Meteors may emit radio waves as they burn up in the atmosphere. The radio waves could be converted to sound by vibrating objects near the ground, explaining why some observers "hear" meteors in real time despite the discrepancy between the speeds of light and sound:
For centuries, some observers have claimed that shooting stars or meteors hiss as they arc through the night sky. And for just as long, skeptics have scoffed on the grounds that sound waves coming from meteors should arrive several minutes after the light waves, which travel nearly a million times faster. Now, scientists have proposed a theory to explain how our eyes and ears could perceive a meteor at nearly the same time. The hypothesis might also explain how auroras produce sound, a claim made by many indigenous peoples living at high latitudes.
Meteors release huge amounts of energy as they disintegrate in the atmosphere. They also produce low frequency radio waves that travel at the speed of light. Some scientists have suggested that those radio waves produce the sound that accompanies meteors. The waves can cause everyday objects—including fences, hair, and glasses—to vibrate, which our ears pick up as sound between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. This phenomenon, called electrophonics, is a well-known principle: "The conversion from electromagnetic waves to sound waves ... is exactly how your radio works," says Colin Price, an atmospheric scientist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and co-author of the new study. "But in this case nature provides the conversion between electromagnetic waves and acoustic waves."
On the electrophonic generation of audio frequency sound by meteors (DOI: 10.1002/2017GL072911) (DX)
Photoacoustic Sounds from Meteors (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep41251) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:39PM
Nice try. I've read that book too.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:43PM (3 children)
I've been in some high RF environments and many KW doesn't do much to natural stuff other than smell ozone sometimes.
Electronic stuff will get weird of course.
I'm just saying the meteors aren't making nearly as much power...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:27PM (2 children)
It's not just a matter of the power. It's a matter of the spectrum. When you were in the high RF environment, how much of the power was in the 20Hz-20KHz range?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @12:46PM (1 child)
Not much but anything non-linear would have detected the AM signals.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 19 2017, @12:55PM
Sure, it would detect the AM signals, but if the various natural objects couldn't mechanically respond to the signals and/or those signals weren't in the range of your hearing, there would be no notable sound.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:49PM (3 children)
so ... basically, normal approved science says that if a square kilometer cube of meteroid falling away from the heavenly skies to fill snug into some square earthly county, then, even 1 cm before impact, the surface would know nothing of the imminent desaster? or even 1 mm?
the study suggests that everything is connected to everything, even before a lazy observer trying to enforce light-speed, that shit happens.
if the tree falls and nobody is there to observe, it doesnt make a sound.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:11PM (2 children)
I assume you're aware of what you've been smoking.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:50PM
virgina tobacoa with a hint of vanilla?
or do you mean the hippy lazy after hour rope making sailing ship kind of cheap hemp?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday April 18 2017, @11:23PM
That is dependent upon how good it is. Plus, the really good stuff gives you short term memory loss. So, it is dependent upon how good it is.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:03PM (5 children)
hiss as they arc through the night sky
I've kept tropical fish for some decades and they pay a ridiculous amount of attention to their sky that being the top of the aquarium where I feed them.
My point is that maybe snakes don't like getting eaten by hawks and some moving thing in the sky pissed them off mightily so they hiss, because other than being eaten theres not much they can do as a hawk swoops about. Just because some dude doesn't find the snake doesn't prove there wasn't a snake there recently.
New generations are growing up knowing that hiss, thats a creeper not a meteor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:24PM (4 children)
I have heard a meteor and I have heard a snake. They do not sound alike.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @12:45PM (3 children)
I have heard a meteor
LOL you can't just drop that without any details.
So do meteors sound like stand up comedy laughter or a large diesel engine or fairies or ...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 19 2017, @01:03PM (2 children)
More of a whoosh. Very similar to red noise.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)
Low freq atmospheric noise has a reddish spectrum (at higher freqs its more white noise spectral shape) so that's not unrealistic. Thats not even mythbusters "plausible" but more "not implausible"
If you can hear a meteor you should have been able to hear omega stations. I hooked a tweeter up to a longwire antenna when I was much younger (omega shut down like 20 years ago) and I heard omega stations, very high freq beeps in the lower 10 khz range. In theory people who hear meteors should have been driven insane by hearing much stronger omega transmissions. Then again, maybe some tinnitus sufferers were successfully receiving omega pulses... That must have been pretty annoying to listen to 24x7.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:07PM
If you can hear a meteor you should have been able to hear omega stations.
That presumes something in my ear was decoding and converting the signal. I have seen many meteors since, but have not heard them.
Wideband vs very narrow makes a difference. For a narrow signal like OMEGA, you not only need something to just happen to have a non-linear response, but to be responsive to the center frequency (or close to it) The latter part is much more likely with a broad signal.
Accidentally decoding OMEGA might explain an instance where I heard an incandescent light bulb "sing" for a minute or 2 just before it burned out.
Probably irrelevant but I do have a bit of tinnitus and have for as long as I can remember.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:44PM (7 children)
So, even after I bother to paint my meteor black, and shove it in the right orbit, I'd also need to put an EMI shield on it to be sure it won't get detected too early?
Come on, guys! Give me a break, it should work anyway. The guys from DC are typically actively ignoring any change in the atmosphere's content.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:58PM
tbh (to be hoenest) there is nooo way you can do everything alone. some things need the right time ( shared time) and four hands (not a mutant).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 18 2017, @10:33PM (3 children)
Whatever happened to relativistic kill vehicles?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 18 2017, @10:46PM
Can't talk about those when the relatives are in town.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:09PM (1 child)
Has anyone actually developed any to talk about?
To the target of such a weapon, due to relativistic length contraction, such weapons would appear to be much shorter in length.
There was a certain runner carrying a javelin. There was a barn with both it's front and back door wide open. The javelin is the exact length of the barn from front door to back door. The farmer is in the barn, off to the side, trying to hack the micro controllers on his John Deere farm equipment. The runner is approaching the barn at nearly the speed of light. He runs all the way through the barn. Through the front door and out the back door.
Incident report from the farmer.
I saw the runner approaching carrying the javelin. The runner entered through the front door. After he entered the barn through the front door, I was able to slam the front door closed. He was still inside running, and then after a short time, he reached the back door and ran right on out of the barn. The javelin easily fit completely within the barn with lots of room to spare.
Incident report from the runner.
I was approaching the barn. I saw the farmer using some hex editing software on a laptop. I ran into the barn. From the midpoint of the barn I could see that the front end of the javelin was already far outside of the barn's back door. I glanced over my shoulder and could see that the other end of the javelin was still far outside of the still open front door of the barn. So clearly the javelin was much much longer than the length of the barn. After I exited the barn, the farmer closed the barn's front door.
So which is true?
Both of them are true. Each is absolutely true. One isn't any more right than the other. The barn and javelin are approach each other with a closing velocity nearly light speed. From the farmer's POV the javelin is foreshortened. From the runner's POV the barn is foreshortened. No matter what physics experiments you do, no matter what sensors and instruments you put on either the barn or the javelin, both accounts are correct as reported.
Q. How much did Santa's sled cost?
A. Nothing. It was on the house.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:48PM
> Both of them are true
Only if the barn contains frictionless spherical cows in a vacuum.
Otherwise, a blast of high-speed plasma made up of former organic and metallic molecules blew the barn, and the rest of the farm, down.
No word on whether the local spacetime warp helped to hack the JD controller.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19 2017, @12:14AM (1 child)
Once it hits the atmosphere all bets are off regardless. Doesn't matter how black it is when it's preceded by a white-hot ball of plasma created by the insane compression of a Mach 23+ bow wave. Actually, I'm curious how much of the low-frequency radio noise is produced by the bow wave itself, rather than the meteor disintegrating in its heat.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday April 19 2017, @03:49PM
I think black because he is worried about those dang visible light telescopes spotting whatever orbital maneuvres are necessary to get the trajectory right...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:12AM (1 child)
If indigenous peoples living at high latitudes can hear meteors then it can be assumed that it's not modern objects that cause this phenomena?
The article mentions fences which I doubt applies to indigenous people, hair just seem to sloppy and not receptive, and glasses is rare among indigenous people I'll assume. So what objects are there in nature that would convert electromagnetic radiation into sound? It ought to be something that conduct so my suspicion is rocks with metal content that have the right shape to vibrate freely. Any other?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 19 2017, @03:38PM
Something to consider is the peak ZHR for the Perseids in 2016 was about three times normal, but not shocking, around 220/hr. So thats around 1 every 20 seconds and its completely believable that if a large one made it down to lower atmosphere and made sonic boomy wooshy noises there's a quite measurable statistical odds that if you looked up you'd see a meteor, while hearing a meteor, yet they're different meteors.
Also something non-scientific people miss is most meteor "fun" happens quite a bit higher than clouds, so during huge meteor showers people should be hearing weird stuff from the sky even when its cloudy. I suppose if its rainy people would misidentify as thunder.
(Score: 5, Informative) by caffeine on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:28AM (1 child)
One of my physics lecturers wrote a paper on this in 1979 - referenced here - http://home.pacific.net.au/~ddcsk1/gelphonx.htm [pacific.net.au]
He died a couple of years ago but was one of the few lecturers I remember well after almost 30 years.
(Score: 2) by lx on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:54PM
Thanks. Any paper containing the expression "magnetic spaghetti" is worth my time.
(Score: 1) by EventH0rizon on Wednesday April 19 2017, @12:12PM (2 children)
I have experienced this (the Leonids over southern Australia in 1999).
See Can You Hear a Meteor? [livescience.com]
It's a very weird phenomenon.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:24PM (1 child)
Is there any possibility that you are not actually hearing a sound but that some EMI from the meteor affects your biological hearing apparatus in a way that you perceive a sound? But the sound is non existent. This would allow the possibility that the EMI is at a higher frequency than typical audio frequencies.
It would be interesting if there were concurrently an audio recording made at the time you heard the meteor.
Q. How much did Santa's sled cost?
A. Nothing. It was on the house.
(Score: 1) by EventH0rizon on Tuesday April 25 2017, @12:34AM
That's a good question. I'm not clear how much the shape of the ear (for instance) is implicated in the experience.
The impression I've gained from other sources I've read, (but this could be wrong), is that the sounds are produced in the immediate environment around the listener and should be capable of being recorded by any audio device.
The sound you experience is very, very odd ;-)