What will the end of the world sound like? Surprisingly musical, considering the tunes are being cranked out by a 17-mile ring nearly 600 feet underground. That's right, the Large Hadron Collider is adding "musician" to a resume that includes "world's most powerful particle accelerator."
The music itself — really no more than a series of beeps — isn't random. It's a byproduct of the many scans performed by the LHC's Atlas detector, which functions a little bit like radar under the right conditions.
"The detector is divided up into very thin wedges and a note is played if there is a track or cluster within the wedge," reads a description from LHC researchers. "The pitch is determined by how much transverse momentum (for tracks) or energy (for clusters) is deposited in each wedge."
The result speaks for itself. The LHC could have its own record deal in the ambient techno scene. Check it out for yourself here.
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