So scientists are not entirely certain about the heat death of the universe. The heat death is the most reasonable prediction given what we know but there could be a force acting across the universe that may very slowly reverse the expansion of the universe that we have yet to discover and cause a big crunch over a ridiculously large amount of time. The fact is predictions that far in the future aren't really very useful.
I imagine a physicist would invoke entropy to describe the diffusion of pressure waves and vibration into other forms of energy. Neuroscience might explain the propagation of signals from the cochlea into the brain. A psychologist could hypothesise on the influence of music on our mood and ideas. A philosopher might talk about the influence of music on the way we build our society and how that feeds back into our music. In this way, the music never stops, it continues on as echos rippling through through the universe.
Thank you and funny you should say that because Watts is an inspiration. From a scientific point of view some of his ideas were a little tenuous but as a teacher on the subject of the ineffable he was quite peerless.
So like can i get like a net and catch it?
Like its my music i paid for so like i gotta keep it for safe keeping.
Do i gotta go to another town and get it that way???
I'm not a scientist by a long shot, but my understanding is that sound if indeed a wave, carried by a medium (air, water, etc). Upon hitting your eardrum, this wave is converted by your eardrum and your auditory nerve into signals your brain decodes. The remainder of the wave continues though, until it runs out of medium, hits an obstacle (basically another medium) or dissipates. Again, just my layman's understanding!
Don’t forget the inverse square law. Even without a change in medium or any obstacles, the strength of the signal decrease over distance until it is undetectable.
This is also why there are no extraterrestrial civilizations hearing any radio broadcasts from Earth. Our transmitters are so weak that any signals we send out fade into the CMB before they get any real distance.
It stays in our brain and we subconsciously put it into new music years later, thereby keeping the industry’s corporate lawyers in cocaine for future decades to come.
It keeps traveling. If you splash some water, where does the wave go? Same question - it terms into something you can no longer see or hear... It never goes away. It becomes part of the world, forever
Music is what you hear - but it was only ever sound waves
Oh, dear child, it goes to the same place where you will go when you inevitably die one day: into complete non-existence, save for an echo in others' minds, and after a while not even that.
After you listen to a song, the secret police from the RIAA come and lock it up in a small, dank cell given minimal sustenance, until the next time they can send it to some seedy hotel, suburban home, or automobile, to turn a trick and make them some more money, like some sort of whoo-re for the ears.
Let's assume the kid knows it's a recording. It's still a valid question.
Like where is the recording coming from when the kid asks Alexa to play a song?
I never thought about it, as I don't have kids, but must be a bit harder explaining a global IT-infrastructure than it was for my grandpa to explaining how a VHS works. On a generalised level, that is.
All these physics answers! The funnest explanation for a kid is just that music is only there when you're listening to it. If you don't listen, there's no music. When you start listening again, music comes back. Then ask if they can hear the music of the wind.
There's a physics argument that information can't be destroyed, so in terms of causality it has an effect (see butterfly effect for reference) but because of various physical thresholds like the planck length, general limits on measurement precision (uncertainty principle, resolution limits, detection limits), chaos theory, etc, at one point it becomes indistinguishable noise.
Where do broken hearts go?
Can they find their way home
Back to the open arms
Of a love that's waiting there?
And if somebody loves you
Won't they always love you?"
Really reminded me of this - the incorrect, useless, but poetic answer could be that it's just like with love. Into the open arms of the music thats waiting there.
I can't say this did or didn't happen, but I absolutely had 'philosophical' thoughts like this as a kid.
When I was ~10 I asked my mom how we know other people aren't 'aliens or something'. She just dismissed me as being silly, and I didn't know it at the time but in retrospect I was absolutely experiencing and asking her about solipsism.
I didn't know it was 'philosophy' but I think it's integral to how we experience the world and sentience in general.