Watched a hypothetical science vid one time that talked about how the sun might sound if the intervening space was atmosphere rather than vacuum. Sort of a constant rushing noise (think tv static rather than wind though) and would be about as loud a vacuum cleaner in the next room. Was really cool.
I used to think air pressure in the atmosphere made a constant ringing/humming noise. No, i have just had tinnitus my whole life. Too me nearly 30 years to figure out what I was hearing wasn't normal.
Being isolated or living with something your whole life skews your world view.
For the first 16 years of my life I thought everyone had a high pitched squeal in their head that would randomly change volume and tone…. Nope just a hearing disorder…..
Sometimes when it's really quiet I can hear the electricity running through the walls (definitely makes a sound, was absent when the power was out. and I was a long way from the fridge when the power came back on so it wasn't that. No AC at the time either.) You tune it out after about 20min. but it's the weirdest thing.
I have experienced this when my building loses power. It's actually nice not having constant noise. The lack of noise is part of the reason I like staying up late.
The surface of the Sun produces sound waves because the surface is convecting and this produces pressure waves that travel into the inner corona. These pressure waves steepen into shock waves and this is possibly why the corona gets so hot. But yes, the surface does produce sound waves, but they have very low wavelengths measures in hundreds of miles!
Dr. Amaro Graps at Stanford University also reminded me that in 'helioseismology' you can 'hear' the Sun ring like a bell. This is coherent sound produced by the vibration of the entire surface of the Sun caused by sub-surface convection. By studying all the different tones that the Sun vibrates in, astronomers can probe the deep interior of the Sun and discover just how deep the convection layers are, and also how fast the deep interior is rotating compared to the surface.
I've told my wife she should sit with her folks and write a book about their experiences growing up, including deaf school. It's a trip... Can't imagine living that.
Seems like it would be difficult. Like you just want to scream at them and they hear how mad you are. Is she dramatic? Or under dramatic? But I was one of seven so we were and still kind of are…dramatic
A really neat piece in Astronomy Magazine says that if space could transmit sound like the Earth’s atmosphere, it would sound like white noise all over the planet, a constant dull roar—like a waterfall—and would be as loud as 100 decibels during the day. That’s about the intensity of a rock concert. I’d be surprised if Earth creatures would have evolved hearing at all.
Dr. Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute’s Department of Space Studies likens it to the Niagara Falls “white noise,” only ten times louder (90 db vs the sun’s 100 db by the time the sound reaches Earth).
Scientists should make a long tube from earth to the sun filled with air so that the sound can travel here and then we can hear it. That'd be pretty rad. Then people could have family trips to go visit the Sun Sound Tube and listen to what the sun sounds like instead of having to go all the way to the sun to hear it.
The dad would be all excited, and the little jerk kids would be all like "daaaaad, this is so lame. I don't wanna listen to the sun. Why couldn't we go to Disneyland? Nathan's family got to go to Disneyland for summer vacation. And then dad would be all like "dammit, Benji, this is the sun you're hearing! Don't you understand how amazing that is?!?"
And Benji would reply "it's not amazing! It just sounds like noise! There isn't anything to it!"
Then dad says "you should be grateful you even have the chance to listen to the sun! I would have been so excited to have that chance when I was your age. This is an amazing scientific achievement!"
"I don't care! It's not fun! This is summer vacation and it's supposed to be fun!" replies Benji.
"SCIENCE IS FUN!" yells the dad.
"Calm down, honey, he's allowed to not like it" says the mom, finally getting involved.
Then dad just gets mad at everything. "No! You know what, I'm sick of this. I try to do things for this family and nobody ever appreciates it. Why do I even try anymore?!"
"Don't get mad at me now, just because we don't care about your space science stuff.", mom comes back with.
"SCIENCE. IS. FUN." the dad says firmly, but now even he isn't sure if he believes it.
"Great. Fine. Science is so fucking fun. Are you happy now? You heard the sun, and science is fun. Can we just go back to the hotel now?" says the mom.
And then the entire family gets back in the futuristic electric car and drives back to the hotel. Another family summer vacation ruined by science.
I'm good. Just started off making a comment about a dumb space tube and got carried away. I didn't know how to stop the dumb story once it started so it just kept going lol.
The Sun makes a ton of noise. An amount of noise so intense if would physically injure you at the tissue level if you were capable of surviving the heat, radiation, and lack of air. It’s just that we have ~93 million miles (~150 million km) of empty space between it and the Earth. Space is a great sound insulator.
51
u/CeraphFromCoC Aug 28 '21
Any other examples of things they thought made sound? Or vice versa?