Physics is full of captivating stories, from ongoing endeavours to explain the cosmos to ingenious innovations that shape the world around us. In the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester talks to the people behind some of the most intriguing and inspiring scientific stories. Listen to the podcast to hear from a diverse mix of scientists, engineers, artists and other commentators. Find out more about the stories in this podcast by visiting the Physics World website. If you enjoy what you hear, then also check out the Physics World Weekly podcast, a science-news podcast presented by our award-winning science journalists.
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Music from our material world
From Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” concertos to the Beatles’ “Blackbird” – musicians have always been inspired by nature. Many artists have even incorporated the sounds of nature into their songs. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are taking a more fundamental approach, exploring the music of the building blocks of life and how they interact in harmonious ways.
In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, host Andrew Glester speaks with Markus Buehler, an MIT engineer who is translating living structures into sound – and vice versa. In one project he has created harmonies informed by the structure of spider webs, through research that could help uncover the secrets of spider silk. More recently his team translated the spike protein of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 into sound to visualize its vibrational properties.
Find out more in this feature article by Markus Buehler and Mario Milazzo, originally published in the January 2022 issue of Physics World.