2024-01-19 20:43:04
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, is the US government agency responsible for the civil space program, as well as aeronautical and aerospace research.
One of the most ambitious projects that the famous space agency has is that of HARP, it is being looked at closely by some scientists and weather and climate researchers.
This project consists of 180 antennas that work together and emit 1 GW = 1,000,000,000 W, that is, a trillion high-frequency radio waves which penetrate the lower atmosphere and interact with the current of the aureal electrojets, with the purpose of translating spatial noise into data used by scientists.
According to According to NASA, the magnetic environment surrounding Earth is filled with a symphony of sound that we cannot hear. Across our planet, ultra-low frequency waves compose a cacophonous operetta that portrays the dramatic relationship between the Earth and the Sun.
The HARP or Audited Heliophysics project has transformed waves inaudible to humans into sounds, hisses, and crackles.
“What excites me most about the HARP project is the ability of citizen scientists to make new discoveries in heliophysics research through audio analysis. “We need your help to understand complex patterns in the near-Earth space environment,” said the project’s principal investigator, Michael Hartinger, a heliophysicist at the Colorado Space Sciences Institute.
The space between the Earth and the Sun is full of particles and is called plasma, which is material from the star of our solar system.
The plasma generates a constant current called solar wind that is sporadically 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 plucked strings of a harp, producing ultra-low frequency waves that are barely detected.
These audible data are obtained thanks to the mission THEMIS (Time history of macroscale events and interactions during substorms) 2007, when NASA launched five satellites to fly through the Earth’s magnetic “harp,” its magnetosphere.
“THEMIS can test the entire harp and has been available for a long time, so it has collected a lot of data,” Hartinger said.
As mentioned, these waves produce a frequency inaudible to the human ear, so the HARP team accelerated them, turning them into sound waves.
“The process of identifying new features through deep listening is a bit like treasure hunting,” said Robert Alexander, a member of the HARP team at Auralab Technologies in Michigan.
HARP was inspired by an earlier sonification project led by Archer called MUSICS (Magnetospheric Sonified Ripples Incorporating Citizen Scientists).
When Archer asked high school students in London to listen to sonified data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (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 missed,” Hartinger said.
The success of this project lies in the fact that, by having a wide audience, if a sound goes unnoticed by one or more people, it can be captured by another. «We want people to discover things that we never considered, or that computer algorithms would not be able to detect. “This is how discoveries are made!” says Emmanuel Masongsong of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is a member of the HARP team and a member of NASA’s THEMIS mission.
“Data sonification gives humans the opportunity to appreciate the natural music of the cosmos. We hear sounds that are literally out of this world, and for me that’s the closest thing to floating in a space suit,” Alexander concludes.
To start exploring these sounds, visit the HARP website.
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