This is surprisingly cool and pleasant to listen to.
I wonder what Sagan would’ve thought of this?
Tip o’ the elbow-patched corduroy jacket to the dozens of people who tweeted and emailed this, though BABloggee Ryan Romo was first.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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September 25th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I don’t know what Sagan would have thought, but I think this is made of win.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Pretty cool.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:25 am
That’s cool. I think he would have liked it.
I wish he lived long enough to see all the cool results coming from Galileo, Cassini, all the Mars explorers, and the recent results about water on the Moon.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Like a dream when an old friend shows up for a few moments. Damn I miss him. Thanks
September 25th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Lovely. I think Sagan would have been amused and flattered.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Does anyone else hear Kermit the Frog in there too? Ingenious audio.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Now -THAT- is a proper use for Auto-Tune!
Very nice! He’d love it.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Isn’t it a little dangerous remixing the universe with so much autotune? Any minute now, I’m expecting Kanye West to jump up onstage and start ranting about how the Andromeda Galaxy has the best globular cluster of all time.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Man. I teared up a little. Of course he would have loved it.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Some passages remind me of the song about the universe from Monty Python’s “The meaning of life”:
youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=buqtdpuZxvk
September 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Beauty.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Sorry, but I’m going to have to go against the grain on this one…
Carl Sagan may have indeed enjoyed this. I, on the other hand, feel a need to go put a kitty in a blender to get this completely awful “song” out of my head.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Wow…I wonder if it’s possible to get this as an mp3. I thought it was great!
September 25th, 2009 at 11:40 am
that was awesome. very cool. i sent it to a bunch of people. Sagan would have embraced that and then gotten Feynman for a follow-up duet
September 25th, 2009 at 11:48 am
It does an excellent job of demonstrating the poetry of Sagan’s words, that’s for sure.
September 25th, 2009 at 11:55 am
I like this.
Tho, I must admit that the change in pitch makes Sagan sound very much like a cross of Jim Henson’s voicings for Kermit the Frog and Ernie from Sesame Street.
“Bert! Bert! Look at this Bert!”
September 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
He would’ve thought: “I hope I didn’t come across that confused and scattered.”
It sounds cool, but the lyrics make no sense whatever unless you remember Cosmos.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Wow, that was a lot better than it had to be… the creator put some work into it.
You can get the mp3 here. http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/youtube.html
EDIT: The video, that is, not the universe.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
@Brian, check out the “More details” link on the side of the YouTube page. There’s a link to download both the mp3 and the video.
That is my new favorite song!
September 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Ausgezeichnet !!! (in my best voice impression of Mr. Burns)
September 25th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
“No – No words. No words to describe it. [...] So beautiful, So beautiful… I had no idea.”
That song brings tears to my eyes!
September 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Absolutely beautiful
September 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I love the beatboxing whale sounds.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
That is utterly beautiful. I wonder if he’d have liked it?
I respect, perhaps even revere Dr. Sagan. His early death was a great loss to all of us; we are much poorer without him.
However, I did notice one thing I did notice I’d forgotten: At times, when you don’t see his face, he sounds a bit like Kermit the Frog.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Half the time I mistake Sagan for Dawkins and vice-versa. I need to pay more attention to faces. Voices I can do; faces require work.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Thanks to you, Phil, I joined Carolyn Porco’s Twitter a few days ago and she had linked to this as well. I think it’s a wonderful, trippy tribute to a true science hero. Great stuff.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Kudos to the author too, to be able to find a beat, verse, and the right sequences. Not to mention the Piano part, an amazing work in and of itself.
I would have thought that Carl would have loved it.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Carl Sagan thru a vocoder? My capacity for awesomeness just expanded exponentially!
September 25th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
That…was…awesome!
September 25th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
[...] Geweldig in elkaar gezet, die mix, nietwaar? Bron: Bad Astronomy. [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] (Via Bad Astronomy) [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
That’s actually a vocoder, not autotune. They are different technologies, which can be used to similar effect but are quite different, especially to people who work with both.
September 25th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Entirely awesome and made of win. thanks Phil!
September 25th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Carl Sagan is the Rod Serling of science.
September 25th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Won’t our merger with Andromeda not actually look all the amazing? I seem to recall from the Astronomycast, that the density of stars is such that we’ll never see the galaxy as a galaxy when it gets near?
That said, I loved this and I hope somebody will remix Feynmann and Dawkins in the same manner. (Are there any recordings of Dirac?)
September 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Ay Caramba!, that was totally awesome
September 25th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
32. fluffy Says: “That’s actually a vocoder, not autotune. They are different technologies, which can be used to similar effect but are quite different, especially to people who work with both.”
Could you (or someone else familiar) perhaps give us a little tutorial on how it’s done?
- Jack
September 25th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
It’s been immensely enjoyable to read the comments on YouTube, as it is here. Anything that gets people excited and appreciative of science gets huge kudos and applause from me. Next to always awesome Phil, Carl and Stephen are two super cool cats who have immensely contributed to our learning and knowledge of the universe. I sincerely hope Stephen Hawking and Ann Druyan love the honorable tribute as much as everyone else has.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Fluffy & Jack H.:
This Vocoder/Auto-Tune debate sounds like a job for Slau! I’ll suggest he tackle it on an upcoming podcast.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
[...] Blog: Fine autotuning the Universe (Sagan and Hawking Music Video) BA Blog: Fine autotuning the Universe [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Kermit? Strange, I hear someone else entirely.
September 25th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I have it on my iPod Touch now. So cool.
The sky calls to us.
Wow.
I put the bug in Slau’s ear about the Vocoder -vs- Auto-Tune issue. Keep an ear on his “Sessions With Slau” podcast to hear the results!
September 25th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I think Dr. Sagan would have fallen back on that old expression, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
September 25th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
MC Hawking in the hizzouse y’all!
September 26th, 2009 at 1:28 am
WIN
September 26th, 2009 at 3:07 am
I thought Sagan sounded like Kermit too! Hawking’s got a good singing voice though. They should add the ability to change voice pitch to his voice computer thing.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:51 am
“Sagan would have embraced that and then gotten Feynman for a follow-up duet”
Feynman would have gone Beastie Boys style (no sleep ’til Brooklyn!).
September 26th, 2009 at 10:52 am
This came in from Slau as I slept:
”
“SlauBeSharp@RichardDrumm Not enough to fill an episode: it’s a vocoder
Oh well.
September 26th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
On a related note Cosmos is currently available on Hulu and Netflix’s streaming service.
September 26th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Sili@35,
I’m not sure if this is what you meant, but Sagan isn’t talking (in Cosmos) about our merger with Andromeda. He’s imagining what the sky would look like from a hypothetical planet in one of the globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way.
I believe that at the time of Cosmos, science hadn’t yet predicted the merger with Andromeda, or the unlikelihood of planets around the old metal-poor population I and II stars that mainly comprise the globular clusters.
Damn, I wish Carl was still around. I’d love to hear what he would have made of the new theories and advances in cosmology, planetary systems, and so on. He’s sorely missed.
September 26th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Thanks, Wrye. It shows that I have never seen Cosmos (that I recall).
Should do as Blake Stacey said and get it from Itunes.
September 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Yeah I just read through the comments and don’t have much else more to add… other than I love to fall asleep listening to Cosmos. This is just made of awesome.
@tacitus #15 – very nicely said! He spoke so eloquently and with compassion.
I could just ramble on right now but I won’t
September 26th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
*Does a dance*
September 26th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
[...] of you have already seen this on Bad Astronomy, Skepchick and Pharyngula, but I had to post it here anyway. I can’t get it out of my [...]
September 27th, 2009 at 1:04 am
fluffy, no it is clearly autotuned.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Thanks to this video, my weekend was spent watching Cosmos and Contact. =)
Through efforts like this, Carl Sagan lives on.
September 30th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Full of whoa. Fantastic job.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
[...] where it might be going. {the photo is Phil Plaitt, the “Bad Astronomer” — thanks, Phil, for pointing me to the video which you can play [...]