The Internet and your mail box is filled with the posts
and messages, supplemented with various supporting videos, claim that NASA has
recorded the sounds from Sun to be Om (Aum or Ohm) -- the ancient, mystic
sounds. But how much truth is in such scientific discovery?
History
In mid-2010, for the first time, astronomers at the
University of Sheffield managed to record the vibrations (eerie musical
harmonies) produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of Sun. Huge
magnetic loops known as coronal loops were observed coiling away from the outer
layer of the sun's atmosphere, which behave like sound waves traveling through
a wind instrument, i.e. vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.
Since sound cannot travel through the near vacuum of
space, scientists cannot record the sounds produced in the Sun's atmosphere
directly. So the scientists at the University of Sheffield used the satellite
images of giant magnetic loops spread over thousands of miles to recreate the
sound -- by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up their
frequencies to make them audible to the human ear. The noise from such a large
and powerful source as Sun sounded as a sort of music because it has harmonics.
Shown in the short, first video is the same, received from a NASA space
telescope TRACE (Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer) that was designed to
study and investigate the magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures
on the Sun's atmosphere. Note that the video actually shows eruptions from the
solar corona, embedded with the recreated audio.
The motive of the investigation was to study the growing
concerns about the increasing solar activity that can have catastrophic effects
on earth. Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen explained that studying the "music of
the sun" can provide new ways of understanding and predicting solar flares
before they happen. To study this and understand the power of the sun, the
Faculty of Science at University of Sheffield also launched a project called
'Project Sunshine'.
In a news report released in late 2013, NASA published
that Voyager 1 (another space probe to study the outer Solar System) has
recorded two outbursts of "interstellar plasma music" -- one in
Oct-Nov. 2012 and the other in April-May 2013. Both of them were excited by
bursts of solar activity, and according to space physicist Don Gurnett, the
principal investigator for the Plasma Wave Science instrument on Voyager 1,
space can make music if you know how to listen. The second video is a report on
these findings.
Why OM is Important
Om (also written as Aum or Ohm) is an ancient mantra and
mystical sound of Hindu origin (India and Nepal), which is considered sacred
and significant in various religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and
Jainism. Hindus believe that all the divine and other creation form of
consciousness originated from the vibration manifesting as sound
"OM". Like cross is sacred to Christians, so is Om to Hindus, which
occurs in almost every Sanskrit prayer and invocation to deities.
In Vedas and other Hindu scriptures, AUM is the 'Sound of
the Sun' and the 'Sound of Light'. In Chandogya Upanishad (before the 8th
century BCE), the holy syllable OM or udgitha was meditated as Sun God. The
Mandukya Upanishad details the significance of Om saying it is the imperishable
word; the past, the present, and the future.
In a theory known as the Harmony of the Spheres, even
Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique
hum (orbital resonance) depending on their orbital revolution.
Om Sound from Sun?
The two study reports in 2010 and 2013 mentioned above
did show samples of sounds recorded from Sun's atmosphere, however, none of
them mentioned Om sound or such resemblance. As you can hear in the beginning of
the audio in first video, only a segment of the recording (audio) sounds a bit
Om-y. Apart from that, there are other sounds as well.
Some online sources, like a 2010 blog article on
awakenvideo.org, mentioned the sound of the sun recorded by NASA to be
precisely as the ancient Hindus had described it in the Vedas thousands of
years ago; that it is a mantra which can be intoned with human speech as
"OM". The article also featured a documentary film called 'Quantum
Communication' that says human communication works from the Quantum level and
is connected to the Universal Laws of Attraction. Then there came up many
videos even concluding that NASA recorded the Om sound from Sun.
Truth or Fiction?
NASA, as such, did not say that the various samples
recorded from the Sun's atmosphere sound like the sacred Hindu syllable Om.
However, a segment of the audio in the beginning of first video can be
interpreted as sounding Om. Some people even say that Om is among the sounds
recorded in deep space, all of which needs further studies to draw any
conclusion. In general, there is no overwhelming evidence that the sound OM was
indeed recorded, and that is not just our wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, the actual sound of Om is very grounding
and peaceful; that which gathers and focuses our mind.
Sources and Additional Information:
1 comment:
This is very nice and valuable information. Thank you so much for sharing such useful information.I had no clue before reading your blog-post that a word that I use daily during meditation is useful even for science.
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