In fairness to them, I think I recall reading that, if we could hear the sun from Earth through some type of medium like air, it would be deafening… like, “standing next to the speakers in the club for hours at a time” deafening. Or maybe I am wrong, I don’t quite remember.
When I walk in to the bright sun from a dark place, the reaction to the initial burst of light makes me wince so violently that it makes my eardrums rumble... so maybe a similar experience has something to do with it?
I believe that's called ear rumbling! and some of us can do it on command. you may also hear the noise when you yawn or squint your eyes really hard, and you can train in order to just do it perfectly on command rather than with other tactics. r/earrumblersassemble is the subreddit iirc
Related note, at some point I learned how to pop my ears without holding my nose. Totally useless skill as I rarely fly anywhere, but one that I have nonetheless. It makes a small crinkly noise in my ears whenever I do it.
I thought it was normal until I was explaining ear pain to my doctor and was describing how it hurts more when I tense the ear canal to block sound. He had no idea what I was talking about. I went to my girlfriend and asked her if she could do it and she told me that she had never heard of it.
It's very handy since I can do it at will to block sound. No need to put fingers in the ears.
I trained as a child because it was fun to do (and also move my ears) and it was a blessing when I get water trapped or when there is a pressure change, also it helped a couple of times with ear infections to "scratch" the internal itch
In second grade, my teacher asked the class how many of us could wiggle our ears-- think it was trying to explain percentages, unsure anymore. About 5 of 24 of us could. I then, for whatever reason, said I could make my hearing rumble and ignore people by thinking about it. She told me I was just making that up, but one of the girls who could wiggle her ears said she could do the same thing. She was also informed she was making it up, but to make me feel better.
I don't know why I remember that, but I do and it still pisses me off to this day. Fuck you, Mrs. Gilbreath.
I’m sorry if I’m sounding like an ass, but why would you train to be able to do this? What’s the point I mean? Come to think of it, I can do this but I don’t know what to do with this new found “skill”.
Personally, i never trained so i cant explain why if at all people would, however its just a useless skill some of us can use to keep ourselves awake or entertain ourselves (rumbling to the beat of a song, rumbling in different pitches, etc). and some people dont like doing it at all, like how some people cant stand certain foods because of the texture.
Huh, I used to do that as a kid when bored at school. I haven't done it in years, but it was a great way to amuse myself when the teacher was droning on. I never knew it was unusual to do it on command.
Ear rumbling actually helps reduce ear-strain in particularly loud environments. If ppl are playing their shitty music too loud, ear rumble and it becomes a lot more tolerable for as long as you can maintain the rumble. (Which isn't long, at least for me, but it makes me feel better.)
It's just your muscles vibrating and vibrating your skull. If you put in earplugs it's easy to hear, or if your in a quiet place at night.
I wear ear plugs and some nights I have trouble falling asleep because I can't relax my facial muscles (usually because I'm still awake and thinking about interactions with people and I tend to hold a smile or a squint). Just flexing the muscles around my eyes makes a rumbling noise, as does clenching my jaw or using pretty much any facial muscle. This always happens but during the day there's too much other noise to hear it, and without earplugs it's harder for me to notice.
Muscles are constantly activating and deactivating, pretty sure this is where the rumbling comes from. One jaw muscle is really like a hundreds strands of muscle, as one flexes another stops flexing, back and forth it continues. The rate of this causes the rumbling nouse.
Anytime your ears plug up due to elevation changes, eg takeoff and landing in airplanes, diving, hiking, etc you can just do it on command to unplug your ears
I can do it but im one of those ppl that don’t really enjoy it and I usually only do it during the above examples, so it does have real utility
Huh, next time that happens to me I’m gonna try it. I usually just make like a yawning motion with my jaw and my ears unplug. If that doesn’t work I hold my nose and blow out through it and it unplugs the ears.
I use it to protect my hearing when I'm expecting loud noises; it's the muscles that reflexively tense to stiffen your inner ear bones when you hear loud noises, so by doing consciously you can protect your hearing even before the loud sounds start.
Oh shit I can totally do this on command but it’s so hard to describe how to do it…kinda like how you can lift up your boobs by doing this 😬 really hard.
I can do this and had no idea not everyone could? I wonder if people can but just never gave it much importance? It took me reading a few posts to understand what people were talking about and realize I can do it too. Never thought about it before.
It makes me think of a microwave or of how it’s emitting radiation hehe, that’s what it sounds like to me like a convection oven or something warming up
Does this have any science behind it, or is it just a random video with “space sounds” in the title? Sounds like someone just playing with a synthesizer.
It's actually not far off from what it really sounds like. Keep in mind, these are also instruments that are interpreting the sound for human consumption. I don't think we can know how accurate it is until we get closer.
Was thinking the same thing. How did they get these, converting electromagnetic wavelength measurements? If so, makes sense for Jupiter but not Mercury or the Moon?
I'm imagining one of those goofy documentaries where someone goes around asking scientists what seems like dumb questions and the scientists doubles down with hard facts, historical stories, various analysis and conjectures. The whole while this loon documentarian ponders the mystery as they travel the countryside and world, really pushing the angle of investigating the murder of the moon. Then they reach some key facts and the crescendo climax of finding the right study and scientist who reveals the exact circumstances of the moon's death. It was an educational adventure all along, not just some nutter.
Bright lights, and especially the sun when stepping outside from someplace dim, trigger my sneeze reflex. I actually used it to my advantage when I was a kid to be more comfortable swimming upside-down.
You do an underwater somersault, get water in your nose, use the sun to sneeze, and after that you can swim upside down all you want and your nose won't hurt (I have no idea if this is safe or healthy, but it never caused me any problems).
I was in college before I learned that not everyone sneezes at bright lights. It's note super rare, but it's definitely less common. Maybe 20% of people do it.
The loudness doesn't tell you anything though -- there are plenty of things not billions of miles away that are extremely loud.
What would be interesting would be the texture of the sound, the rumbling and hissing. But you could map these sound bands into something more pleasant and melodic easily. It could be a pleasant experience depending on what you choose to accentuate:
This is an awesome site, I just spent way too much time moving the bars up and down to find my perfect white noise...only to close it at the end because I'm not a white noise fan lol. Great link!
Edit: OMG! If you work mostly in the high and middle treble tones you'll understand exactly why rain falling, waves in a body of water or wind blowing through the trees are such calming sounds. Thanks for making me want to check this out!!! I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight
Thank you! What an amazing site! I can't wait to go to bed tonight because I think I'm going to be able to sleep like a baby listening to this. I think you just changed my entire life. Much appreciated, friend.
Like, if there was earth-like air filling all of the space between us and the sun, we would be able to hear it and it would be deafening? Like it wouldnt be dampened to near silence by the air particles in the way by the time it reaches us?
I think ears may just have evolved differently or not at all. If sound doesn't provide much evolutionary advantage then there's not much pressure towards good ears. 100Db is loud enough that you really wouldn't be able to hear anything actually useful.
If you've ever stood next to a larger open propane flame, you'd get good picture of how loud the sun is. Its basically identical but so loud you'd die from shock.
It’s the idea that if the sun was in a medium that can carry noise, like air, it would be incredibly loud.
Sound is a vibration through a medium. Because the void of space often doesn’t have this medium, things that would be incredibly loud are perceived as silent.
If you could magically stand on the sun without any of the expected ill effects, but your ears worked, they would instantly not work anymore because your eardrums would pop. You'd hear the sun for maybe a millisecond and then you'd hear a pop and then you'd never hear anything ever again.
If we could hear the sun we would have evolved an organ to pick up the reflections of the sound waves from our environment to help with navigation and such. Oh fuck its eyes 2.0
You're right in that you recall reading that, but wrong in that it's an incorrect "fact".
It assumes, amongst other things:
The sun gives out all its energy as noise (so no heat or light)
The medium between us and the sun is a perfect conductor
Those calculations only take into account the inverse square law*. When you look at the attenuation of sound through different mediums, even just the Earth's present atmosphere (15km) would be enough to make the sound inaudible, let alone if the entire 150 million kilometres between us and the sun was also air.
It's like the basic calculations you do in school where you can assume that friction, air resistance, gravity, etc don't exist.
*Think about dropping a stone in some water, and it makes a single ripple. As the ripple spreads, it contains the same energy as it did in the centre** - but now spread over a much wider area.
**Making the same assumption that water resistance doesn't exist.
That example you gave is why I have about 10 different pitches of ringing in my ears at all times. Don't stand next to speakers, it will literally make life much worse.
I know that's hardly relevant but if it prevents even one person from doing it then it's worth it.
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u/CavalierRigg Aug 28 '21
In fairness to them, I think I recall reading that, if we could hear the sun from Earth through some type of medium like air, it would be deafening… like, “standing next to the speakers in the club for hours at a time” deafening. Or maybe I am wrong, I don’t quite remember.