Pythagoras’ Music of the Spheres

Scott McGill, Professor of Classics, Rice University, and Christopher M. Johns-Krull, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, discuss Pythagoras, NASA, and the centuries that separate them. The Infinity Machine installation by artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel evokes both ancient science—the “Music of the Spheres” theory advanced by sixth-century B.C. mathematician Pythagoras—and contemporary space science—the sound of the interaction of solar winds and planetary fields recorded by NASA’s Voyager spacecrafts. Public Program of the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. October 9, 2015.