{"id":363,"date":"2025-08-25T14:02:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.sciencepicker.com\/?p=363"},"modified":"2025-08-25T14:02:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:02:54","slug":"can-a-planet-make-a-sound-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/can-a-planet-make-a-sound-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a planet make a sound in space?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The physics of sound waves<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The spectrum of light that we really understand is very tiny\ncompared to the much-extended spectrum of possible light, extending from\ngamma-rays to radio waves. Signals that can be transformed to sound make up\nonly one part of that spectrum.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way humans and creatures hear sound<\/strong> is, sound<\/strong>\nstreams travel within the air and ultimately reach the ears of the listeners.\nInside, they recoil into the eardrum, which starts to vibrate. Those waves<\/strong>\npass within small bones in the ear and cause small hairs to vibrate. The hairs\nappear like small aerials and transform the fluctuations into electrical\nsignals that race to the intellect through the nervures. The brain then\ntranslates that as sound<\/strong> and identifies the pitch and tone of the sound<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about sound in space?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Everyone has tried the line used to promote the 1979 movie “Alien” – In space<\/strong>, no one can hear you scream. It’s actually quite accurate about sound<\/strong> in space<\/strong>. For any sounds<\/strong> to be discovered while someone is in space<\/strong>, there have to be molecules to fluctuate. On our planet, air molecules vibrate and transfer sound<\/strong> to our ears. In space<\/strong>, there are fewer (if any) molecules to deliver sound<\/strong> waves<\/strong> to the ears of people. Plus, if someone is in space<\/strong>, they’re expected to be wearing a heavy helmet and a spacesuit <\/strong>that wouldn\u2019t let them catch any sounds because there’s no air to transfer it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn’t mean there aren’t vibrations passing through space<\/strong>, it\u2019s just that there are no molecules to pick them up. However, those discharges can be used to produce artificial sounds<\/strong> that are not the original sounds<\/strong> a planet or other objects might make. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Are we really “hearing” a planet sound?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The planets\ndon’t produce a lovely melody when spaceships<\/strong> travel by. But, they do\ngive off all those radiations that Voyager, New Horizons, Cassini, Galileo, and\nothers can collect, and communicate back to Earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, each\nplanet does have its personal, different tune. That’s because each of them has\nvarious wavelengths that are transmitted due to different amounts of imposed\nparticles flying nearby, and because of the multiple magnetic field forces in the\nsolar system. Every planet\u2019s sound<\/strong> varies, and so does the space<\/strong>\naround it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astronomers have also transformed data from satellite crossing the boundary of the solar system termed the heliopause and directed it into a sound<\/strong>. It’s not affiliated with any planet but does show that signals can come from various places in space<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do data collections become sound?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The music we listen to on streaming services, our\nphones or personal players is simply encoded data. Our music players reassemble\nthe data into sound<\/strong> streams that we can hear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Voyager 2 data, there were no actual\nsound waves. However, the compound of the electromagnetic winding and particle\nwaving frequencies could have turned into sound<\/strong> in the same way that our\nmusic players turn it into sound<\/strong>. All NASA did was, took the data\ncollected by Voyager exploration and transformed it into sound<\/strong> waves<\/strong>.\nThat’s where the “songs” of different planets came from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The physics of sound waves The spectrum of light that we really understand is very tiny compared to the much-extended spectrum of possible light, extending from gamma-rays to radio waves. Signals that can be transformed to sound make up only one part of that spectrum. The way humans and creatures hear sound is, sound streams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":686,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}