Sounds and Matrices

When listening to music, we usually don’t think about the actual process that is taking place. In my earlier posts on String Theory, I talked about how everything in the entire universe is vibrating strands of energy. Every vibrating strand can take on an infinite range of frequencies that determine the properties of that object, force, or in our case sound waves. However, our brains are only capable of sensing and deciphering a certain range of frequencies. For instance wild animals typically have much sharper senses and are able to take in a wider range of frequencies needed for their survival. Communication devices send and receive frequencies we as humans are unable to physically sense because they are beyond the narrow range that our brains can interpret. The way in which we actually send and receive messages through man-made communication devices is essentially all mathematics. We take a sound or image and represent it using a matrix of numbers we sometimes call wavelets. Wavelet Transformations use linear algebra to compress the digital media in order to send it over computer networks, and then reconstruct them by undoing the mathematical operations. Our brains have been naturally programmed to receive extremely complex wavelets and decode them into what we ultimately experience through our five senses. Our brains are able to process insane amounts of information effortlessly and almost instantaneous. We don’t really think of our brains as supercomputers, but whether we know it or not they are constantly decoding a divine matrix we call reality.