Saturday, March 31, 2007

Space Sounds


Although sound can't travel in space, this site has some intriguing "sounds" captured by space craft. In particular, I got a kick out of the "noise" generated by Jupiter's magnetic field and the sound of dust particles striking the antenna of Voyager II as she passed through the rings of Saturn. Oh, don't forget to check out the Lion's Roar on Earth...

Check out spacesounds

4 comments:

_ said...

Incredibly, this answers a question I was pondering just the other day. I was wondering what the Sun sounds like. No kidding. I really was!

Crushed said...

Fascinating of course.
I love the idea of Cosmic Background Radiation, the 'sound' if you like, of the Big Bang.

Sound of couse does kind of travel in space. It's just that it cn't be heard. Kind of like the 'Does a tree that falls in a forest with no one round make a sound' conundrum.

Shades said...

Crushed, I'm not certain how sound can travel through space- I saw the bell in the vacuum jar at the science museum!

Crushed said...

Kind of travels. Radio waves transmit sond which can be heard here on earth. This is how we know of very distant objects. The only radiation we receive from them is radiowaves. Of course, radio waves are EM waves- light waves in effect.
The sound we actually hear is caused by transmission of soundwaves through air. These waves effect our ear bones. With no air soundwaves would not be transmitted to the ear. Lightwaves travelling on certain frequencies however are interpreted by us as sound, eg the Cosmic Background radiation, the sond that travels through space all the time, kind of like Plato's music of the spheres.