The material universe (if we are to believe string theory) is made up of vibrations, of frequencies. Humans, being made of meat that expires after about 80 years, perceive frequencies in the range of sound (as low as 20 cycles per second) up to visible light (a few quadrillion Hz).
Do beings with longer lifespans experience frequencies even slower than sound? Greenland sharks live for 250-500 years. Do they experience the daily tides and movements of ocean currents as a low hum? Does a 3,000-year-old bristlecone pine feel the freeze of each winter as a buzz?
One of the lowest frequencies you will ever perceive in your lifetime is arriving soon. At 36 octaves beneath A0 (the lowest note on a grand piano), you can’t hear this 0.000000000396 Hz frequency. Instead, you will see it as a flash in the night sky.
To prepare for this event, learn how to find the Northern Crown constellation, west of Hercules. In that neighborhood, spinning darkly, is T Coronae Borealis, a binary system normally invisible to us at some 3,000 light years away. But within the next few months in 2024, and for one week only, this system will go nova, furiously blazing to light. A star will appear where there was none before. And one week later, it will disappear as suddenly as it appeared, going dark for another 80 years.
NASA visualization of a white dwarf + red giant binary system
This every-80-years blinking light comes to us courtesy of a binary star system comprised of a white dwarf star locked in orbit with a red giant. The hydrogen on the ancient red giant is gradually stripped away by its neighboring cold white dwarf. Once enough hydrogen accumulates on the dwarf, it spontaneously ignites with the force of a thermonuclear explosion we can witness for a full week. How long will this continue? There’s probably enough hydrogen in that binary system to continue this slow flashing for a hundred thousand years.
If you were to speed up that flashing to 27.5 Hz (A0 on a grand piano), that low hum would last for just one minute. I wonder what kinds of beings feel these ultra-low frequencies.
