Sign in to follow this  
fenriz275

Sound In Space

Recommended Posts

I have what is probably a really basic question but I figured someone on the site could answer it for me. Is there any sound in space? Do sound waves travel through space? :look:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Nope there is no sound in space i remember watching a interview with some one from the Org startrek Production team,and he explained that they had thought about useing no sound,but then it wouldnt be very intresting watching a ship fly in space with out a sound..

 

In space no one can hear you scream :lol: :look:

Edited by hangon

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But energy travels in waves similar to sound, (according to theorem) that is how new star formation begins; a blast of energy, say from a supernova, collides with a cloud of stable dust and/or gas thus destabilizing it causing it to collapse towards star or solar system formation.

 

That is movements of energy from one place to another just like sound waves right? So wouldn't a sound wave and an energy wave have the same characteristics in common?

 

I wonder if the difference lies in the ears ability to hear space sound or not, just because we don't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the same way our eyes inability to see Hugh portions of the EMS doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I would think so AE. I mean if energy in space is the same as sound, why not?

 

Like if a ship explodes in space, does it make a sound? Like if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? Does our ability to percieve events only make those events real? Percussion bombs use sound as a weapon, is that correct? HMMM :look:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This thread has given me a lot more to thimk about like, Why didn't I pay more attention in school?

 

I think we needs a physicist in this here thread. :look:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
But energy travels in waves similar to sound, (according to theorem) that is how new star formation begins; a blast of energy, say from a supernova, collides with a cloud of stable dust and/or gas thus destabilizing it causing it to collapse towards star or solar system formation.

 

That is movements of energy from one place to another just like sound waves right? So wouldn't a sound wave and an energy wave have the same characteristics in common?

 

I wonder if the difference lies in the ears ability to hear space sound or not, just because we don't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the same way our eyes inability to see Hugh portions of the EMS doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

My thoughts exactly. Perhaps the sound waves are contorted somehow in the vacume so that humans can't interperet them. We can't see the entire light spectum, we can't hear the entire sound spectum, so we may just not be registering sound waves.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know too much about physics, but perhaps I can make a feeble contribution.

 

Energy transport takes many forms. Sound and light - both of which transport energy - take the forms of waves. However, while light - which does travel in space - is a self-propagating, time-dependent transverse wave consisting of (usually) orthogonal electric and magnetic fields, sound is a lognitudinal mechanical wave. It requires matter to travel. There's not a whole lot of matter in interstellar space, and even less in intergalactic space, so particles really don't transmit sound very well.

 

Shock waves, matter jets, and subluminal outflows are also great ways to transfer energy in space as AE said. These are basically "clumps" of matter moving through space - not exactly sound, but the mechanics on a microscopic scale is pretty similar in the case of impingment on other objects.

 

While sound doesn't travel in space for all practical purposes, the speed of sound is

an important consideration in stellar hydrodynamics (the mechanics explaining how stars work). In the case of things like how carbon burning goes on in massive stars, and especially how matter propagates in a supernova explosion, scientists are interested in the "speed of sound" in this medium, as it affects the outflow mechanics.

 

One should keep a few things in mind. Electromagnetic waves are not tangible things. They are paradigms to quantify non-zero disturbances in an electric field. Many people seem to be confused by thinking about light waves as little ocean waves bobbing through space along some sort of sinusoidal path. That's not right.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

Shock waves, matter jets, and subluminal outflows are also great ways to transfer energy in space as AE said.  These are basically "clumps" of matter moving through space - not exactly sound, but the mechanics on a microscopic scale is pretty similar in the case of impingment on other objects.

 

 

OK, nik, it's not exactly matter? Then what is it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Our ears can hear vibration, there is no vibration in space therefore no sound if our ears could pick up energy waves aswel as particle movement, then yes we would here something.

Edited by ARMS

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm going to disagree, to an extent, with AE. if I remember from my science classes correctly, sound is produced by vibrations, and those vibrations create waves through a medium. Sound travels faster in one medium than another (I'd have to check, but if I recall correctly, sound travels faster through water than air, and faster through a solid than through water.) now, since there is no air or liquid in space, there is nothing to carry the sount waves. It works kinda like a guitar string, I suppose. the vibrations of the strings create sound. alter the frequency of the vibration in certain ways, you can make a different sound.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm going to disagree, to an extent, with AE. if I remember from my science classes correctly, sound is produced by vibrations, and those vibrations create waves through a medium. Sound travels faster in one medium than another (I'd have to check, but if I recall correctly, sound travels faster through water than air, and faster through a solid than through water.) now, since there is no air or liquid in space, there is nothing to carry the sount waves. It works kinda like a guitar string, I suppose. the vibrations of the strings create sound. alter the frequency of the vibration in certain ways, you can make a different sound.

That does ring a bell...I think you're right.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm sorry but I'm not buying any of this. What about Percussion?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm sorry but I'm not buying any of this. What about Percussion?

you mean like if I smash the side of the shuttle with a sledge hammer? Sitting on the tarmac at Cape Canaveral, the sound would be rather loud. at 300 miles above the earth's surface, you wouldn't hear a damned thing outside the shuttle. inside is another matter, though. it would sound as though you were in a car crash, more than likely

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

OK, JIM, SO EVEN IF YOU CAN'T HEAR IT IT DOES CAUSE DAMAGE, RIGHT? If a sound wave can travel in space, which we know it can. Can sound be used as a weapon in space?? I mean we've all seen shock waves in space on ST, haven't we?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Shock waves and sound waves are different. A shock wave is the force of the explosion moving outward, sound, like Jim said, is a vibration. In space it doesn't travel, but when a hammer impacts the shuttle, there is something solid for the sound waves to move through.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So sound waves traveling through space have no effect until the hit something then, right?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No, because there is nothing for them to vibrate in.

 

The reason you'd here something hitting the hull is because the vibrations begin on impact, spreading through the solid walls.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

exactly. Inside the shuttle, it sounds like someone hitting the side of the ship with a sledge hammer, since the air inside the shuttle conducts the vibrations. outside you don't hear anything.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wish I had seen this thread earlier. The true definition of sound, as we know it, is minute fluctuations of air pressure producing what is called "Compression" and "Rarefaction". An object, voice, or instrument causes changes in air pressure that ours ears pick up and transmutes or changes into electrical pulses to the brain via the ear drum and inner ear. Sound travels by compressing the air molecules and then releases them when the energy of the sound wave passes. Think of a slinky stretched out horizontally. If you take one end and give it a push, you'll see that little wave travel down the length of the slinky. The coils compress as the energy travels down the length and then returns to it's original position once the wave has passed. Sound in air or water works this way. In space, there is really no medium for sound to travel through, there is not enough dense material for the waves to travel through. Air has mass and therefore can transmit energy. Space just doesn't have enough mass to be able to transmit a sound wave that our ears can hear. Plus we can only hear sounds that fall into the rage of 20Hz on the low end and 20,000 Hz on the high end. Our sensitivity though falls primarily between 400 Hz and 7,500 Hz. A very narrow range. Everything else above or below these numbers our ears pick up as harmonics of those frequencies. We sense them more than really hear them. SPL or sound pressure level, determines how loud we perceive that sound to be. Expose yourself to enough high SPL's and your hearing will begin to diminish. Now in space, there are energy waves that are way above our level of hearing and most likely produce frequencies that we just can't pick up and depending on what sort of energy wave it is, might or might not produce a sound if it meets a barrier such as the side of a space capsule or such. As far as we know, gamma, x-rays and such produce no discernible sound that we can detect but it just may be that we haven't yet developed the instruments sensitive enough to actually measure and transmute those energy waves into something our brains can understand. It would fall into the realm of psycho-acoustics or how our brains interpret sound. To understand psycho-acoustics more, here's a fun experiment I used to give my students when I was teaching. Stand in front of a normal set of stereo speakers set at a minimum of 6 feet apart, enough to produce a proper stereo image. Stand in a position that places you at equal distance between the speakers. Now blindfold yourself and have someone either play a piece of music or better yet a sine wave or steady tone out of just one speaker. Without moving your head, keeping it facing forward to the speakers, point to where the sound is coming from as you hear it. Now have that person slowly pan that sound towards the other speaker all the while continuing to point to where you believe the sound is coming from. If you set this up correctly, your finger should follow the sound from one speaker to the other. That left and right spectrum is produced by the changes in SPL between the two speakers and if you send equal levels to both speakers, your finger should be pointing to a space directly between the two speakers where there is no sound source. This is where your brain is telling you where the sound is coming from but there is nothing there. I got a little off track here but it helps to understand the rudiments of how sound actually works.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

OK, X, the reason THIS thread was started was to get a discussion going on weaponry in space. Since Fen and I were writing a story I was trying to come up with a weapon we could use in space involving Sound. I came up with this idea, The "Sonic Percussion Mine". But since we had this discussion in this thread I found out that the actual weapon had to be attatched to the hull of a ship for it to work. Fen did an excellent job of using the weapon in the story. He figured out a way to attatch it to a cloaked ship and it did destroy all the ship's systems. It was an excellent post. Want to read it? I can go find it and post it in this thread. May take me a little while but I'll find it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

X, these a 2 posts from 'Day Star':

 

 

"Jeanway to Fenriz, you there?" Jeanway says as she taps her com-badge. "I'm here in Launch bay 4, both Evaiders ready to launch." He answers. " Be careful out there." She answers. The Evaiders are going to drop two mines on the cloaked Romulan ship. One, the first an ion mine to create a storm of sorts, the second mine a sonic percussion mine to knock out all their systems.

 

A pair of Evaiders shot away from one of the HT 01's four launch bays. Piloting one of them, Fenriz linked the sensors of his craft to those of the Elusive. The neural interface projected the data directly into his mind. Mentally he had the computer highlight any traces of mid-rapidity anti-proton residue, MRAPR. In his mind the MPAPR showed up as a red vapor that was overlayed on the field of stars that filled his view. He turned his ship towards the largest concentration. "Alpha two, do you see that dense pocket at bearing 168 mark 34?" Fenriz asked the pilot of the 2nd Evaider. "Affirmative, I bet that's our Warbird." In unison the two tiny ships turned sharply and sped towards their target. Alpha two accelerated past Fenriz, it carried the ion mine that would detonate and release a massive burst of ion radiation. In order to protect itself from the radiation the Warbird would have to lower it's cloaking field and raise it's shields. Fenriz would then be able to lock onto it and drop the sonic percussion mine. The sonic percussion mine would release a massive blast of sound but in order for this to have any effect the mine would have to be in direct contact with the hull of the Warbird when it detonated. "That is going to be the tricky part." Fenriz said to himself.

Alpha two reached the coordinates and released the ion mine. As the mine's detonator counted down the Evaider sped away to a safe distance. With a flash the ion mine exploded, bathing everything in it's blast radius with radiation. Within seconds Fenriz saw the Warbird appear as it decloaked and raised it's shields. Accelerating to maximum velocity he steered his Evaider directly at the large ship. His sensors told him that the Warbird was trying to lock onto to him but without success, disruptor blasts began to lance out from the Warbird as the ship fired it's weapons manually. A few were a little too close to comfort for Fenriz and he set the Evaider on an erratic course, making it an almost impossible target. At the last moment he put the engines into full reverse before powering them down completely letting the Evaider drift through the Warbird's shields. At such a close range the large ship couldn't target him as Fenriz used thrusters to maneuver close enough to release the sonic percussion mine. Fenriz released the mine and watched it drift away from him and attach itself to the hull of it's target. There was no immediate sign that it had detonated until Fenriz could see the Warbird vibrating, within seconds small explosions began to erupt all over the ship. Fenriz's sensors told him that the Romulan ship was experiencing widespread system failures, it was dead in space. "Alpha two, head for home." Fenriz commed. Turning his Evaider back towards the HT 01 he thought "The Admiral will have more then a few questions for our Romulan friends."

Edited by Jeanway

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this