Scientists turned Antarctic radio waves into music, and the strange sounds from Earth’s magnetic field are now becoming nine albums that could make space weather research feel unexpectedly close to home

One of the most remote places on the planet has a giant spider-shaped antenna sitting in it, listening to Earth’s magnetic field for years. Situated at Antarctica’s Halley Research Station, it picks up radio waves produced by solar wind and lightning, signals scientists usually use to study space weather and its connection to Earth’s climate. According to the British Antarctic Survey, these waves lie at the low end of the radio spectrum and can be detected with large antennae, which is precisely what made them so easy to convert into something else entirely: music.

For research scientist Nigel Meredith, the data stopped being just data when he heard how strange and beautiful it sounded played aloud. According to Science News, the sounds are created by converted radio waves and were described by Meredith as “weird and wonderful,” with a genuinely melodic quality. It was that realization that led him to work with professional artists rather than just keep the sounds locked away in a lab. That collaboration dropped its latest project on June 15: an album titled Infinitas Formas, featuring the sounds of Antarctica.

Why this static sounds like a campfire and a flock of birds
Here's the part that sounds almost made up: a lot of the radio waves that are flying around the Earth are right in the frequency range that human ears can pick up. So there's not a lot of translation involved. The short radio pulses produced by lightning, known as sferics, sound like a crackling campfire, and when those pulses travel long distances, they can stretch into a distorted ringing sound known as “tweaks,” like a quick laser-gun noise from an old arcade game, Science News reports.

Then there are chorus waves, which sound almost exactly like a dawn chorus of songbirds. These waves are generated when electrons propelled by the solar wind enter the Earth’s magnetosphere, the same process that causes auroras, and like real birdsong, the waves are most intense at dawn, according to Science News. This is not mere pleasant background noise. According to Smithsonian Magazine, chorus waves can produce high-energy “killer electrons” strong enough to fry satellites, which is part of why Meredith believes making this data more engaging can help the public understand why space weather research matters.

A scientist, a composer and an artist walk into a studio
The project, however, was almost an accident. In a science-meets-art event, Meredith met Cambridge-based multimedia artist Diana Scarborough, and the two decided to collaborate, forming what’s now called the Sounds of Space Project. Soon after, composer Kim Cunio, head of the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, signed on. According to Science News, the three have been working together on short films, dance performances, podcasts, and publications on science, music, and visual art for the past several years.

Since 2020, the group has released nine albums, which can be streamed on their Bandcamp page. Meredith provides the raw space recordings, Cunio writes the music around them, and Scarborough creates artwork for each track and trailer videos for some releases, often with striking images from the research station or natural phenomena like auroras. “We each bring our unique perspectives, skills and curiosity,” Scarborough has said, adding that the goal is to create work that feels emotional and immersive but also based in the science.

The latest album sounds a little more like Earth than outer space
Infinitas Formas is a bit different than the previous releases. It includes field recordings made during the RRS Sir David Attenborough’s 2025 voyage to Antarctica, focused on studying the effects of climate change on nutrient release from Earth's polar regions, according to Science News. In addition to the usual radio-wave sounds, the album features recordings of the sea, wind, penguins, and seals, as well as ambient sounds from the ship’s deck and researchers at work.

Even Jupiter has a signature sound
The team also continues to dig into sounds from other worlds, all different depending on how and where the radio waves originate. According to Science News, solar particles slamming into Jupiter's enormous magnetic field sound like a giant ocean wave crashing onto shore, based on a 2016 recording from NASA's Juno spacecraft. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the recording captures Juno crossing Jupiter’s bow shock on June 24, 2016, with the audio derived from the amplitude and frequency of the waves it picked up over about two hours.

One thing the team keeps coming back to is that these recordings sound eerily similar. As Science News reports, the trio has said that listening to the audio is like stepping onto the set of a 1960s sci-fi film, and Meredith has wondered whether early space radio recordings inspired sound designers of that era, with the earliest dating to the 1880s and 1890s. Cunio has another theory: the similarity may just be that the same type of equipment was used to turn radio waves into sound and to produce early sci-fi effects. "We have been thinking about it for some years," Cunio told Science News, "but no one has landed on a definitive answer.

Looking ahead, Meredith plans to sonify a broader array of space weather data, including measurements such as electron intensities and solar wind speeds that are traditionally used in forecasting models. The goal, according to Science News, is to continue using those sounds to inspire new music while making increasingly complex science easier for the public to understand.