Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Symphony Of Science

The Symphony of Science has actually been around for a while now, and I've known about it for some time. I sincerely apologize for not posting about this long ago. I have been seriously slacking in my duties as a nerd blogger, and I apologize profusely for that.

With that said, if you haven't yet had the chance to see any of the Symphony of Science music videos on Youtube yet, you really are missing out on something truly wonderful. The project was originally created by composer John Boswell, whose stated goal is "to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music". The very first video from the series is embedded above. It's titled "A Glorious Dawn", and it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

The song combines video and audio clips of the late Carl Sagan run through autotune software and mixed with original music from Boswell. The clips come from Sagan's groundbreaking 1980's science series Cosmos. Even Stephen Hawking gets in on the act a little bit into the song. That's right, Stephen Hawking . . . singing.

The end result is something powerful, intelligent, moving and beautiful at the same time. Please, take a few minutes and actually watch this video. Don't just put it on in the background and tune it out. Watch it. Pay attention to it. Leave yourself open to think about it. It's worth it, trust me.

If you like this song, you can find others at Symphony of Science's youtube channel. You can also download MP3's of the songs and find more information on the project at their official website.

On a related note, if you've never seen Carl Sagan's Cosmos, you just lost some major nerd points. I'm not kidding. But don't worry, you can easily regain them. Cosmos just so happens to be available on Netflix's Instant Play feature, so there's no excuse for you to have not seen it by now. Get to watching it. That's an order.

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