In 2020, experts at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center began the first ongoing, sustained program to “sonify” astronomical data. The sonification project is led by my guest today, Dr. Kimberly Arcand (Chandra Visualization Scientist) along with her colleagues Dr. Matt Russo (astrophysicist/musician) and Andrew Santaguida (musician/sound engineer) at System Sounds.

The sonification of stars, black holes, galaxies and more invite a new way of knowing the cosmos. It is one thing to see a static image of the night sky and an entirely different experience when we hear that same data in an embodied way. 

As we talk about the sonification of the cosmos, you will see that this is really another way of knowing or connecting to something that we think we know. Meditation is exactly the same - we think we know ourselves, but then we get still and quiet and learn to listen, and suddenly a whole new field of insight and awareness is made available to us.

This interview was such a bucket list interview for me. Dr. Arcand - a fellow meditator - helps us to more fully grasp the words of Carl Sagan when he told us we were made of star stuff and the words of Kabir when he wrote that inside the body there are hundreds of millions of stars.

Dr. Kimberly Arcand is the Visualization scientist & Emerging tech lead for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Arcand is an award-winning producer and director. She is a leading expert in studying the perception and comprehension of high-energy data visualization across the novice-expert spectrum. As a science data storyteller she combines her background in molecular biology and computer science with her current work in the fields of astronomy and physics.

In this episode, Kim and I chat about:

• What a Science Data Storyteller does and how this relates to our work as meditators
• The origin of the sonification project at NASA
• How data is translated into embodied knowing
• Black Holes as cosmic recycling centers
• What happens when a star explodes (hint: the same thing happens to us when we ‘explode’!!)
• Learning to hear what is unhearable

After our conversation, I guide a really unique meditation that uses 3 sonifications from Kim and her team to help us map the cosmos inside our bodies. 

Join me for an exploration of the cosmos - both within and without.

Learn more about Dr. Arcand and NASA’s sonification project here:

https://chandra.si.edu/sound/

https://plus.nasa.gov/video/listen-to-the-universe/

https://www.kimarcand.com

Thank you to NASA for the sounds and images in today’s episode, to Nick McMahan for the ocean wave field recording as well as the sound design and production of today’s episode, and to Brianna Nielsen for production support.

Find them here: 

https://nickmcmahan.com/

https://www.instagram.com/brianna_podcastpro/

Lastly, be sure to Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to access these meditations as stand-alone audio files for your daily practice.  

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