When I was about five years old I was 
allowed aboard a somewhat antique fire 
engine in order to operate its 
hand-cranked (and pre-electric) siren. 
 I believe its sound was created on 
the same principles as those operant 
in a child's singing top, a hollow and 
spin-able closed metal cone with holes 
in it, that turns on -- and is driven 
to spin by -- a shaft-like 
plunger-spindle.  The note of the 
sound produced by the spinning top is 
determined by such things as the speed 
of the rotation, size of the holes, 
and diameter of the top at the holes' 
level on the cone. This sounds a bit 
like the following from the article 
instanced by Helen Vincent:  "For 
example, when it comes to radius, the 
smaller the star the more high-pitched 
its song. 'It is similar to musical 
instruments. A piccolo trumpet is 
small and resonates at a higher 
frequency than a much larger tuba. The 
same is true for stars: they resonate 
like musical instruments because they 
have sound trapped inside,' says 
[astroseismologist] Chaplin."  The 
reasoning is ancient:  the unborn at 
the end of Plato's Republic reportedly 
"came ... to a spot whence they 
discerned, extended from above 
throughout the heaven and the earth, a 
straight light like a pillar, most 
nearly resembling the rainbow, but 
brighter and purer.  ... and they saw 
there at the middle of the light the 
extremities of its fastenings 
stretched from heaven, for this light 
was the girdle of the heavens like the 
undergirders of triremes, holding 
together in like manner the entire 
revolving vault.  And from the 
extremities was stretched the spindle 
of Necessity, through which all the 
orbits turned.  Its staff and its hook 
were made of adamant, and the whorl of 
these and other kinds was commingled. 
 And the nature of the whorl was this. 
 Its shape was that of those in our 
world, but from [the report in Er's] 
description we must conceive it to be 
as if in one great whorl, hollow and 
scooped out, there lay enclosed, right 
through, another like it but smaller, 
fitting into it as boxes that fit into 
one another, and in like manner 
another, a third, and a fourth, and 
four others, for there eight of the 
whorls in all, lying within one 
another, showing their rims as circles 
from above and forming the continuous 
back of a single whorl about the 
shaft, which was driven home through 
the middle of the eighth.  Now the 
first and outmost whole had the 
broadest circular rim, that of the 
sixth was second, and third was that 
of the fourth, and fourth was that of 
the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, 
sixth that of the fifth, seventh that 
of the third, eighth that of the 
second.  That of the greatest was 
spangled, that of the serventh 
brightest, that of the eighth took its 
color from the seventh, which shone 
upon it.   ... The staff turned as a 
whole in the circle with the same 
movement, but within the whole as it 
revolved the seven inner circles 
revolved gently in the opposite 
direction to the whole ...  And the 
spindle turned on the knees of 
Necessity, and up above on each of the 
rims of the circles a siren stood, 
borne around in its revolution and 
uttering one sound, one note, and from 
all the eight there was the concord of 
a single harmony." (Cornford trans.) 
 Speculation gets there first.*  Jim 
N.

   
* Gnomic Verses on the Mysterious 
Universe

	Argus runs his nightly spys,
Sets their sights on Distant Sources 
--	
Earth's lazuline and argent eye,
Scoping skies in throes of awful 
forces...

	Galaxies like haystacks
Hide tremendous needles;
Magnets on gigantic poles
Radio their spin.
The Very Wide Array
Deploys its vasty bay;
And like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,
Listens for a pin.

	Whole dynasties of matter
Are going down the tubes --
Departing like the monopole,
Smoking up the flue.
Myriads in flight
Leave the dynamited site
And shift their hue to red.
-- We too are coward fled;
Every hour adds light-years to the 
spread.
  
	The daughters of these voices
Give astronomers strange choices,
Of what there is to make
Of news from nowhere near --
And rates of its decay,
 From very far away.

	Something weird this way comes
 From spots that swallow many suns
And drag on magnitude itself.
Gnomons ghost, desert old posts,
The Magi draw new maps --
Dark deeds endowing voids
Y-propertied with mass.
God only knows the blanks are left --
All properties are theft,
Chaos gives von Helmont gas.

	The sonar beams its spooky bell
Across the murky glades,
Trolls in dens no light can visit,
Or raise their ponderous shades.
-- Things out there, there are,
Go buzz within the dark.
	
	Wizards in the desert
Haunt vacant lunar caves,
New shadows of appearance
With newer calculation save.
Monitors and auditors
Upon their restless chair
Take in late displays
Of cataclysmic glare.
The element of fire --
Not quite out, out there.
  
	We cast our net a-sea
To catch the dusky Elohim,
Hear say his Let-There-Be,
Before he say Amen --
So Long, Good Night, All's One --
Or hear them said again.

	Timbres of a hum
Wreathe the smoking gun,
Haloed with an echo,
A contrabass pitched sol:
Reports a Rhenish mist
And moisture like a bow --
Vibration from the pit,
A genesis ago.
  
	These the deeps downstream
To which the thing must come --
Nigh vortical near Dover
And bottomless to plumb --
Dizzy steep all Nature
Verge conjecture on.

	So those before us chose
Life upon the edge
Of agéd Father Ocean.
And Uncle Forest murmured nightly
Of the things beyond
The marges of the pond.



On Sat, 9 Apr 2011 09:35:41 +0100
  "Vincent, Helen" <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
> Anyone interested in celestial 
>harmonies may be interested to hear 
>that
> the stars really do make music, 
>apparently:
> 
> 
> 
> http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/45659
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13009718
> 
> 
> 
> I'm looking forward to the discovery 
>that we all really do consist of
> four humours next...
> 
> 
> 
> Helen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121