The Universe Was Already Singing

In 2022, NASA released something no human had ever heard before — the sound of deep space. Using a process called sonification, scientists converted light and radiation data from the James Webb Space Telescope into audio. Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, a region of space thirteen billion light-years away, became a haunting wash of tones. Each frequency of light was mapped to a musical note. Layers of cosmic gas hummed low. Distant stars rang high and bright. Researchers at the Chandra X-ray Center described it as eerie and beautiful, like listening to a cosmic orchestra warming up before a performance.

The psalmist wrote, "Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy" (Psalm 98:7-8). For centuries, readers may have treated those lines as lovely metaphor — poetic exaggeration. But what if the psalmist knew something we are only now catching up to?

Creation has never been silent. The rivers have always been clapping. The stars have always been humming their frequencies into the dark. We simply lacked the ears to hear it.

The question Psalm 98 puts to us is not whether creation is singing — it is. The question is whether we have added our voices. "O sing to the Lord a new song," it begins. The cosmos already knows the melody. Do we?