Austrian composer Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube has, for many people, been synonymous with space travel since it was used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
However, the world famous waltz truly traveled among the stars yesterday, when the European Space Agency’s (ESA) antenna broadcast a live performance of it into space to celebrate the composer’s 200th birthday.
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra was to play a concert in the Austrian capital from 7:30pm, ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher said.
The concert was to be broadcast live on the Internet and shown at a public screening in Vienna, New York and near the antenna in Spain.
“The digitized sound will be transmitted to the large 35m satellite dish at ESA’s Cebreros ground station in Spain,” and from there, the waltz will be “transmitted in the form of electromagnetic waves,” he said.
The Blue Danube evokes the elegance of 19th-century imperial Vienna, which lives on in the city’s roaring ball season.
For Norbert Kettner, director of the Vienna tourist board, the Danube waltz is a “true unofficial space anthem,” because of Kubrick.
It is the “typical sound of space,” Kettner said, with the tunes being played “during various docking manoeuvres of the International Space Station (ISS).”
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra would make sure to underline the waltz’s airiness as if it were floating through space, orchestra director Jan Nast said.
Music is a language “which touches many people” and has “the universal power to convey hope and joy,” said Nast, who put together the program for yesterday’s hour-long “interstellar concert.”
Once transmitted via Spain’s satellite dish, the signal was to travel to reach NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft — the most distant man-made object in the universe — in approximately 23 hours and 3 minutes.
After surpassing Voyager 1, it would continue its interstellar journey.
By catching up with the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, Austria also seeks to right a perceived wrong.
Both Voyagers carry “Golden Records” — 12-inch, gold-plated copper disks intended to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials. The record holds 115 images of life on Earth, recorded in analog form, and a variety of sounds and snatches of music.
While The Magic Flute by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was included among the selection of 27 music pieces, Strauss’ famous waltz was not.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS