Walter Murch
Looking-Glass Films
Abstract
Titius-Bode and The Music of the Spheres
I will present a re-interpretation of the Titius-Bode rule of orbital spacing, which shows that the sequence of average distance intervals predicted by the rule appear with great frequency not only in the planets of the Solar System, but the lunar systems of the gas giant planets and many recently-discovered exoplanet systems. In the process of re-evaluation, the Titius-Bode formula is re-framed and given a mathematically more efficient expression: the number of arbitrary constants in the formula is reduced, and the exponential function in the formula is unrestricted, removing the inherent and accidental “geo-centricity” of the original formula. In this unrestricted form, I will show that Titius-Bode can be applied more readily to other orbital systems, and it will consequently account for the orbits of more objects which were otherwise found not to fit the formula. Finally, I will show that the revised Titius-Bode formula is similar to the formula for harmonic series in music; and consequently we find that there is an exact correspondence between Titius-Bode intervals and certain harmonic intervals in music. The relations of the predicted orbits of the planets and moons will be played as a series of musical chords.
Biographical Details
In 1997 Murch received a double Oscar for both film editing and sound mixing on The English Patient, as well as the British Academy Award for best editing. Seventeen years earlier, he received an Oscar for best sound for Apocalypse Now, as well as British and American Academy nominations for his picture editing. He also won a double British Academy Award in 1975 for his film editing and sound mixing on The Conversation, was nominated by both academies in 1978 for best film editing for Julia, and in 1991 received two nominations for best film editing from the American Academy for the films Ghost and The Godfather Part III. In 2004, for the film Cold Mountain, he received a ninth Academy Nomination for Film Editing, as well as British Academy nominations for Film Editing and Sound Mixing. His most recent work is The Wolfman, opened world-wide in February 2010. Murch’s work on orbital systems has been presented at: the Italian Digital Astronomy conference (2004); NYU Institute for the Humanities (2005, 2009); Northwestern University/ Chicago Humanities Festival (2006); Galileo 400, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2009).
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