How Extraterrestrials Compose Music

One of the most famous sci-fi flicks of all time is "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Below is a clip regarding those musical tones that Richard Dreyfuss kept hearing in his head. But what's up with those tones? What do they mean? Why did the extraterrestrials send them to the lead actor's head? And, most importantly, how do Extraterrestrials compose music? All these questions shall be answered soon after you're done watching the clip:

Put yourself in the extraterrestrial's shoes. You are light-years from your home planet. You and your crew are exhausted after exploring much of the galaxy. Your navigation system is on the fritz due to a meteor shower. You are lost. You pull your flying saucer up to a nearby inhabited planet so you can ask directions.

Hopefully the earthlings can tell you how to get back to the constellation where you are from:

But first you have to let them know which constellation it is. They don't speak your language and the lead actor doesn't have a clue what is happening. He keeps building mounds with his mash potatoes and the the mud in his yard. His wife thinks he's insane and leaves him. That doesn't help you at all. What can you do to get through to these earthlings? You can create a musical language that describes the stars in your constellation. You begin with an alphabet or scale: Do ray me fa so lah te do.

Each note in the scale has its own frequency. When you double the frequency (f) you raise the pitch a whole octave. If you want to go down an octave, cut the frequency in half. If you want to go up or down a half tone, multiply or divide the frequency by 1.06, respectively. There are 12 half-tones per octave, so going up an octave requires 1.06^12 times the frequency (f). Going up a perfect fifth requires (1.06^7)f. Going down one full tone requires f/1.06^2.

Once you get your universal musical language together, you match each star in your constellation with a note:

You can now tell the earthlings where you are from and hopefully they can tell you the way back home. If they don't understand at first, just keep telepathically sending those tones until the whole planet is singing them.

If they still don't understand, try taking Richard Dreyfuss for a ride in your flying saucer and show him your sheet music below:

Extraterrestrials use triangles to communicate their music. The height of the top triangles are the pitch. The base (cosine) of each triangle is the duration. The up-side-down triangles are the loudness. The bigger the sine waves the louder and higher the pitch, and vice versa.

Below I use super-complex numbers to translate the alien music. (If you are not familiar with super-complex numbers, click here.) Hopefully the diagram below will serve as a Rosetta stone. Each note is indexed by the letter u.

To simplify the math further, let's assign first-rank tensor variables (T, P, L) to each cosine and isine term.

We end up with a simple tensor equation that describes the language of the universe: music. Now that we understand what the extraterrestrials want, can someone please give them directions?

Probabilities, Euler's Identity and Super-complex Numbers

Today we are going to examine how super-complex numbers fit in with Euler's identity and probability amplitudes. If you are not familiar with super-complex numbers, read my post entitled: "Introducing Super Complex Numbers."

Euler's identity is as follows:

It has a cosine and one isine or imaginary number. It can be used to model a right triangle:

Or a propagating wave:

Here is the super-complex number version of Euler's identity:

The exponent has i sub-n and theta sub-n. This tells us we will take the cosine of angle theta, and the isine-thetas from 1 to n. In the example below, n = 3.

The super-complex Euler identity is useful if you are working with one cosine and multiple triangles that share the same cosine. Take the exponent i sub-n, theta sub-n; it shows precisely how many isines/triangles are involved. The super-complex Euler identity is a real time saver. Instead of writing a big long string of trig functions we can write one simple exponent.

Since it can represent multiple triangles, it can be used to represent a wing design for a stealth aircraft:

OK, so that wasn't really a stealth aircraft--just more triangles, but you get the idea. Below are multiple waves propagating through space that are modeled by the super-complex Euler ID:

We know that if we multiply Euler's identity with its complex conjugate we get 1. We can also take the inner products of cosine and isine to get probabilities, but notice we are stuck with just two probabilities:

Using the super-complex Euler ID, is it possible to have as many probabilities as we like--and they all add up to one? To answer this question we need to derive the super-complex Euler ID. Start with the normal Euler ID, then split up the isin(theta) into smaller parts. Each part shall have a coefficient of epsilon:

If we examine a unit circle diagram and some trig relations, we discover that each epsilon sub-j isin(theta) equals isin(theta sub-j). We make a substitution:

If we equate i with each i sub-j and i sub-k, we assume the product of any two indexed i's is -1. Unfortunately this will give us non-zero cross product terms.

Let's check to see if the cross product of two arbitrary indexed i's really do give us -1 and not 0. Take the sum of two arbitrary terms and multiply it by its super-complex conjugate. That will give us a real number we label b^2. Like the isine of Euler's ID, we split b into smaller parts. Call those parts c and d.

The last equation above confirms the product of any two indexed i's equals -1. The great thing about Euler's ID is the square of its absolute value yields the same result as a dot product. We want the super-complex Euler's ID to behave the same way--no non-zero cross products! So here's what we do:

At the second equation above, we assume there are no non-zero cross product terms on the right side; however, without the extra cross-product terms, the left side is greater than the right side. We cure this by increasing the value of the isines. We then throw in unit vectors (ej). We now have a multiplication that behaves like an inner or dot product. We make some further refinements below:

Note how each indexed i is converted to an indexed mu, which behaves like a unit vector, giving the result we want:

Each squared sine can represent a probability and the total is 1.

As you can see, the super-complex version of Euler's identity has a great deal more flexibility than the ordinary Euler's identity. It allows us to model complex systems and probability amplitudes with just one simple exponent expression.

Introducing Super Complex Numbers

We know that i and -i are square roots of -1. They are part of the axis of imaginary numbers. Combine them with real numbers and you get complex numbers. Complex numbers are often used to model rotations, spins, oscillations, vibrations. They can even be used to model error margins. 55 +/- 3 can be expressed as 55 +/- 3i.

Complex numbers are useful any time you have a real-number value combined with a number that fluctuates. A good example is a wave. The real number tells you how long the wave is or how far it has moved along the x-axis. The imaginary number tells you the vertical measurement along the i axis. (See diagram below.)

Point A above is the sum of the real part and the imaginary part. Complex numbers work well in the above example, but suppose you want to model, say, an electric wave and a magnetic wave? For that you may want to use super complex numbers. Super complex numbers have an extra imaginary axis so you can model two waves for the price of one:

As you can see, i1 and i2 are both equivalent to i. They are both square roots of -1. Multiplications between them yield -1 or 1 in the same manner as plain old i. Operations of super complex numbers are similar to complex numbers.

Division with super complex numbers is tricky just as it is with complex numbers. You use super complex conjugates ( super complex numbers with the signs reversed) to get a real number solution:

The type of super complex number we've been working with so far is called a type-2 super complex number. It's type-2 because there are two imaginary axes. A complex number is a type-1 super complex number, since it only has one imaginary axis. Real numbers are type-0 for an obvious reason. All this implies we can have type-3 or even type-infinity super complex numbers.

Suppose we have multiple waves propagating through space? We can model the entire system with the following expression:

So far, all our waves have conveniently moved along the x-axis. What about the y and z axes? Or some combination of axes? Suppose we have waves moving along a vector? The imaginary axes would have to become imaginary vectors with the same angular relationship to the real-number vector as they had with the x-axis.

Below is a super complex vector expression:

But why stop at super complex vectors when we can have super complex tensors? The diagram below shows a type-n super complex tensor of rank-2. Below that is a general expression that can fit any super complex number or tensor.

Imagine being able to model a highly complex system filled with fixed values and variations. The weather perhaps? You could also model beams in a building as they vibrate during an earthquake. The beams could make up real-number tensors, and all the different vibrations could make up the imaginary-number tensors. These are but a couple of examples of what you can do with super complex numbers. Their application is only limited by your imagination.

For more information of this topic see "Probabilities, Euler's identity and Super-complex Numbers."