Dark energy. Physicists believe it makes up 70% of the universe, but we don’t know what it is or how it works. Yet this mysterious force is responsible for pushing everything in our universe apart. This elusive phenomenon has had cosmologists scratching their heads for decades.
What if it could be interpreted through music?
In this episode, David Boldeman is joined by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt, composer Constantine Koukias, as well as ConnectSci News journalist Evrim Yazgin to talk about the universe and music. They cover literally light-years of listening revelry from Pink Floyd and The Beatles to whether or not it’s true that in space no one can hear you scream. The discussion led to a Spotify playlist of the best songs.
Koukias was given the daunting task of composing a piece of music to convey the concept of dark energy. His piece – an epic which plays with more than 100 voices and the space of the theatre itself – will premiere at this year’s Beaker Street Festival which will take place over 2 weekends during 6–17 August in Hobart, Australia.
No 2 seats will hear the exact same music. No one will be left not wondering how they fit into the vastness of the cosmos.
Koukias’s composition, called VAST, will be playing at the Theatre Royal on 12 and 13 August. On 13 August, Koukias and Schmidt will hold a conversation at the Theatre Royal about the piece, the discovery of dark energy and the expanding universe. Get your tickets through the Beaker Street Festival website.
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