Tell me, what's so "magical" about a perfect geometric form, with wings made of mirrors, flying in the dark silence outside of the world, singing a song made of light
My kid tried to explain that to me once. I still don't get it. (On the other tentacle, he also explained the omegaverse to me, and I get that, and I really really wish I didn't.)
This is the exact type of passionately deranged literalism we need out of our science communicators. "The universe sings for you and me" will never be dethroned as the hardest bar to ever hit, but this comes close.
Pack that shit up, boss: we're done here. You're never topping this.
> made so that a death machine could find its way more perfectly to the most victims
That's a totally fair comment but in the spirit of beating swords into ploughshares both GPS & the Internet escaped the apocalypse to power PokémonGo & cat video redistribution.
"What time is it? Keep pointing at the rock. But what time is it? Keep pointing at the rock! Okay, but what time is it? Point at the rock, dammit! I'm asking another satellite. What time is it?! Shit. PLEASE point at the rock..."
With special rocks inscribed with symbols on a microscopic level designed to channel lightning so it can turn your incantations (code) into myriad wondrous things 😊
I made a math error above. The GPS primary carrier is more like a F#, 21 octaves above middle C, and it's less detuned than I thought. Plus there's sorta a second note around D. Overtone singing is real so a human voice could potentially make this sound (in a lower octave)?
with the caveat that these chords are exceeding approximation, i've made a table of these frequencies here. i'm planning to do a little more work charting and explaining the *intervals* in these clusters, rather than the absolute pitches, since absolute pitch doesn't super matter. more info in alt.
If we pick five agencies that all share a base "note" (a low frequency they all use) and call that the "fundamental", we can examine the intervals these guys form above the fundamental without being tied down to A=440Hz. we see, surprisingly, that ALL OF THEM HAVE A NEAR-PERFECT FOURTH buried within
poetically: the 1575 MHz signal of these celestial beings is joined, often, by a 1176 MHz signal as well. they sing not only in unison, but in harmony: a near-perfect fourth cast across the heavens.
On my understanding of intervals, from the bottom to the top of that is just over a fourth, which on the face of it is mostly full of sound especially the major third section
🎵
"Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That satellites played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for maps, now, do ya?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The coding lines composing Hallelujah"
🎵
What else should I be?
All apologies
What else could I say?
Satellites are great
What else could I write?
Leonard Cohen's song is tight
What else should I be?
All apologies
As a musician I’d expect it to be… weird. I’d be really surprised if we took all of the carrier signal frequencies, transposed them down the exact same amount, and got something analysable within traditional music theory
closest thing it’d prolly be analogous to is something like Microtonal music
Come to think of it it’s very possible someone has already adapted those signal wavelengths into an appropriate equal-temperament microtonal system and made compositions with it
Comments
Pack that shit up, boss: we're done here. You're never topping this.
That's a totally fair comment but in the spirit of beating swords into ploughshares both GPS & the Internet escaped the apocalypse to power PokémonGo & cat video redistribution.
https://youtu.be/ziv4BHtW91w
-- Things a GPS satellite has on its mind
https://bsky.app/profile/dryad.technology/post/3l7cmz5lh4s2q
What do you get if you transpose all these operating frequencies to human hearing range and play them at once. What chord is this :O
"Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That satellites played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for maps, now, do ya?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The coding lines composing Hallelujah"
🎵
All apologies to Leonard Cohen
All apologies
What else could I say?
Satellites are great
What else could I write?
Leonard Cohen's song is tight
What else should I be?
All apologies
closest thing it’d prolly be analogous to is something like Microtonal music
The.fourth, the fifth
https://bsky.app/profile/bedsores.bsky.social/post/3l7e6ebipql2s