Planethesizer: Approaching exoplanet sonification

Abstract

The creation of simulations, sounds and images based on information related to an object of investigation is currently a real tool used in multiple areas to bring the non-specialized public closer to scientific achievements and discoveries. Under this context of multimodal representations and simulations developed for educational and informational purposes, this work intends to build a bridge between virtual musical instruments’ development and physical models, using the gravitation laws of the seven planets orbiting around the Trappist-1 star. The following is a case study of an interdisciplinary conversion algorithm design that relates musical software synthesis to exoplanets’ astronomical data - measured from the observed flux variations in the light curves of their star- and that tries to suggest a systematic and reproducible method, useful for any other planetary system or model-based virtual instrument design. As a result, the Virtual Interactive Synthesizer prototype Planethesizer is presented, whose default configurations display a multimodal Trappist-1, Kepler-444 and K2-72 planetary systems simulation.