth, it causes the magnetic field lines and plasma around the Earth to vibrate like the strings of a harp, creating ultra-low-frequency waves that are barely detectable.
This audible data is obtained thanks to the task Themis (Time history of large-scale events and interactions during substorms) 2007, when NASA launched five satellites to fly through Earth's magnetic “harp,” its magnetosphere.
“THEMIS can test the entire harp and has been around for a long time, so it has collected a lot of data,” Hartinger said.
As mentioned, these waves produce a frequency that is inaudible to the human ear, so the HARP team accelerated them and turned them into sound waves.
“The process of identifying new features through deep listening is a bit like a treasure hunt,” said Robert Alexander, a member of the HARP team at Auralab Technologies in Michigan.
HARP was inspired by an earlier sonication project led by Archer called MUSICS (Magnetospheric Acoustic Ripples Involving Citizen Scientists).
When Archer asked high school students in London to listen to acoustic data from NOAA satellites, they identified a new plasma wave pattern related to solar storms. “London high school students were able to pick out a complex, but repeatable, pattern in the sound that automated methods had missed,” Hartinger said.
The success of this project lies in the fact that by having a wide audience, if one or more people do not notice the sound, someone else can pick it up. “We want people to discover things we never thought of, or things that computer algorithms wouldn't be able to discover. “This is how discoveries are made,” says Emmanuel Masong Song of the University of California, Los Angeles, a member of the HARP team and a member of NASA's THEMIS mission.
“Sonification of data gives humans the opportunity to appreciate the natural music of the universe. We hear sounds that are literally out of this world, and to me this is the closest thing to floating in a space suit.”
To start exploring these sounds, visit Runaway site.
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