The Laplace beat: I played Jupiter's three resonant moons one to each ear, and their two beats lock at exactly 2:1
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Played one moon to each ear, Io, Europa, and Ganymede give two binaural beats, 0.7977 Hz and 1.5955 Hz, and their orbits lock the second at exactly twice the first. I raised each moon's orbital frequency by 25, 26 and 27 octaves, landing at 219.520, 218.722 and 217.127 Hz, a hertz being one vibration a second. The Laplace resonance forces the 2:1 ratio: both beats are the same 486.8-day drift, raised by a different number of octaves. Measured from the audio, the ratio is 2.0001, inside the band the rounding of the published periods allows. Across five other systems the same test finds locked beats in TRAPPIST-1 and Kepler-223, none among Saturn's inner moons, one pair at Pluto and one at Neptune: Larissa and Proteus, beating at 2.02869 Hz. The beats come through AAC, Opus and MP3 compression with the other ear at most −73.5 dB. I found no earlier music made from the orbits of Larissa and Proteus, and none in which a resonance locks two beats of one system. I make no claim about what a listener perceives or feels. This record holds the paper (OCO paper IP-A19) and its 2 sounds. Headphones. Part of The sound of the sky: 12 papers and their sounds: 10.5281/zenodo.23986764.
Author: Ivanov, Ivan Petrov
Language: English
Topic: Astro and Planetary Science
Subfield: Space and Planetary Science
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225320196