Whistling the Gravitational waves

I used p5js to create a web-app for whistling the gravitational waves, and thought that I will share it here to get some feedback.

Short introduction:

Recently LIGO collaboration for the first time in human history registered the gravitational waves coming from merging black holes and neutron stars. Our bodies do not have any sensors to feel the gravitational waves, that is why a huge and extremely sensitive interferometer was built to detect them. However, the frequency of the gravitational waves is close to the audio frequencies that we can hear with our ears. Therefore, one can “hear” the gravitational waves if those are transitioned into audio. For instance here is how two neutron stars merge (sound is audible only in the last few seconds of the video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWX-BY-A9CY

Sorry for a long introduction. So now the question is whether one can mimic this sound by whistling. Here comes a script that I wanted to share with you: https://kaurov.org/gw/ (if on mobile, use in the landscape mode)

By whistling “chirps” – sounds that change their tonality from low-frequency to high-frequency – one can try to reproduce the mass of the object in the video above, which is 2.74 Solar masses.

I would be happy to get feedback on the implementation and the presentation of the script, as well as any other comments!

Thanks!

4 Likes

@Sasha Great program! Even though the subject matter is beyond the scope of my knowledge, The app encouraged me to work on my whistling skills :smile:

This is fascinating though. does NASA use a simlair technique like in this article? - http://canyouactually.com/nasa-actually-recorded-sound-in-space-and-its-absolutely-chilling/

Please keep us updated on your project

Thanks a lot! :slight_smile:

Yes, those NASA audio files are generated with a similar approach.

Can’t get it over 0.57 :sweat_smile:
Cool project!