RPM Challenge 2015 Part VI: Hymn For The Universe

Track 5 from Impossible Universe -- Hymn For The Universe

If you've read any of my previous posts about the Impossible Universe tracks, you've seen some pretty amazing things that we've discovered in this Universe we live in.

These are only a handful of the infinite wonders of the cosmos. Take a look at the image to the left, and the one at the bottom on the left. Almost all of those luminous blobs are galaxies.

2MASS Galaxy Catalog shows 1.5 million galaxies
near our own Milky Way.

In fact, there are about 1.5 million galaxies just in our local universe. The image to the right is an infrared scan of our "local universe." The center is our galaxy, the Milky Way. The blue-colored blobs are galaxies nearer to us, green ones are further out, and red ones are the furthest away from us. (1)

I say "local universe" because the Hubble telescope has been used to count and catalog galaxies in the "observable" universe, which is vastly larger than what astronomers call the local universe. Astronomers and astrophysicists have used the Hubble data to make an estimate of how many galaxies would be in the entire universe. Their number? More than 100 billion galaxies.

So how many stars in all those galaxies? Astronomers say that our galaxy has 300 billion stars. And, our galaxy is one of the larger ones in the universe. By measuring the luminosity of the observable galaxies, they estimate that there are 70 billion trillion stars. (2)

With so many galaxies that have so many stars, I find it hard to believe that Earth is the only place where life exists. There is life out there; I am convinced of it. The odds are pretty good, I think.

Hymn for the Universe is meant as an anthem for our universe; for all of the stunning, amazing, unbelievable, impossible things that we are discovering out there. I'm sure that we are just starting to scratch the surface of the magnitude of the universe, and I'm convinced we do not understand a billionth part of how all of these things work, how they came together, and what their (and our) fates will be.

Hymn for the Universe is also meant as a small and perhaps unworthy tribute to The Creator of all of these things.



Thanks to my friend, Darren Major, who wrote the chord progression used as the basis of this track.

(1) https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March04/Jarrett/Jarrett1.html
(2) http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-many-stars-are-there/

RPM Challenge 2015 Part V: M31

M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy

Impossible Universe Track 4 -- M31

So yeah, track 4 is named after the Andromeda Galaxy, well, the "official" name of the galaxy, which is also my musical moniker. This galaxy's name has some historical meaning for me, so read on....

The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31) is the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way. It's only 2.5 million light-years from us, and gets its name from the area of the sky in which it can be found, in the constellation Andromeda.

We are expected to collide with Andromeda in ... 3.75 billion years, at which time the two galaxies will combine to form one great elliptical galaxy. We'll have to see if that actually happens.

When I started a Mannheim Steamroller cover band in high school, there were initially four of us: my brother Brett on bass guitar, recorder, french horn; friends Joseph Hawkins on keyboards and David Kinard on drums, and myself on keyboards and arrangements. After the Sophomore assembly which brought us together, we competed in the Davis County Fair talent show. We didn't have a name for ourselves, and my cousin Brad Mottishaw suggested "Andromeda." Well astronomy was a hobby of mine, and it sounded pretty cool, so we went with it.

Andromeda's 1st incarnation in 1983.
L to R: Joseph Hawkins, Brett Tippetts,
Kyle Tippetts, David Kinard

We ended up winning 1st place in our category and went on to compete in the Utah State Fair talent show, many school assemblies and other community performances, and even did a live radio broadcast in Evanston Wyoming, where a Golden Retriever sauntered on to the stage. Fortunately it was radio, so no harm no foul, and it kind of brought the rural ambience of Evanston into the auditorium.

Nice touch.

I should mention that by the time we did the radio broadcast, the band had a few more members: Mark Steiner on EVI/Trumpet, Lonnie Nybo on keyboards and oboe, David Long and Cathy Brande on Keyboards, and several members of the Davis High School Band and Orchestra. Clif May and Todd Leishman provided excellent live sound.

We even got invited to perform at the 1985 Stadium of Fire (we had Douglas Spotted Eagle do the live sound for our final performance at the end of the 1985 school year since Clif and Todd weren't available to do it. Doug got us the gig. Alas, since most of us graduated that year, we couldn't pull it together. One of the biggest regrets of my musical undertakings).

Close-up of M31. This shows about a 61,000 light-year piece of the galaxy.

Probably TL;DR, but when I started doing music again 25 years later, I wanted to use the same band name, Andromeda. But, I found that there was a Swedish progressive metal band using it. But rather than give up on all the history, I chose to use the "official" name of the Andromeda galaxy, M31.

I wanted this track to be an upbeat, trance-y/house-y tune. At the break, I imagined what it might be like to be floating in space, thousands of light-years out from M31, watching it in all it's glory.

I don't believe in coincidence. I don't believe that any of these wondrous, fantastic, unbelievably beautiful things in our universe are just coincidences, that they just "happened." That is what is impossible.

What is possible, and I believe what is most certainly true, is that all these things, including our galaxy, solar system, our planet, and even ourselves were purposely created by the Great Creator, God.

And so, M31.

RPM Challenge 2015 Part IV: Twin Jet

Twin Jet Nebula in 2012

Track 3 from Impossible Universe -- Twin Jet.

When I first saw this image of the Twin Jet Nebula (also known as the Butterfly or Wings of a Butterfly Nebula), I wondered what it was; I'd never seen anything like it before.

I found out that William Herschel discovered the first one in the 1780s and dubbed it a planetary nebula, since the center of what he was seeing in his telescope looked like a planet. Modern science has shown that "planetary nebula" is a misnomer, but because Herschel's name for these astronomical phenomena was widely adopted, it's never been changed. (1)

Twin Jet is 2,100 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. Astronomers estimate that Twin Jet is about 1200 years old.

But what causes the twin jets? Well, planetary nebulae are formed when a star is at the end of its life. It sheds it outer layers, and the exposed star core illuminates these layers.

Twin Jet Nebula in 1997

But wait, there's more! The unique colors and shape of Twin Jet Nebula's two jets are because...there's actually two stars there! Twin Jet is actually a bipolar nebula, and the jets are caused by the motion of the two stars around each other.

The blue areas on either side of the binary star system are actually jets of gas being violently shot into space at an estimated 620,000 miles per hour. (2)

If there was sound in space (which there isn't), I imagine that the Twin Jet nebula might sound like the beginning of its namesake track from Impossible Universe...



(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula
(2) https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1518/

RPMChallenge 2015 Part III: The Pillars of Creation

The Pillars of Creation

Impossible Universe's second track. The Pillars of Creation.

This cosmic spectacle was discovered when the Hubble telescope took the first close-up pictures of the Eagle Nebula in 1994. (1) This particular part of the nebula got the name "The Pillars of Creation" because of the stars forming in the dust and gases that make up these pillars.

I've seen this picture many times: NASA's APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day), Space.com, Pinterest...(yes I have a Pinterest account with an Astronomy board...you can check it out here). But as I was searching for inspiration for this project, I ran across this again and was mesmerized by this particular close-up of the nebula.

The Eagle Nebula (M16).
The Pillars of Creation are just
off-center to the left.

Eagle Nebula is about 7000 light years away from us and can be found between the constellations Serpens and Sagittarius. The entire nebula measures 70 light-years high by 50 light-years wide, with the tallest of the pillars being about 4 light-years high. (2)

Each of the "finger-like" tips of the pillars are larger than our solar system, and contain dense knots of gasses, and stars are being formed inside some of these.

I wanted to evoke the feeling of being in some sort of space vessel floating amongst the gas, dust, and newly-forming stars. I imagined the sheer size and majesty of these pillars of creation, and what it might be like to be much, much closer to them. I realize that if we, in our imaginary spacecraft, were closer somehow, it probably wouldn't look much different than where we are now on earth, considering the sheer immensity of just that one four-light-year pillar.

Still, the song is meant to be just that; a moment in time, a snapshot of floating amongst the majesty and wonder of The Pillars of Creation.



(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula