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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday July 07 2019, @12:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-voice-of-the-universe dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

In the minutes before a solar eclipse plunged Chile into darkness, a loudspeaker projected a deep baritone to a group of blind men and women who had traveled to the Atacama desert to "hear" what hundreds of thousands of others had come to see.

Then, a moment of silence until the sunlight, and the sound, returned.

Tourists from around the globe converged on the northern Chilean desert on Tuesday to witness the total eclipse under the world's clearest skies.

The musical experience, orchestrated by Chile's University of Valparaiso, was designed to help blind people, or those with some level of visual impairment, experience the phenomenon through a change in the frequency of sounds.

"It was exciting, incredible, a magical experience," said Octavio OyarzĂșn, 41, one of the thousands of people who came to the small town of Cachiyuyo, about 600 km (373 miles) north of Santiago.

[...] "This allows people who can't see the eclipse to hear it," said the scientist. "As astronomers, this excites us."

Denisse Reyes, 34, said the experience surprised her.

"I can perceive lights, I can recognize day and night, but this amazed me. I felt like I was entering the mysterious world of the planets and the solar system," she said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-eclipse-chile-blind/blind-chileans-listen-for-the-solar-eclipse-idUSKCN1TX31N


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:53PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:53PM (#864143)

    We traveled to the totality in South Carolina recently - and not only did it get dark, and cold, but the frogs etc. did start acting like nightfall. It was mostly cloudy for us, couldn't see anything directly, but the effect was unmistakable. I would think that blind people could sense it just as well from temperature alone without an artificial noise - unless they were in the middle of a crowd of humans, then, yeah, assistance required because h. sapiens are a noisy bunch on all frequencies audio, EM and thermal.

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