SYSTEM Sounds's video: Song of the Black Widow Pulsar Instrumental

The Black Widow pulsar is slowly blasting material off the surface of its partner, giving the brown dwarf a long comet-like tail. The pulsar's beam is magnified as it passed through the clumpy tail, getting up to up to 40 times brighter. This is similar to the way that starlight twinkles after passing through the Earth's atmosphere. All of the sounds in this video are created using actual data of the pulsar's signal which was collected by the Arecibo radio telescope. The pulsar's radio emission is converted directly into sound, creating an Eb note that flickers every time beam is magnified. The percussive instruments are triggered by these magnification events and the pitched sounds are created by shifting the pulsar's typical signal to different notes by speeding up or slowing down time. system-sounds.com Research paper: R. Main et al 2018 (Nature) go.nature.com/2AHq8LD Press release: bit.ly/2Oa97vx Watch the narrated version here: youtu.be/8c1umevz1ck and hear the isolated sound of the pulsar flickering here: youtu.be/PHNeDlZp-Uk