[f_minor] Glenn Gould Bach and the Voyager[s] leaving our Solar System

[James Wright]

It was Carl Sagan who quipped "That would be bragging!" (in reply to the proposal that the Voyager golden audio disc should contain all Bach and only Bach ).  Lewis Thomas allegedly added (or so the story goes): "I would vote for Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later."

James K. Wright, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor &
Supervisor of Performance Studies
School for Studies in Art & Culture: Music
A917 Loeb Building, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  K1S 5B6
Email: James_Wright at carleton.ca
Telephone : (613) 520-2600 (ext. 3734)
Fax : (613) 520-3905



 



From: bobmerk at earthlink.net
To: f_minor at glenngould.org
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:43:16 -0500
Subject: Re: [f_minor] Glenn Gould Bach and the Voyager[s] leaving our Solar System





Somebody, I forget who, said that sending Gould's Bach into outer space isn't sharing Earth sounds with sentient life forms who find and play Voyagers' golden audio discs. 
 
It's just bragging. 
 
So we Earthoids may get a rep as the braggarts of the Milky Way.

But that's okay with me. With GG's WTC, we really have something to brag about.
 
The entirety of the solar system is defined by the volume of space surrounding the Sun which is irradiated by the sun's energy, and is called the heliosphere. Here's an image of the structure of the heliosphere, with the approximate locations of Voyagers 1 and 2.
 
from Wikipedia:
 
Heliopause
 

 
The Voyagers entering the heliosheath
 
The heliosphere is divided into two separate regions. The solar wind travels at roughly 400 km/s until it collides with the interstellar wind; the flow of plasma in the interstellar medium. The collision occurs at the termination shock, which is roughly 80–100 AU from the Sun upwind of the interstellar medium and roughly 200 AU from the Sun downwind.[77] Here the wind slows dramatically, condenses and becomes more turbulent,[77] forming a great oval structure known as the heliosheath. This structure is believed to look and behave very much like a comet's tail, extending outward for a further 40 AU on the upwind side but tailing many times that distance downwind; but evidence from the Cassini and Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft has suggested that it is in fact forced into a bubble shape by the constraining action of the interstellar magnetic field.[78] 
 
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are reported to have passed the termination shock and entered the heliosheath, at 94 and 84 AU from the Sun, respectively.[79][80] The outer boundary of the heliosphere, the heliopause, is the point at which the solar wind finally terminates and is the beginning of interstellar space.[21]
 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Kpapademas at aol.com 
To: f_minor at glenngould.org 
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 7:17 PM
Subject: [f_minor] Glenn Gould Bach and the Voyager leaving our Solar System


 
F Minor Members
 
The music by Bach as played by Glenn Gould (WTC ) is about to leave (in about 4 years if I heard properly) our Solar System and travel into that Cold Solitude known as Space!
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11988518 (audio file only)
 
 
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/music.html  (the list of music)

Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyXwwcgozTw
 
 
For all our members, the first link is recent.
For our new members: the second link lists the music sent into space and the third link
is Glenn Gould playing Bach's WTC, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No. 1.
 
Regards from Chilly Chicago,
Katherine

 
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ff0.org/pipermail/f_minor/attachments/20101214/086cfcce/attachment.html>