PHILIP MORIARTY: We all
know what pi, the
number, looks like.
But this is what
it sounds like.
[COMPUTER TONES]
PHILIP MORIARTY: SO what I've
done is I've taken the digits
of pi to 3.1415, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
And I've mapped those onto
a C major scale.
So basically I've said 1 is C,
2 is D, 3 is E, 4 is F, 5 is
G, et cetera.
And I've gone all the way up--
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0.
And what you can hear in the
background is the result of a
computer program, which takes
those digits, converts them to
the frequencies of those notes,
converts them to the
sound of those notes, and
then plays it back.
And so that's what you're
hearing in the background
which, when I first did it, I
guess I thought it was going
to sound not particularly
musical.
But it's remarkable just
in some places how
musical it can sound.
[INDIVIDUAL NOTE SOUNDS,
SLOWLY PLAYED]
PHILIP MORIARTY: Pi is a
transcendental number.
It's this jumble of digits.
You'd expect it would sign very,
very random, almost like
white noise, and perhaps--
well, if we speak that up quite
a bit, it will sound
quite atonal--
let's put it that way.
[FAST PLAY OF NOTES]
PHILIP MORIARTY: But because
I've mapped onto a very simple
musical scale, C major,
you get this--
on occasion, you get these nice,
little musical motifs, I
would argue.
They don't repeat.
We can't play it on
other instruments.
And then you start to get a bit
more character, and a bit
more feel as well.
I have really geeked out here.
I've taken the first
42 digits of pi.
And then what I've does
is-- then this is--
so I learned to play guitar.
I'd no lessons, so those
guitarists who aren't
particularly good at reading
standard music notation do
something called guitar
tablature, which is sort of
the idiot's version of
writing down music.
3-1-4-1-5-9-2-6-5-3-5-8-9-7-9.
I'll start now.
[PLAYING GUITAR]
PHILIP MORIARTY: And
then we've got--
[PLAYING GUITAR]
BRADY HARAN: Can you
do that again?
And this time talk me through
it, as you do it?
PHILIP MORIARTY: You
ask a lot, Brady.
I'll try.
So 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, bend up
to 9, back to 2, and then
we've got 6, 5, 3, 5, 8,
9, and then back down
to 7 and up to 9.
You want it again?
[REPLAYS PI MELODY]
PHILIP MORIARTY: Richard
Feynman, who was a really,
really important 20th century
physicist, made contributions
right across the board.
He had this really very
interesting point about pi
that he brought up, a quite
amusing point in some regards.
And he noted that at the 762nd
digit of pi, you get this six
nines in a row.
If you look at that, given that
pi is meant to be this
irrational number, that seems
very, very, very unusual,
particularly because it occurs
so early on in this sequence.
The next time that set of
recurring set of numbers
occurs, it's something
like-- if I remember,
the 190,000th digit.
And again, it turns out to be
nine, which is, from some
aspects, rather, rather
surprising.
And so Feynman made the joke
that what he'd really like to
do is to learn pi off-- and
there's obviously very many
people who'd like to learn pi
off to x number of digits.
I know it barely past
the sixth digit.
But people can learn it off to
many hundreds of digits.
Feynman wanted to learn it off
to the 762nd digit, and then
go "pi is 3.1415 (TRAILS OFF)
99999 and so on," sort of
pretending that it's rational
beyond that point, and
irritating all those people
who've learned off all the
rest of the digits,
because it's
irrational beyond that point.
So what we're going to
do now is listen
to the Feynman point.
[NOTES PLAY DIGITALLY]
PHILIP MORIARTY: Wait for it.
That was it.
Did you hear that doooooo?
That was the notes though,
because they all bleed into
each other.
The only reason you can
differentiate them is because
the pitch is changing.
So it bleeds into each other.
Do you want to hear it again?
[NOTES PLAY DIGITALLY]
BRADY HARAN: pi is random.
pi goes forever.
So somewhere in pi is
Beethoven's Fifth.
PHILIP MORIARTY: Yeah, but
you've got to remember that
we're actually in the
key of C major here.
So I've mapped that onto
a particular key.
So things outside that key,
like Beethoven's Fifth for
example, it's impossible
for them to come in
here, because you need--
in basically in the key
of C, you don't have
any flats or sharps.
For Beethoven's Fifth, you have
to have those flats and
sharps in there.
So you don't have those there.
But there are pieces of music,
like, for example, doe a deer,
a female deer.
123-1313.
[PLAYING DO-A-DEER
MELODY THEME]
PHILIP MORIARTY: We should be
able to find that somewhere.
BRADY HARAN: Is it inevitable
that my mobile phone number,
your tax number, is
somewhere in pi?
PHILIP MORIARTY: Well, if
it repeats to infin--
it doesn't repeat.
If it extends to infinity, then,
yes, there's a finite
probability of finding those
numbers somewhere in there.
Indeed you might argue that if
you code our DNA structure,
you can code the genome, perhaps
if it extends to
infinity, we may well be
coded somewhere in pi.
[MUSICAL RENDERING OF PI]
