Singing Comet Is a Mystery to Rosetta Scientists Responsible for Philae Probe Landing

Singing Comet 67p is a mystery to the scientists of the Rosetta mission who successfully landed the Philae probe on the comet's surface yesterday. The comet is emitting a strange "song" into space, which was first detected by instruments on the Rosetta orbiter several months ago.

The comet is emitting the sound in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet's environment. The sounds are at the frequency of 40-50 millihertz, a level that is far below the frequency audible to humans. Humans can typically hear sound between 20Hz and 20 kHz.

The music was detected by a magnetometer experiment (RPC-Mag). To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies had to be increased by a factor of about 10,000.

German composer Manuel Senfft took the RPC-Mag data and turned it into sound that is audible to human ears.

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