“There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker …"

Apollo 10 launched in May 1969, paving the way for Apollo 11's historic mission just two months later, in July of the same year. The Apollo 10 astronauts flew to the Moon in a command module, assisted by a secondary vehicle called the lunar module, which descended to within ten miles of the Moon's surface.

As part of their mission, the Apollo 10 crew orbited the Moon multiple times, which took them around the far side of the Moon. While they were on the far side, they were out of radio contact with Earth, which was a common occurrence during lunar missions due to the Moon blocking the signal.

In audio recordings from the Apollo 10 mission, astronaut Gene Cernan, who was piloting the lunar module, asked John Young, who was piloting the command module, "Do you hear that whistling sound?" Cernan described it as "music" that sounded "outer-spacey." The two astronauts then asked Thomas P. Stafford, who was commanding the dress rehearsal flight and was also in the lunar module, if he heard it too. All three agreed they had heard this "really weird" sound, and Young remarked, "We're going to have to find out about that. Nobody will believe us."

The whistling sound was eventually explained as interference between the VHF radios of the two vehicles. However, there is still speculation about the true origin of this sound.

NASA published the Apollo 10 mission transcripts online in 2008, though the documents themselves indicate they were declassified in 1982. The audio files were also made available online in 2012, according to the NASA History Office.

What’s intriguing about this incident is that the astronauts from both Apollo missions never discussed it publicly. We can only speculate about the reasons for their silence. While some astronauts from later Apollo missions, like Al Worden, expressed doubt about the radio interference theory and speculated on NASA's response to the incident, the true nature of the signal remains a mystery.

In essence of this experience, I think about the ideas shared by Shinichi Nakazawa, "Beyond Development: Rediscovering Nature's Wisdom"

Shinichi states beautifully, "Technology was not given so humankind could ride roughshod over nature and wreak irreparable changes. Rather, technology is to draw out the hidden essence of all nature so that it can sparkle with new purpose. Technology is not to enslave and command life but to draw forth the inifinite possiblities locked within all lifeand nature and to create new interference infused with nature's wisdom"

Recently, a mysterious sound was heard coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The noise, described as a knocking or sonar-like sound, was detected during an exchange between astronaut Butch Wilmore and Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "There's a strange noise coming through the speaker... I don't know what's making it," Wilmore reported.

This incident is reminiscent of Apollo 10 and 11—sounds that resembled odd sirens and screaming. I found much of my interest to how we seperate noise from sound? At the core of this investigation comes another question how would we determine if these sounds are created by an instrument of some type, or a machine. A solution I arrived at was to change the experience of listening from astronomer to a seismologist, or seismology, the study of earth's vibrations.

To seek direction, I read into Carl Jung's exploration of synchronicities, offering a fascinating perspective on the concept of ghost signals, especially when considering them within an invisible web or interconnected framework. UnderstandingExternal reality was to be discovered rather with the senses, experience, and instruments of high sensitivity.

In developing an instrument that will have the ability to observe high-senestivites, I came across Schlieren Optics, an optical technique that allows us to see small changes in the refractivity of air and other transparent media. This technique is used to demonstrate the diffraction of light around objects, particually within vapors and the flow of gases due to the densities of pressure.

A long focal-length mirror is used to focus a point source of light onto a thin wire (or razor blade edge), which acts as a light block. Positioned directly behind the light block is a camera, which is looking at objects immediately in front of the mirror in the “test area.” If there is a change in the refractive index of the air in the test area, the image of the point light source will be deflected slightly. If it is deflected past the edge of the light block, the additional light that enters the camera will appear as streaks of light originating from the area where there was a change in the index of refraction; this is the so-called schlieren effect.

The parallel interplay between listening to the whole recorded seismogram (“synthetic listening”) and listening to specific features of it (“analytic listening”) shaped what I am becoming more inclined to understand about an epistemological practice.

In conclusion, the mysteries of space are not merely about what we can see but also what we can hear and feel. The strange sounds recorded during the Apollo 10 mission, much like the recent occurrences in modern spacecraft, challenge our understanding and invite us to explore new ways of interpreting the universe. By shifting our perspective from one of purely technological analysis to one that integrates natural wisdom and advanced scientific methods like Schlieren Optics and seismology, we can begin to unravel these 'larger' unknowns that lie beyond the edge of our current knowledge.

These phenomena push us to question the boundaries between noise and signal, between mere interference and potential communication from the cosmos. They encourage us to seek deeper connections between the seen and the unseen, the heard and the unheard. As we continue to explore space, these questions remain at the forefront, urging us to develop new tools and methods for discovery. Just as Nakazawa suggests, the role of technology is not to dominate but to reveal—to help us unlock the hidden potential of nature and, perhaps, the mysteries of the universe itself.