Listen to the Higgs boson

7/24/2012 1:09 PM EDT

The recent discovery of a physics particle that may well be the Higgs boson - also known as the "God particle" - has sparked a lot of general interest in the subatomic particle and the role it plays in modern theoretical physics. The discovery has inspired everything from various compilations of top Higgs boson explanations to the best Higgs boson jokes.

In the music the peak of high notes in the second bar is the appearance of the Higgs-like particle (about 3.5 seconds into the recording). (DANTE)

Piano solo (MP3)
Piano, bass, percussion, marimba and xylophone (MP3)

The above sonification - actually "musification" - appears to mostly reflect a fairly straightforward mapping of musical notes to the LHC data. It clearly represents quite a leap from what actually took place in the LHC, but certainly adds another perspective to such scientific data.

For a somewhat different - and less musical - take on what such data might "sound" like, the following video offers some previous (~2010) sonic simulations of data expected from collisions at the LHC:

In this case, researchers apparently assigned low pitches to energy that was closer and higher pitches to energy that was farther away. Also, the loudness of the sounds was tied to energy levels, with higher-energy events being louder.

The latter project involved no piano or marimba sounds. However a composer involved with the project was reportedly still struck by how musical the products of the collisions sounded and thought it reminded him of a lot of what he heard in "contemporary composition."

Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at rich.pell@ubm.com.