antimatter annihilation and modular synth

Giorgio Sancristoforo

"For the first time in history, antimatter is used for music.

All the sounds of this piece are triggered by positron annihilation from a Na22 source. For the task I've programmed a custom gamma spectroscope that outputs the annihilation gamma peaks at 0.511MeV, these pulses are sent in realtime to a MIDI to CV converter.

A positron is the anti-particle of the electron, having positive charge instead of negative. Positron emission is a special case of beta decay. Inside the unstable nucleus, a proton is transformed into a neutron, and in the process, the nucleus emits a neutrino and a positron.

As soon as the positron encounters an electron on its path, they attract each other and finally annihilate, transforming all their mass into energy (2 entangled gamma photons at 0.511MeV), following E=mc^2.

I'll film the process in the next weeks.
Use headphones for best listening experience.

Sound generation: Shuttle Endorphin.es synthesizer.
MCA software written on Cycling '74 Max/MSP

Dedicated to the memory of Iannis Xenakis."