Strauss' 'Blue Danube' waltz is launching into space to mark his 200th birthday
by Naharnet Newsdesk 27 May 2025, 15:14
Strauss' "Blue Danube" is heading into space this month to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king's birth.
The classical piece will be beamed into the cosmos as it's performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago.
Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid any technical issues. The live performance will provide the accompaniment.
The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing 670 million mph (more than 1 billion kph).
That will put the music past the moon in 1 ½ seconds, past Mars in 4 ½ minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours. Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft at more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) in interstellar space.
NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' "Across the Universe." And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" toward Venus.
Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover. Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of will.i.am's "Reach for the Stars" to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back.
These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s.
Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago.
Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there.
The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music. The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and Indigenous selections.
Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose "Blue Danube" graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on Oct. 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars.
ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honors. The dish will be pointed in the direction of Voyager 1 so the "Blue Danube" heads that way.
"Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said in a statement. "The European Space Agency is pleased to share the stage with Johann Strauss II and open the imaginations of future space scientists and explorers who may one day journey to the anthem of
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nahar Net
21 hours ago
- Nahar Net
What would happen if the Amazon rainforest dried out?
by Naharnet Newsdesk 30 May 2025, 16:34 A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world's largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for "Forest Drought Study Project" in Portuguese— set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is the longest-running project of its kind in the world, and has become a source for dozens of academic articles in fields ranging from meteorology to ecology and physiology. Understanding how drought can affect the Amazon, an area twice the size of India that crosses into several South American nations, has implications far beyond the region. The rainforest stores a massive amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is the main driver of climate change. According to one study, the Amazon stores the equivalent of two years of global carbon emissions, which mainly come from the burning of coal, oil and gasoline. When trees are cut, or wither and die from drought, they release into the atmosphere the carbon they were storing, which accelerates global warming. Creating drought conditions and observing the results To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuana National Forest, assembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across one hectare (2.5 acres), diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 1 meter above ground (3.3 ft) on the sides to 4 meters (13.1 ft) above ground in the center. The water was funneled into gutters and channeled through trenches dug around the plot's perimeter. Next to it, an identical plot was left untouched to serve as a control. In both areas, instruments were attached to trees, placed on the ground and buried to measure soil moisture, air temperature, tree growth, sap flow and root development, among other data. Two metal towers sit above each plot. In each tower, NASA radars measure how much water is in the plants, which helps researchers understand overall forest stress. The data is sent to the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where it is processed. "The forest initially appeared to be resistant to the drought," said Lucy Rowland, an ecology professor at the University of Exeter. That began to change about 8 years in, however. "We saw a really big decline in biomass, big losses and mortality of the largest trees," said Rowland. This resulted in the loss of approximately 40% of the total weight of the vegetation and the carbon stored within it from the plot. The main findings were detailed in a study published in May in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. It shows that during the years of vegetation loss, the rainforest shifted from a carbon sink, that is, a storer of carbon dioxide, to a carbon emitter, before eventually stabilizing. There was one piece of good news: the decades-long drought didn't turn the rainforest into a savanna, or large grassy plain, as earlier model-based studies had predicted. Next steps include measuring forest recovery In November, most of the 6,000 transparent plastic covers were removed, and now scientists are observing how the forest changes. There is currently no end date for the project. "The forest has already adapted. Now we want to understand what happens next," said meteorologist João de Athaydes, vice coordinator of Esecaflor, a professor at the Federal University of Para and coauthor of the Nature study. "The idea is to see whether the forest can regenerate and return to the baseline from when we started the project." During a visit in April, Athaydes guided Associated Press journalists through the site, which had many researchers. The area was so remote that most researchers had endured a full-day boat trip from the city of Belem, which will host the next annual U.N. climate talks later this year. During the days in the field, the scientists stayed at the Ferreira Penna Scientific Base of the Emilio Goeldi Museum, a few hundred yards (meters) from the plots. Four teams were at work. One collected soil samples to measure root growth in the top layer. Another gathered weather data and tracking soil temperature and moisture. A third was measured vegetation moisture and sap flow. The fourt focused on plant physiology. "We know very little about how drought influences soil processes," said ecologist Rachel Selman, researcher at the University of Edinburgh and one of the co-authors of the Nature study, during a break. Esecaflor's drought simulation draws some parallels with the past two years, when much of the Amazon rainforest, under the influence of El Nino and the impact of climate change, endured its most severe dry spells on record. The devastating consequences ranged from the death of dozens of river dolphins due to warming and receding waters to vast wildfires in old-growth areas. Rowland explained that the recent El Nino brought short-term, intense impacts to the Amazon, not just through reduced rainfall but also with spikes in temperature and vapor pressure deficit, a measure of how dry the air is. In contrast, the Esecaflor experiment focused only on manipulating soil moisture to study the effects of long-term shifts in rainfall. "But in both cases, we're seeing a loss of the forest's ability to absorb carbon," she said. "Instead, carbon is being released back into the atmosphere, along with the loss of forest cover."
Nahar Net
4 days ago
- Nahar Net
Strauss' 'Blue Danube' waltz is launching into space to mark his 200th birthday
by Naharnet Newsdesk 27 May 2025, 15:14 Strauss' "Blue Danube" is heading into space this month to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king's birth. The classical piece will be beamed into the cosmos as it's performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago. Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid any technical issues. The live performance will provide the accompaniment. The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing 670 million mph (more than 1 billion kph). That will put the music past the moon in 1 ½ seconds, past Mars in 4 ½ minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours. Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft at more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) in interstellar space. NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' "Across the Universe." And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" toward Venus. Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover. Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of "Reach for the Stars" to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back. These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s. Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago. Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there. The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music. The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and Indigenous selections. Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose "Blue Danube" graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus "2001: A Space Odyssey." The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on Oct. 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars. ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honors. The dish will be pointed in the direction of Voyager 1 so the "Blue Danube" heads that way. "Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said in a statement. "The European Space Agency is pleased to share the stage with Johann Strauss II and open the imaginations of future space scientists and explorers who may one day journey to the anthem of
Nahar Net
15-04-2025
- Nahar Net
Blue Origin launches all-female celebrity crew with Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched his fiancee Lauren Sanchez into space Monday with an all-female celebrity crew that included Katy Perry and Gayle King. It was the latest wave in space tourism, where more of the rich and famous than ever before — or lucky and well-connected — can enter the zero-gravity realm traditionally dominated by professional astronauts. The New Shepard rocket blasted off on the quick up-and-down trip from West Texas. The fringes of space beckoned 66 miles (107 kilometers) up and provided a few precious minutes of weightlessness. Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV journalist, invited the others along for the 10-minute, fully automated flight, packing on the star power with singer-songwriter Perry and "CBS Mornings" co-host King. Moved by the views of Earth below, Perry said she couldn't resist singing "What a Wonderful World" in space. Also sharing the ride were film producer Kerianne Flynn; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA engineer who started her own companies to promote science education; and Amanda Nguyen, a scientist who studied planets around other stars and now advocates for survivors of sexual violence. Blue Origin declined to say how much the flight cost or who paid what. The trip came two months before Sanchez and Bezos marry in Venice. It was the 11th human spaceflight for the Washington state-based company, founded by Bezos in 2000 after making a fortune with Amazon. Bezos strapped in for Blue Origin's first space tourist flight in 2021 and accompanied the latest crew to the pad. The celebrity launch was the nation's first spaceflight where women filled each seat. The only other all-female crew in 64 years of human spaceflight was back in 1963. That's when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova launched by herself, becoming the first woman in space. Tereshkova spent three days off the planet. Even after the latest launch, women represent barely 15% of the more than 700 people who have traveled into space. Sanchez said she deliberately chose women to launch with her, each of them eager to inspire both the young and old to dream big, and even commissioned special flight suits. The launch brought out VIPs to West Texas including Oprah Winfrey; Kris Jenner and other members of the Kardashian family; former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, who became the first Black woman in space in 1992; and several women who previously have flown on private flights. Winfrey, a close friend of King, wiped away tears when the capsule reached space and the passengers were heard marveling at the moon and shouting with joy. As the women were buckling up for the ride back, Perry broke into song. Despite urging by her crewmates, she resisted singing "Roar" or her other tunes and instead chose "What a Wonderful World." "It's not about me. It's not about singing my songs," Perry said following the flight. "It's about a collective energy in there. It's about us." At a news conference later, she stressed, "We weren't just taking up space. We were making space for the future." Bezos opened the capsule's hatch minutes after touchdown, embracing Sanchez, the first one out. As they emerged, Perry and King kneeled and kissed the ground. "Oh my God, that was amazing," said King, who considers herself an anxious airplane flyer. Three hours later, Sanchez said she was still trying to process everything. "Profound is like the one word I would use," she said. This wasn't the first Blue Origin launch with marquee names. "Star Trek" actor William Shatner caught a lift to space with Blue Origin in 2021 at age 90, soon after Bezos' inaugural trip. He was followed by former New York Giants defensive end and TV host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, for whom the rocket is named. Two aviation pioneers who missed out on space when they were younger — Wally Funk and Ed Dwight — also rocketed away at ages 82 and 90, respectively. Most of Blue Origin's passengers — 58 counting the latest launch — have been business or science types, TV hosts or YouTubers. Ticket prices are not disclosed. The Russian Space Agency also has launched its share of space tourists, beginning with a California financier in 2001. Two decades later, a Russian actress filmed aboard the International Space Station. Elon Musk's SpaceX also sells multi-day trips to private customers. SpaceX's first client to fly, billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman already has launched twice and performed the first private spacewalk. He's now set to become NASA's next administrator if confirmed by the Senate. Chinese-born bitcoin investor Chun Wang just returned from the first spaceflight to carry people over the north and south poles. Wang picked up the whole SpaceX tab for himself and three polar explorers for an undisclosed sum. "In this exciting new era of commercial spaceflight, the dream of becoming an astronaut is no longer limited to a select few," Wang said via X last week.
