Brian Greene: Albert Einstein dreamed of finding what he called a Unified Theory. By that he meant a single idea, a single principle, maybe even a single equation that might describe everything in the universe. He worked long and hard many decades to try to find the theory and he never did. Since his passing many physicists haven take up where he left off, and many of us believe then an approach called String Theory may be the Unified Theory that he was looking for. And the basic idea of the unified description of all matter is pretty straightforward. If you take any piece of material, say a piece of wood, cut it in half, cut it in half again, keep on cutting it to ever smaller pieces, the basic question is what’s the smallest piece that you get to? What is the finest uncuttable constituent? Now we all know if you cut fine enough you get molecules, if you cut them up, you get atoms, if you cut them up even further you get other particles, electrons going around the nucleus with neutrons and protons, even though the neutrons and protons are smaller entities called quarks. The conventional idea stopped there. String Theory comes along and says “There may be one more layer of structure: inside an electron, inside a quark, inside any particle you have heard of, according to these ideas, is a little tiny filament. Looks like a tiny little string, that’s why it’s called String Theory, and the little strings can vibrate in different patterns.”

So the idea is that, according to this theory an electron can be a string vibrating in one pattern. You can call it a middle C if you want, by the musical analogy, a quark could be a string vibrating at a different pattern like an A. So the difference between one particle and another is simply  the note that its string is playing. And this is the unified description that this theory puts forward: everything can be reduced to the notes these fundamental strings are playing. Now that’s metaphorical. There’s math behind this, that allows us to see all of the key elements of physics can find a home in this description, but in a nutshell that’s what this theory says.

Brian Greene: Perhaps the most familiar kind of interval in music is the octave where you have C and another C They sound kind of the same but the second one is higher pitch relative to the first. Mathematically we know how those two waves, those two vibrations relate to one another. So when two notes are an octave apart the wavelength of one is twice the wavelength of the other or said differently the frequency of the higher one is twice the frequency of the lower one. So that is a very simple relationship between how quickly the note, the string if it is producing that note is vibrating, and if it’s vibrating twice as fast, it’ll be an octave higher.

There’s a lot of math in music in that the relationship between vibrations can be phrased mathematically. The art of music of course goes beyond the math in doing things that don’t really come out of a formula, don’t come out of some well defined system of going from one note to the next but using sort of creative genius to do things unexpectedly. That’s where I think the music happens.

Brian Greene: When we talk about vibration in physics, we have an interesting set of equations, mathematical equations that govern how a system vibrates. So if we have a string on a violin, we have an equation for how that string will vibrate. And that equation is one we can study mathematically and predict for a given string, what it will sound like based in the mathematics. And this set of equations, the equations for what we call simple harmonic motion are the most ubiquitous equations in all of physics. They’re the ones we deal all the time in a wealth of different systems, in cosmology we deal with them, in astrophysics we deal with them, in everyday settings we deal with them. Those equations are the bread and butter of physics.

Brian Greene: Well, all sounds—all music in particular—comes from vibrations. So the reason why you can hear me speak is because I am creating pressure waves that are emanating from my mouth, compressing the air, then rarifies as it spreads out, compresses again. And that ripple of air ultimately bangs into your eardrum, smashes your eardrum with these molecules of air, going back and forth and your eardrum registers and your brain decodes that. And you have the sensation of hearing. So all sound is a matter of producing those pressure waves, those vibrations in air.

Daniel Barenboim: Sound has several very interesting aspects, I think, worth observing. One is duration—that there is a connection between sound and time. But before that there is a connection between sound and silence. When one speaks about sound, very one speaks of the color of sound— a bright sound or a dark sound. Which is of course nonsense because what may be dark for one is light for the other, and vice versa. It’s very subjective. I could say “It’s a beautiful sound.” What is a beautiful sound? So it’s very subjective and not really a definable characterization. Whereas the duration of sound and it’s relation to silence is a very objective thing. I sing a note or I whistle a note and when I have no more air, the note goes. Where does it go? Into the silence again. And when we observe that really more clearly we see that sound has a relationship with silence not unlike the law of gravity. In order to lift a certain object from the ground we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy or otherwise the object falls to the ground. It’s exactly the same thing with the sound. We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it we have to give more energy or otherwise it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time. And this, I think, what gives it or even more so when it becomes music. It’s really tragic element of the fact that it can die, of the fact that it is a lifetime. Every note is a lifetime for itself.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (speaking to the audience from the stage): You know when I was growing up I wanted my violin to sound like a bass guitar.

I wanted my violin to sound like an electric guitar.

I wanted my violin to sound like a turntable.

I wanted my violin to scream.

I wanted my violin to laugh.

You know I wanted my violin to be like a drum.

Michael Fitzpatrick: One of the research endeavors that I took was to look into the ideal sound wave rate, the idea of a vibrato wave, of oscillation, and there was a study that analyzed the great musicians of the past 20th century: Caruso, Heifetz, Casals, and they all have a vibrato wave or rate that was about 7 or 8 cycles per second.

So you have this—ning, ning, ning, ning—ning, ning, ning, ning– ning, ning, ning, ning—and the physicist will attest to that we are entrained to the vibration that is dominant in our environment sonically.

So I was then curious to know if somehow this was a deeper universal rhythm that they were tuning into. If you can tap into that universal pulse, if you can get that to come out of the instrument that other people would experience that directly.

You hit that pulse right on, then—whatever word you want to use—you can experience peace of mind, enlightenment, or just deep listening