Sound is caused by vibrations in a medium. Common mediums we experience sound in are air and water. You can hear how the difference in sound mediums affect how you perceive the sound.
Space has no medium for sound to travel it is a near perfect vacuum. There would be nothing to vibrate to produce sound.
There’s a medium even in interstellar space. But the pressure is low, so transmission is as well. There is no hard boundary on ‘atmosphere’. Just smooth gradients of density across the universe
Technically true, there is matter in space. But the particles are so far apart that they don’t vibrate against each other, so no reasonable person would describe it as a medium of transmission.
Particle’s still collide in space. There’s nothing keeping them from doing that. Collisions simply increase due to increased pressure. It’s not really technical, just true. If anything it’s a misunderstanding to imply otherwise or that empty space exists. If you want to distinguish human audible. Then certainly it isn’t that. But then neither are infrasound or ultrasound.
Technically and extremely fascinating is that “space itself” not just the baryons inside it, is still a medium. Its literally how LIGO functions. And if that’s not mind blowing enough, there actually are massive structures in space caused by pressure waves that we can detect. Those are technical. And another fun fact, if the atmospheric pressure at sea level extended all the way to the sun. We would be able to perceive the sound of the sun. Millions of miles away. Everywhere across the surface of the earth a constant 100 Dba roar. A bit quieter than standing close to a jet engine.
I’m surprised the sun would fall so neatly in our hearing range. Seems like the odds of it instantly shredding our eardrums, or being too faint to perceive were much higher.
Remember that dB is a logarithmic scale. Each 10 is 10x bigger than the 1 before. We talk at around 60dB, so 10,000x quieter. We can hear from around -9dB to 90dB (into hearing damage territory) that’s a 10,000,000,000x range. If you allow for hearing damage, a gunshot is around 140dB. So add 5 extra zeros to that.
True. A sufficiently low-pitch sound will travel just fine. In neutral gas, it only breaks down as the wavelength reaches the mean free path of the particles.
On top of that, space is usually filled with ionised gas, and sound could travel electromagnetically. Actually calculating what that looks like in near-Earth space is beyond me.
Sound is caused by vibrations in a medium. Common mediums we experience sound in are air and water. You can hear how the difference in sound mediums affect how you perceive the sound.
Space has no medium for sound to travel it is a near perfect vacuum. There would be nothing to vibrate to produce sound.
There’s a medium even in interstellar space. But the pressure is low, so transmission is as well. There is no hard boundary on ‘atmosphere’. Just smooth gradients of density across the universe
Technically true, there is matter in space. But the particles are so far apart that they don’t vibrate against each other, so no reasonable person would describe it as a medium of transmission.
Particle’s still collide in space. There’s nothing keeping them from doing that. Collisions simply increase due to increased pressure. It’s not really technical, just true. If anything it’s a misunderstanding to imply otherwise or that empty space exists. If you want to distinguish human audible. Then certainly it isn’t that. But then neither are infrasound or ultrasound.
Technically and extremely fascinating is that “space itself” not just the baryons inside it, is still a medium. Its literally how LIGO functions. And if that’s not mind blowing enough, there actually are massive structures in space caused by pressure waves that we can detect. Those are technical. And another fun fact, if the atmospheric pressure at sea level extended all the way to the sun. We would be able to perceive the sound of the sun. Millions of miles away. Everywhere across the surface of the earth a constant 100 Dba roar. A bit quieter than standing close to a jet engine.
I’m surprised the sun would fall so neatly in our hearing range. Seems like the odds of it instantly shredding our eardrums, or being too faint to perceive were much higher.
Remember that dB is a logarithmic scale. Each 10 is 10x bigger than the 1 before. We talk at around 60dB, so 10,000x quieter. We can hear from around -9dB to 90dB (into hearing damage territory) that’s a 10,000,000,000x range. If you allow for hearing damage, a gunshot is around 140dB. So add 5 extra zeros to that.
Human hearing is insane.
Thank you for the rabbit holes, interesting stuff!
Just coming back to say the rabbit hole lasted about 7 hours lmao
Aha and hearing people told us the sun wasn’t loud!
True. A sufficiently low-pitch sound will travel just fine. In neutral gas, it only breaks down as the wavelength reaches the mean free path of the particles.
On top of that, space is usually filled with ionised gas, and sound could travel electromagnetically. Actually calculating what that looks like in near-Earth space is beyond me.
… but if you’re in a medium in a vessel which is in space, then you’ll sure as shit hear someone scream.
Sure, just like right now, on spaceship earth!