Solarbeat is a cool digital music box created by visual designer Luke Twyman, using the real orbital frequencies of the solar system. Originally designed in flash in 2010, it’s been remade using the WebAudio API, coinciding with NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entering Ceres’ orbit. Have a listen! It’s oddly calming, the UI is fun, and with the sliders, you can adjust the music to suit yourself. Via Mentalfloss:
Space is a quiet place. Because the large area between stars and planets is more or less a vacuum, sound has nothing to bounce off of. Hence, the old adage that no one can hear you scream. But that doesn’t mean the universe is silent.
Each planet is assigned a musical note, and every time it rotates around the sun, that note plays. Because the planets orbit the sun at different rates, it creates a unique melody, reminiscent of a particularly melodic doorbell.
Twyman first created SolarBeat in 2010 and updated it this year with more sound controls. You can now adjust the speed of the planets’ orbits and various aspects of the sound, like the bass levels and the echo, molding the solar system’s music to your whims. Play around with it on his site.