[Dixielandjazz] Re: Bb is the key of life

[Dan Augustine]

>From: Andy.Ling at Quantel.Com
>Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 09:37:55 +0100
>
>It's official. Forget all those horrible sharp keys used
>by others. The Jazz key of Bb is what nature uses. A recent
>report states :-
>
>Astronomers have found, for the first time, sound waves
>from a super-massive black hole. The "note", pitched at
>B flat and fifty seven octaves below middle C, is the
>deepest ever detected from any object in the Universe.
>And the tremendous amounts of energy carried by these
>sound waves may solve a long-standing problem in astrophysics.
>
>You'd need one enormous tuba to get down that low though.
>
>For those interested, there is more info at :-
>
>http://www.nasa.gov/lb/home/hqnews/2003/sep/HQ_03284_Chandra_Hears.html
>
>Andy Ling
**--------------------------------------------------------------------**
    Ahem.  As a tuba player and one interested in acoustics and psychoacoustics, i think that whoever wrote the article that Andy's referring to either is joking or is an idiot.
    To get 57 octaves below middle C (which is what, 256 cyles per second) you would have to divide 256 by 2 successively 57 times.  My calculations (which admittedly could be wrong) show that this would be a 'frequency' of 0.00000000000000710542735760, or one 'sound' impulse every 140737488355328 seconds, which works out to be a vibration-beat every 8,925,512.96 years.
    That's a very low blow indeed.

    Dan
-- 
**----------------------------------------------------------**
** Dan Augustine - ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu             **
** Office of Admissions, University of Texas; Austin, Texas **
**----------------------------------------------------------**