sciencesoup:

Symphonies of the Planets

There is no sound in the vacuum of space because sound needs a medium to travel through, but celestial objects can still make a “noise” with electromagnetic waves. On its journey to the edge of the solar system, the Voyager 1 Spacecraft recorded vibrations created by interactions between the charged particles of the solar wind and the magnetospheres of various planets and moons. These haunting soundscapes were sent home to Earth, and since the vibrations were between 20 hz to 20 khz—within the range of human hearing—we could convert them into sound. The results are both stunningly familiar and utterly alien, and NASA even released an album of them. Press play, and realise that you’re not listening to human-made sounds, but instead to the solar weather of planets and moons billions of kilometres from home.

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Source: sciencesoup

(via mianoti, invisiblestories)

(via yama-bato, invisiblestories)

I like these two photos.  They could almost be two parts of the same narrative.  There’s intent in the poses of the figures - they’re engaged.  It’s something that occurred before the photo was taken and will continue beyond the instant captured.  The fog has destroyed everything else in the world, like in a story, where only what the author describes exists.  The whole world is a blank, there’s nothing between these two pockets of description.  The drama is melancholy and ambiguous.  The figure on the boat is preoccupied with something urgent and must, for the time being, face it alone.  The figure standing on the edge of the cliff is looking for something, and in communication with the second figure on the lighthouse.  In a way, they remind me of the characters in Edward Hopper’s paintings, who always seem to be in the middle of some decision, or quiet emotional turmoil.


  • 23 Plays
  • Ladybird, Ladybird / EngineA Number of Young Lovers

From a live show by A Number of Young Lovers recorded in the living room of 4A Hartington Rd, Brighton, UK.  There are two tracks here.  Ladybird, Ladybird is based on a old nursery rhyme and Engine is a love song about someone across the sea.

Lyrics

Ladybird, Ladybird

Fly away home.
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
Your children all roam.

Except little Nan
who sits in her pan
weaving her laces as fast as she can.

Engine

Pull out your engine,
pull him from the place
where you’d been
keeping him.
He’s tired,
but sturdy;
a good enough traction to
get you to me.
I’ll take it,
just bring it;
I’ve got a net
and a few yards to spare.

He’s tired,
but sturdy!
A good enough traction to
get you to me!
Mount him!
Fly him!
Across the
deep blue sea.

I need your diesel,
I need your sweat.
When it’s cold,
I need you to start.
I need your diesel,
I need your sweat.
When it’s cold,
I need you to start.

  • 30 Plays
  • Let Your Feet Do The ThinkingA Number Of Young Lovers

From a live show by A Number of Young Lovers recorded in the living room of 4A Hartington Rd, Brighton, UK.  This first track is called Let Your Feet Do The Thinking, and it is about a girl who was obsessed with two famous quantum physicists.  I was born on the same day in the same hospital as her.  The two physicists were fantastically intellectual, but failed to reconcile their personal differences when they might have quite easily done so.  In the end, the girl ran away and we never saw her again.

Lyrics

I’ve never

seen you as

angry with

anyone

as you were with

Heisenberg that night.

Though their handedness

paired perfectly

their innermost

ghosts chose

to keep themselves hidden.

Great minds

are dubious assests.

Idiot hearts

can break down a marriage.

Your mother said

if she could

spit well

his mother would

be her first target.

Her hands rest

on the handlebars,

the test left

her head starved,

her feet got to moving.

Let your feet do the thinking.

Some things

are so serious

that one can

only joke about them.

Marilyn Monroe In 1960, Marilyn Monroe was succumbing to despair and was addicted to drugs.  She turned to Dr. Ralph Greenson, an LA psychoanalysist and a close friend of Anna Freud, for help.  Adam Curtis, in The Century of the Self, tells the story: What Greenson did is follow Anna Freud’s theory.  If Marilyn Monroe could be thought to conform to what society considered a normal pattern of life, that would help her ego control her inner destructive urges.  But Greenson pushed it to an extreme.  He persuaded Monroe to move into a house nearby that was decorated like his own.  He then took her into his own family life, and he, his wife and his daughter played at being Monroe’s own family.  Greenson himself would become the model of conformity. Despite all his efforts, Greenson was unable to help Marilyn Monroe.  On August 5th 1962 she committed suicide in her house.  The suicide shocked many in the analytic community, including Anna Freud.  And high profile figures in American life who had previously been enthusiasts for psychoanalysis now began to question why psychoanalysis had become so powerful in America.  Was it really because it benefitted individuals or had it in fact become a form of constraint in the interests of social order?  The critics included Monroe’s ex-husband, Arthur Miller: “My argument with so much psychoanalysis these days is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know will have come out of people’s suffering. That the problem is not to undo suffering or to wipe it off the face of the earth but to make it inform our lives, instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it. And avoid anything but that lobotomized sense of what they call happiness. There’s too much of an attempt it seems to me at controlling man rather than freeing him; of defining him rather than letting him go. And it’s part of the whole ideology of this age which is power mad.”
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Marilyn Monroe

In 1960, Marilyn Monroe was succumbing to despair and was addicted to drugs.  She turned to Dr. Ralph Greenson, an LA psychoanalysist and a close friend of Anna Freud, for help.  Adam Curtis, in The Century of the Self, tells the story:

What Greenson did is follow Anna Freud’s theory.  If Marilyn Monroe could be thought to conform to what society considered a normal pattern of life, that would help her ego control her inner destructive urges.  But Greenson pushed it to an extreme.  He persuaded Monroe to move into a house nearby that was decorated like his own.  He then took her into his own family life, and he, his wife and his daughter played at being Monroe’s own family.  Greenson himself would become the model of conformity.

Despite all his efforts, Greenson was unable to help Marilyn Monroe.  On August 5th 1962 she committed suicide in her house.  The suicide shocked many in the analytic community, including Anna Freud.  And high profile figures in American life who had previously been enthusiasts for psychoanalysis now began to question why psychoanalysis had become so powerful in America.  Was it really because it benefitted individuals or had it in fact become a form of constraint in the interests of social order?  The critics included Monroe’s ex-husband, Arthur Miller:

“My argument with so much psychoanalysis these days is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know will have come out of people’s suffering. That the problem is not to undo suffering or to wipe it off the face of the earth but to make it inform our lives, instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it. And avoid anything but that lobotomized sense of what they call happiness. There’s too much of an attempt it seems to me at controlling man rather than freeing him; of defining him rather than letting him go. And it’s part of the whole ideology of this age which is power mad.”