Science/Tech

Listen to the First 760,000 Years of the Universe in Just 100 Seconds

By Makini Brice | Update Date: Apr 09, 2013 02:45 PM EDT

The world may end with a whimper, but the universe also began the same way.

According to the Verge, University of Washington professor emeritus John Cramer created a sound approximation of the Big Bang in 2003, using the National Airenautics and Space Administration's (NASA) probes of cosmic background radiation. Though no one was around to hear the Big Bang, scientists have been able to determine what it may have sounded like, based on tools like NASA's probes. When the universe grew in size, the sound echoed and then filled the plasma and hydrogen. As a result, NASA and other space agencies are able to determine the sounds of the Big Bang, based on which areas of the universe or hot or cold.

Because Cramer received such success with the first recording, he decided to make a second "more high-definition version" using the European Space Agency's Planck Mission. That mission was able to create a newer, more precise map of the cosmic microwaves.

Of course, the noise of the creation of the universe would not be audible to the human ear, the Huffington Post UK reports. So, after plotting the data points on a graph, adjusting for how much they changed over time and creating a monoaural, or not stereo, sound wave, Cramer brought the frequency to a point where humans could hear.

According to io9, the universe's sound peaked at 379,000 years, reducing to 60 percent intensity in the 110,000 years both before and after the peak. "The universe was expanding and becoming more of a 'bass instrument' while the cosmic background radiation was being emitted," Cramer writes on his website. "To put it another way, the expanding universe 'stretches' the sound wavelengths and thereby lowers their frequencies."

The audio can be heard below.

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