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Big Bang Really a Big Hum

Posted by michael on from the letdown dept.

benna writes "The New Scientist reports, 'The Big Bang sounded more like a deep hum than a bang, according to an analysis of the radiation left over from the cataclysm. Physicist John Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle has created audio files of the event which can be played on a PC. "The sound is rather like a large jet plane flying 100 feet above your house in the middle of the night," he says.' Apparently the idea for the project came from an 11 year old."

4 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. Listen to the Big Bang by rpiquepa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is amazing is that Prof. Cramer used only a 16 line Mathematica notebook to produce his simulation of the "sound of the Big Bang. This summary gives you more details on his work and his writings. You also can read his column, "BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang," It has been published in January 2001 and amended in September 2003.

  2. For all those space is a vacuum commenters by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The soundwaves that were found are an impression of quantum scale energy fluctuations carried to earth by cosmic microwave background radiation. Scientists were able to measure the waves by looking at cosmic microwave background (CMB). These early soundwaves are thought to have created super and giant clusters of galaxies with their travel. The soundwaves are actually contained in primordial plasma. They are effectively overtones or harmonics of the big bang explosion that is said to have created the universe.

    I did a story that posted on Kuro5hin some time back about this that goes into just a touch more detail about ramifications for this sound.

  3. Re:Big Bang? by dido · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But the early universe at the moments they're talking about was crammed into a space less than a quarter the size of a proton. Any vibrations in the primordial soup would have to have a wavelength even smaller than this, and hence a frequency whose value in Hertz would boggle the mind. If it had a wavelength bigger than the size of the universe at the time, then the "sound wave" would destructively interfere with itself.

    --
    Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  4. Re:Big Bang? by pegr__ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But, as an observer, you either had to be a part of that "singularity" to "hear" it (certainly couldn't exist as a human in those circumstances) or you had to be separate from the singularity. (Not even sure you could exist outside... Wouldn't you need SPACE and/or TIME for that?) Within the event horizon? Not going to exist for long! Outside of the event horizon? All vacuum, no sound. DURING the event? You just became some of the matter flung all directions.

    The point of this mental drivel? The idea of the Big Bang having any sort of sound is absurd. Kinda like downloading ice cream...