lhsi writes
"Ahead of a special episode of the Sky at Night, the BBC has a short clip demonstrating some of the sounds of the Universe (video, unsurprisingly containing sound). Even though sound waves can't travel through the vacuum of space, detected vibrations can be sped up until they are in our audio range.
The sound of charged particles interacting with Jupiter's magnetic field is eerie, but interesting to listen to."
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(Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:47AM
The audio on that page doesn't work for me. Does anybody else have an alternate source?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:17AM
I'm sorry, the Universe just doesn't want to talk to you right now. Maybe it was something you said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:02PM
"Hello! This is Voyager 1. I'm not in the Solar System right now, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you when I find a new power source."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:31AM
Whole concept doesn't work for me.
Converting oscillations of one form of energy to sound and claiming its the sound of space, (or whatever) isn't a very educating crutch if you ask me. Seems like a condescending attempt to dumb it down for the lay folk.
For some reason, I'm never tempted to play along.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Sunday March 09 2014, @10:37AM
Are you opposed to car analogies too? ;-)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kebes on Sunday March 09 2014, @04:12PM
Sonification is just the audio version of visualization, which is so common in science, engineering, and life, that we hardly even think of it as a thing. But every time you see a graph, that's a visualization of some data. It is not the actual data, nor is it "how the data looks"--it is a visual way explore/interpret the data. Even the majority of imagery in science/engineering is not 'real': they are false-colour images, composite photos, highly processed photographs, obtained using detectors that behave very differently from the human eye, etc. All of these visual artifacts are useful and valuable, but to get the most out of the visual data representations, you should be aware of how the representation works.
Similarly with sonification. It is not a direct sound recording, and should only loosely be thought of as "the sound of X". But like any data representation, they are valuable because they provide a way to explore a dataset.
A frequent question is: "Why sonify? Aren't visual representations better? Or at least good enough?" There are many answers to this question:
1. Sensitivity: The human auditory system is sensitive to different kinds of features/patterns than the human visual system. For instance, people are quite sensitive to small variations in timing and pitch. So a variation that might be missed if just looking at a graph of a time series becomes obvious if the data is sonified. (There are some actual examples of new ocean currents and astronomical pulsars being discovered by sonified exploration of the data.)
2. Accessibility: For people with visual impairment, sonification provides a way for them to explore a dataset. Even for people without disabilities, some people are more visual-thinkers, while others may be more easily able to understand an audio representation of data.
3. Multi-modal: Using sonification does not preclude a visual representation. Having both channels of access to data allows deeper immersion into datasets.
4. Ambient analysis: Audio representations of data can be listened to while working on another task; if the signal/data deviates substantially from expectations, one will immediately notice this. (By comparison, a visual trigger like a dial is easy to ignore if you're not focusing on it.) Concepts like this are of course implemented in things like alarms, Geiger counters, etc.
I'm certainly not claiming that sonification is a silver-bullet in data exploration. But it can be valuable. So I would not dismiss various attempts to sonify datasets; doing so can indeed provide us with new insights. But, as I said at the outset, sonification is often mistakenly described (especially by journalists) as "the sound of X"; which isn't really helpful.
(Score: 1) by similar_name on Sunday March 09 2014, @09:31PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by forsythe on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:53AM
I was able to find what seems to be the source of the first two: the stuff from Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network, and from Donald Gurnett. The final two (Pulsars and Voyager leaving the heliosphere) I wasn't able to find simple download links to in my brief search, although it seems Tim O'Brien has given demonstrations of the sounds before.
http://bison.ph.bham.ac.uk/index.php?page=outreach ,sounds [bham.ac.uk]s / [uiowa.edu]
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/sound
(Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:22PM
Disconnect the antennae from your TV [if you have one], switch it to use antennae channels [vs cable], and then change to an unused channel. turn the sound up as high as you want.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @07:30PM
Here is direct link to MP3:/ audio_slideshow/newsspec_7250/content/audio_hi.mp3 [bbc.co.uk]
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/news/nol/shared/spl/hi
wget seems to download it without problem.
(Score: 1) by tniemi on Sunday March 09 2014, @08:21PM
In SoylentNews AC delivers the most useful comment...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jt on Sunday March 09 2014, @11:26AM
If you like this kind of thing, you might like Stephen McGreevy's 'Electric Enigma', a series of recordings of VLF electromagnetic emissions from storms, solar wind, and so on. It was published by Irdial and they let you download it for free here: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/stephen%20mcgreevy/dis c%201/ [hyperreal.org] and http://irdial.hyperreal.org/stephen%20mcgreevy/dis c%202/ [hyperreal.org] You also download a PDF of the CD notes here: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/www/vlf_booklet.pdf [hyperreal.org] An alternative link is here: https://archive.org/details/ird062 [archive.org]
Not at all related, but still very interesting, is the Irdial-published Conet Project. This is a set of recordings of three letter agency numbers stations, again available legally for download: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/ disc%201/ [hyperreal.org], http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/ disc%202/ [hyperreal.org], http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/ disc%203/ [hyperreal.org], http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/ disc%204/ [hyperreal.org], and PDF of notes here http://irdial.hyperreal.org/www/conet_project_book let.pdf [hyperreal.org]