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]