Media Your Brain on Music: The Sound System Between Your Ears
The amazing sound system in the human brain helps explain why people everywhere fill their lives with music.
Art/Space
Is there music in space?
How do composers hear space? What does space sound like? Is there music in space? Narrated by Roger Launius of the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum, this series looks at the way music and outer space connect.
Lesson Content
What Does Space Sound Like?
What does space sound like—and who decided that? Composers have toyed with themes of space, stars, and discovery in music—describing through music the ideas of open space, travel, mystery, and majesty, as well as imagining what “outer space” might sound like if you could hear it.
Performing Music in Outer Space
Astronaut Carl Walz summed it up: “Taking musical instruments on a ship for an expedition is a tradition, if you will. It’s what makes us human is because we bring some of our home with us.” Listen as we explore the intersection between the human drive to explore and the ability to create.
Sputnik
The space age began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik—the first artificial satellite. Around the world, millions of people tuned their radios to hear it beeping or waited outside to watch it pass overhead.
Voyager & the Golden Record
There’s music floating in Outer Space. And we’re not just being fancy or poetic. There are actually two disks filled with songs that are floating out beyond the planets that are most distant to Earth. The disks are strapped to the sides of the Voyager probes that were launched to explore the outer edges of our galaxy and whatever lies beyond them. In this podcast, we hear from two of the three people who decided what music would go on the disks to learn why they thought it was important to let whatever extraterrestrial life may exist in the universe know that human beings make music.
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Narrator
Roger Launius
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Audio Producer
Richard Paul
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Copy Editor
Tiffany A. Bryant
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Producer
Kenny Neal
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Updated
April 4, 2022
Related Resources
Collection Classical Music
Meet great composers, explore the vast musical world of the orchestra, study the science behind the instruments, and discover how classical music is anything but boring.
Collection Space
Music and mobiles take flight in these resources that explore the relationship between artist, art, and the cosmos, including the special meaning behind the stars and early African-American spirituals.
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