prologue

On March 4th, 2024, a user named Astronautala04 makes a post on Instagram.

"this is CRAZY shit," the caption reads. "spent 3 months taking NASA's raw data on the distribution of galaxy superclusters thru the known universe. applied a grid, assigned x and y values to an audio scale for shits and giggles. listen."

Anyone clicking on the corresponding video sees a white bar slowly cross over a 3D image, overlaid with clouds of green-and-pink pixels. It starts to play noise -- warbled, distorted. At first blush, there's nothing there.

But then the bar crosses over more points in the cloud. Synthesized guitar hits start to play, and it soon becomes clear -- it's AC/DC's "Back in Black."

The video only gets a few thousand views its first week, until the lead singer for the indy band Jill & the Starstrucks retweets it. Then it racks up hits -- hundreds of thousands, then millions, as it migrates from Twitter to BuzzFeed to the mainstream news. It's the first thing in months to rank above hashtags #my5years and #iwasdust.

"Tell us, Cindy," a daytime CNN host talk-laughs, as he turns exactly ninety degrees away from the camera. "This has whipped up quite a frenzy, but -- can it be possible?"

Cindy Justison, paid astronomy expert, shakes her head. "There's no 'up' or 'down' in the universe, Tom. And what's represented in this model is just the sliver we can see, here from Earth. This guy probably messed with settings and perspectives before he got something that happened to be suggestive of a song. Hate to be a--"

"Kind of a downer!"

She laughs. "I'm just giving you the science. Sorry, Tom."

Astronautla04 gains a few thousand followers. There are a couple human interest stories of how he's a college kid, and now has an invitation to work at the big telescopes in Maui. Interest dies down.

A couple months later, a user named PetersonFam423 comments to the original post.

"My daughter showed me this. So cool!!!" it reads. "God is real, and he loves AC/DC."