Big Bang Really a Big Hum

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."

Comments

Big Bang?

[captainclever]

Sound doesn't travel thru space (a vacuum) right... so how can you hear the big bang?

Re:Big Bang?

[Transient0]

The entirety of all matter constituting the eventual univers hardly qualifies as a vacuum when highly concentrated.

Re:Big Bang?

[Ianoo]

The reason you can't hear sound in space is because it's almost a vacuum. Back around the time of the Big Bang, matter was packed much closer together and density was far higher. Much higher, for example, than the density of the Earth's atmosphere. So yes, sound vibrations could propagate around in the early universe.

Re:Big Bang?

[DShard]

You mean that the unvierse has _stuff_ in it? no, no, no... At the big bang it was all empty space on the backs of turtles. Below the turtles were more turtles. Eventually the unverse cooled down and expanded enough that the turtles got sucked in. The process of turtles falling into the universe caused matter to be created.

Re:Big Bang?

[Davak]

From these variations, he could calculate the frequencies of the sound waves propagating through the Universe during its first 760,000 years, when it was just 18 million light years across. At that time the sound waves were too low in frequency to be audible. To hear them, Cramer had to scale the frequencies 100,000 billion billion times.

I am not sure of the scientific strength of a study where you take some extremely, extremely small number multiply it times "100,000 billion billion"... and then try to make some scientific sense from it.

I'll agree that it's interesting enough that he may be able to get a grant and make some scientific cents out of it.

Re:Big Bang?

[dido]

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.

Re:Big Bang?

[Gordonjcp]

Ah, but the medium would be very dense, so the speed of sound would be high. And, if the soundwaves were longer, they *wouldn't* destructively interfere except at very specific wavelengths. You'd get a phasey, comb-filter effect - rather like a jet plane going overhead.

Re:Big Bang?

[pegr__]

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...

Re:Big Bang?

[sinucus]

and here I am thinking this whole time that slashdotters were intelligent. Another dream I once had shot down in the flaming vacuum of space. OMG I said flames in space, how could that be, because you need air to have fire, right? I think http://www.badastronomy.com would be a useful link for most of you people who have absolutly NO understanding of anything outside of the 6 inches of grey matter inside that skull of yours.

Re:Big Bang?

[neelm]

What if D O G really spelled cat?

Re:Big Bang?

[Trolling4Dollars]

Hey man... that's deep.

Re:Big Bang?

[rpresser]

Read up on cosmic inflation.

Re:Big Bang?

[4of12]

...sound vibrations...

Hmmm, make a note for Human Species 2.0 design specs:

• coat eardrums with metallized layers to pick up EM waves instead of just acoustic pressure waves,
• get finger tips metallized with electrochemical charging so hand-waving arguments are adequate communication

Re:Big Bang?

[yourmom16]

Ah, but the medium would be very dense, so the speed of sound would be high.

no the speed of sound is the square root of the bulk modulus divided by the density, so high density means sound moves slower. However if it did move faster it would mean low wavelengths correspond to even higher frequencys.

And, if the soundwaves were longer, they *wouldn't* destructively interfere except at very specific wavelengths.

Without taking into account the uncertainty principle, They *would* destructively interfere except at certain wavelengths. When the wave hits the boundary and is reflected it then interferes with other parts of the wave, which are out of phase, they continue to reflect back and forth until they are 180 degrees out of phase and you get destrictive interference.

However with the uncertainty principle its more complicated. The uncertainty in the wave number (the wave number is 2 times pi divided by the wavelength) times the uncertainty in position (not really an uncertainty, this roughly describes the amount of space the wave takes up, the term comes from quantum mechanics) is at least 1/2. This leads to a wider range of wave numbers being possible(for the same reason spectral lines have thickness, however there it is best to use energy rather than wave number). Since we are talking about a very small amount of space being possible for the wave to take up this means the uncertainty in the wave number is very high, meaning any wave number, and thus any wavelength, is possible.

Re:Big Bang?

[neonmagic]

mmm I suspect people read plancks laws, the uncertainty principle by Heisenberg and read some of Niels Bohr' works. Not just read Einsteins general or special theory of relativity. Might want to try reading Sir Isaac Newtons Principia Mathematica as well. I would logically say that given the uncertainty principle, and quantum physics as per plancks definitions, sound would not have occurred. As some others have pointed out, sound may have occurred after the big bang, from when time and space started to behave under 'normal' known physics. Anything prior to that is well...unknown. Several people such as Stephen Hawking & Roger Penrose have suggested in the past that time was a by product of the big bang. Well, time as we know it. But that's another story ;-) Einstein himself had several heated debates with Niels Bohr and did not like the uncertainty principle or Quantum physics either. Hence his great comment "God does not play dice". Dave

Hum? Huh.

[Robotech_Master]

I guess it just didn't know the words.

The sound of one hand clapping.

[DShard]

And how do you verify what it sounded like. This seems like the jumped a few steps in the scientific method.

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[Ianoo]

It's a hypothesis, just like the Big Bang itself. There's no real way to "prove" it, except inventing a time machine. People don't seem to get what science is all about. No-one can ever be 100% sure of a theory. In the case of the Big Bang:

1. We observe that things seem to be moving away from eachother pretty rapidly.
   
2. We note that if things are moving away from eachother, it's quite likely they all started out in the same place. So we formulate the Big Bang hypothesis.
   
3. We go out and look to see if our new hypothesis can predict any interesting things, like star formation or black holes, or whether it fits nicely with other theories like Relativity, for which we already have compelling evidence.
4. We do experiments to test these predictions. An experiment can also be an observation, in the sense that the entire universe can be viewed as one big continual experiment about which we can record results.

So, it seems the Big Bang is about the best model we have of universe formation at the current time. So by applying other physics principles we might be able to estimate what it sounded like. True, this is in a sense unprovable, so I agree that we can't really reach step 4, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Scientists (Personally, I'm just an amateur these days) have great difficulty getting people to understand this distinction. These wackos say things like PROVE EVOLUTION OR I DECLARE IT WRONG!. The point is, you can't prove it, and any scientist will regard such things just as the best model based on some compelling evidnece, but will never put blind faith in it.

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[swillden]

any scientist will regard such things just as the best model based on some compelling evidnece, but will never put blind faith in it.

There's ample historical evidence to disprove this theory, unfortunately. Many scientists get tied to particular theories and cannot be dissuaded from them. In the face of evidence that appears to contradict their theories, they try to find ways to discredit the evidence or demonstrate through some logical sleight of hand that it does fit their theory. Or sometimes they just ignore it.

This is because scientists are people and people are imperfect. However, science as a whole is pretty effective at discarding bad theories, even if scientists aren't. It just takes a generation or two.

It's also important to remember that bad theories, once established, do not die until a theory that is clearly better comes along. Until then, the bad theory is kept, and patched to fit the evidence.

Science is a fine process for understanding the observable world, but it's a good idea to understand its limitations as well as its strengths. One must be skeptical of skepticism :-)

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[forgotmypassword]

This is because scientists are people and people are imperfect. However, science as a whole is pretty effective at discarding bad theories, even if scientists aren't. It just takes a generation or two.

It's also important to remember that bad theories, once established, do not die until a theory that is clearly better comes along. Until then, the bad theory is kept, and patched to fit the evidence

I think you are mixing things in your head.

Bad theories still get used because they can still have utility. Today we still use Netwonian Gravity, because it works fairly well and its a million times easier than GR. But we know that NG is wrong. And we know that Newtonian mechanics is wrong. But its easy to understand and its easy to calculate.

I'll give you an even better example. We know (physics) that every single theory we have is wrong. GR is classical, QED is bad at small distances, QCD is bad at large distances, ... They are all wrong. We know they are wrong. And like you said, we won't stop using them until a better theory comes along. And like in the case of NG/GR we may still use the old theory.

If we all put our calculators down everytime we figured out how one of the fundamental theories was wrong, then we would never get anywhere.

Now aside from that there are old foggy scientists that will never convert from aether theory to that new fangled relativity. But this is a completely different process, and it is much less important - because those old grey physicists don't publish much and they don't have nearly as much impact on the community as the young guns. Physics today is a young man's science (peak at 30), and this is why we are focusing/wasting so many minds on completely unfounded things like string theory.

The main problem you state lies in long time rivalries between semi-unproven theories. Right now Quantum Loop Gravity is a rival to String Theory. String people say "hey you're not Lorentz invariant". And the Loop people say "so what, Poincare sucks, we use an A/DS universe. you're using a background metric, you can't quantize gravity with that, duh" to which the string people reply "er, um, its perturbative quantum gravity" or "we believe classical gravity only gets the waves right perturbatively anyhow"

Perhaps in the future, after we have quantized gravity, things will settle down once again and the old people will rule.

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[Tyreth]

The theory of "evolution" encompasses more than what they study. As talkorigins.org puts it, evolution is "Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time." That is probably what your thousands of biologists study. Of course, creationists also agree with that definition of evolution. What we reject is that all life has a common ancestor, and that given enough time living things will increase in complexity and the gene pool will become more diverse.

I'm curious to know when exactly you think that these thousands of scientists are daily studying evolution - because I'm betting they're only studying those portions of evolutionary theory that also are a part of the creationist model.

Of course, there are examples of false evolutionary predictions that have had dangerous medical effects. Take for example the philosophy that humans and other creatures would have many vestigial organs. That has turned out to be ~0. And there's the example of back treatment based on the false assumption that our ancestors walked like apes. That cause more problems until a creationist started treating patients on the assumption that the back is designed perfectly as it is. Read more here.

My recommendation is that you explore the whole of that theory of evolution that creationists reject, and see whether the pieces really do fit together.

Bear in mind, if you don't understand how a creationist can accept natural selection (which is a part of the creationist model) and still consider themselves sane/credible, then you have a lot to learn about our position. As I've said many times, I am yet to find an evolutionist who understands our position. And to me, that speaks volumes of people who are so quick to condemn something they haven't even taken the time to understand and evaluate.

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[Tyreth]

Let him who puts on his armour not boast as one who takes it off. You pretend you have already won the discussion before I've responded. This is indicative to me that you will not listen, even if you are proven wrong.

There's just so much wrong about what you say, but I've argued with others before - when their back has been against the wall (as you like to call it), the argument gets irrational very quickly. I don't much enjoy the sensation of banging my head against a brick wall - so I've taken the liberty of only arguing/debating with those who have the wisdom not to act arrogantly.

Your "theological" arguments are flawed on a fundamental level and are incredibly simple to dispel. I will answer that because it is the simplest - and also as a test. If I see you are willing to be corrected on the small things, then I'll know if it's worth my time replying to your other "points". But I must re-emphasise, I despise your arrogance that assumes that anything I can offer is wrong, and that all your arguments are perfect and flawless. I have no need to admit I lied if I did no such thing. I will not plead guilty when I am innocent. This makes me extremely unwilling to grace you with a response. Nevertheless, on with the easy one...

Your original claim: "Elementary theology all by itself shows that this must be wrong: if there is proof there cannot be faith."
Elementary theology teaches no such thing, at least not from any institutes I know of, or in any churches I visit. Faith has two definitions:
1. Believing in something without proof. "I've never seen fairies but I have faith that they exist"
2. Having proof of something, and so putting your trust in them. "I've seen my friend shoot and never miss the target, so I have faith he'll hit the apple on my head and not me"

See the difference? The second is the correct definition of the faith that Christ calls us to have. We already have adequate proof and assurance of His existence, and His faithfullness in fulfilling His promises. Given that, when He tells us to have faith in Him, He is telling us to trust in Him to fulfill what He promised.
So your claim that proof invalidates faith is absurd and based on an incorrect definition of Biblical faith. Proof goes hand in hand with true Biblical faith, not opposed to it.

This is a common misconception, even amongst Christians, who believe that proof will destroy their faith. I always correct them and tell them that faith has nothing to do with believing without proof, and everything to do with trusting in someone who has already proven Himself.

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[Tyreth]

My goodness...do you want to actually provide any evidence of your definition of faith, or pretend you are a theologian?

Look up "faith" in the dictionary. It also means trust. I trust one friend because he has proven himself trustworthy. I distrust another because he has proven himself untrustworthy. It's a simple concept. Your verses do not contradict anything about my position.

But I'm not going to debate with you any more. I despise the way you pretend you have already won an argument before taking the time to discuss. Your very first post arrogantly assumed that I would not be able to stand up against you.

There are, according to Wiedersheim, no less than 180 vestigal [sic] structures in the human body, sufficient to make of a man a veritable walking museum of antiquities. Among these [is] the vermiform appendix . These and numerous other structures of the same sort can be reasonably interpreted as evidence that man has descended from ancestors in which these organs were functional. Man has never completely lost these characters; he continues to inherit them though he no longer has any use for them.

The World?s Most Famous Court Trial, Tennessee Evolution Case (A word-for-word report), Bryan College, p. 268, 1990 (reprinted from the original 1925 edition).

Re:The sound of one hand clapping.

[Tyreth]

Your claim: if there is proof there cannot be faith

You stated that this was elementary theology. I contend that elementary theology teaches no such thing - at least not within the reformed tradition, of which I am a member.

I did. Repeatedly. All those passages in the Bible support my position and refute yours.

Very well, I'll examine the Hebrews verse where you appear to get your definition of faith from:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen - Hebrews 11:1. The word faith here is in the greek "pistis". This means "conviction of the truth of anything, belief" Take also the second definition, "fidelity, faithfulness, i. e. the character of one who can be relied on" (Thayer's Greek English Lexicon). It says nothing about conviction of the truth of anything without proof. In fact, in order to be convicted of the truth of something, it must be proven in one's mind (no matter how poor the evidence is). This word means trusting in someone who has proven themselves. We know that God's word is good and true, because He has proven His testimony many times throughout history. Therefore, we have faith in Him. So, just as vs 3 says, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Not because we have seen them formed personally, but because He is faithful and His word is worthy of trust - and if it's worthy of trust, then we know from His word how the world was formed.

First remotely accurate thing you've said on the matter. Faith is not about, is never about proof or empirical evidence. This is irrefutable as I have provided ample quotes form the Bible illustrating this.

You should not assume your logic to be so flawless. You are right that faith is not directly about proof or empirical evidence. It is about trusting someone who has proven themselves in the past. I reacted to your claim that faith is the antitheses of proof. Faith is founded on someone's proven faithfulness - their demonstration that they are worthy of being trusted. So when we have faith in them, we don't have proof that they will perform a certain thing in the future, but we do have faith that they will perform this thing, because they have proven themselves faithful. That is what faith means.

Only if you admit to being a pawn of the Devil. Or is the Gospel according to Matthew not in your Bible? You do own a copy, don't you?

You should not act so arrogantly self assured. It will make you look like a bigger fool if you are proven wrong.

The creation movement does not seek to test God. We already know by faith that His word is true. He has proven Himself faithful to us already. We believe that if God's testimony is true, then the earth must be young. This means two things:
1. That if the earth is proven old, then God is not worthy of faith
2. If our faith in God is proven misplaced, then we have no reason to hold on to the idea of a young earth (aside from the great deal of evidence that has been found)

Basically, I don't see how creationists are testing God. They already trust His testimony that the earth is young. They are now trying to demonstrate to you and others how flawed the old earth evolutionary model is. They do so using scientific and philosophical (logical) evidences. After all, if He is worthy of our faith, then His word must be true.

sound

[lordmetroid]

Even if sound can't travel through space due to the the sparse particles to set in motion... their should still be some particles set in motion after all they were created in pretty much the same instance as the sound itself were created...

Re:How long before people start complaining...

[iapetus]

I win. :)

This came up on the BBC Radio 4 interview with the scientist responsible, incidentally. I believe you can discover his response at the BBC website, assuming this is the interview that was broadcast this morning.

Re:sound?

[Ian Wolf]

Living on final for an international airport, I can answer this.

In the middle of the night, its more annoying.

Sound

[Hythlodaeus]

AFAIK, the density of matter approached infinity as you went back to the moment of the big bang (since the volume approached 0.) I don't know how long it lasted, but for at least awhile there would have been enough density for sound to propagate.

Hum?

[duffbeer703]

I would never describe a jet plane passing over my house as a "hum".

I used to camp in an area where Air Force F-16's and A-10s would fly very low to approach a target range about 10 miles away. An F-16 sounds more like screeching, earth-shattering death at 100 feet than a "hum".

And if the afterburners are on, forget it. YUO = Temporarily deaf!

You had to be there really

[maharg]

.. most of the action was over after 10e-30 seconds

Re:parent is written by an 11 year old.

[DeepBlueDay]

Duh, of course it needs oxygen. How else would it breathe, let alone hum??

Listen to the Big Bang

[rpiquepa]

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.

Something wrong in the article?

[carnivore302]

From the article:

From these variations, he could calculate the frequencies of the sound waves propagating through the Universe during its first 760,000 years, when it was just 18 million light years across. At that time the sound waves were too low in frequency to be audible. To hear them, Cramer had to scale the frequencies 100,000 billion billion times.

I don't get this (but then, this isn't my cup of tea either). If the universe started out as a small dot how can it be 18 million light years wide after only 780.000 years? Did it expand at a rate greater than the speed of light? I thought that was impossible...

Re:Something wrong in the article?

[MSBob]

Expansion of the universe is not a physical movement through space. It is a rate of change of the physical properties of space ie. space is stretching or to be more precise, light shifts more to the red as it travels now than it did fifteen billion years ago.

Re:Something wrong in the article?

[DShard]

They haven't quite worked it out. There are some competing theories about but nothing that results from some fundemental mechanism (think relativity+quantum physics). Below are the two I have heard talked about.

1) Inflationary model.

The universe went through a period of extreme expansion from about a trillionth of a second to a billionth of a second where it expanded much faster than light through some unknown mechanism.

2) Variable light speed.

Light itself has changed it speed during the evolution of the universe.

Also you have to keep in mind that we are talking about the surface of the universe which does not necissarily have to follow the same rules as what is inside of it.

Big bang didn't do "bang"

[MSBob]

Big bang was not really an explosion per se. In fact all the matter in the universe has not changed its position since the beginning of the universe. Instead it's space itself that got "stretched" ie. the time for light to reach two distinct points in the universe has increased over the last fifteen billion years. The escape of galaxies works the same way.

There was no big cluster of mass that exploded like a bomb. It is simply that space itself expanded, meaning that the shift to the red has increased for the light travelling between two disctinct points in the universe.

Ommmm... Yoga

[3Suns]

In Yoga, the mantra "Om" (or Aum) is supposed to represent the sound the universe makes. The "vibration of life" as it were. Those old yogis were really ahead of their time! Ommmmmmmmmmm...

Re:The "Big Bang" could not have made any sound

[DShard]

Close but sound is a compression wave through some medium. It does not have to be air. It could be air as we commonly experience. It also could be water, iron, or any other element on the periodic table. in other words it is the compression and expansion of matter that is what we experience as sound.

For all those space is a vacuum commenters

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:For all those space is a vacuum commenters

[mgrassi99]

Perhaps it's more accurate to describe it as a compression wave, since "sound" is only the effect of a compression wave that propogates through a medium and ultimately interpretted by our ears.

the humming chicken and the egg

[splateagle]

OK so as 50 people have already pointed out, sound can't exist in space because sound waves are vibrations and there are no air molecules in space for a 'sound' to vibrate, but has it occured to anyone else yet that there wasn't any space for this sound to exist in either?

If the big bang was the creation of the universe (aka everything), then it happened not in empty space, but in nothing so how is it even remotely meaningful to talk about the sound of the big bang when the event itself was (at the time) all that existed - there was nothing for it to make a sound into other than itself,

so what we're really talking about isn't the sound of the big bang at all but the frequency at which it is thought to have been resonnating? which that humming sound (I'd already heard it on Radio 4 when the Today programme ran this story this morning) doesn't really illustrate very well since our ears aren't sophisticated enough to hear 90% of it.

surely it would make more sense to look at a waveform diagram of this than turning it into a funny noise...

Re:the humming chicken and the egg

[Darby]

OK so as 50 people have already pointed out, sound can't exist in space because sound waves are vibrations and there are no air molecules in space for a 'sound' to vibrate, but has it occured to anyone else yet that there wasn't any space for this sound to exist in either?

As 50 people have been refuted and corrected but you still don't seem to get it here goes:

All the matter in the universe was packed together. *That is a freaking medium through which sound can move*

This was done over a time period of over 700,000 years of the expansion of the universe.
*That is the space in which the vibrations occur*

Note: there is so much stuff that the matter density was still pretty high after this period of expansion.

That was said a crapload of times already.
Cripes.

Heh heh

[arvindn]

Slashdotting a .wav file :)

I wonder what the sound of the dying server will be like? A bang or a hum?

Re:Location

[Ianoo]

Standing outside the universe is not really something you can do. If indeed the universe is bounded, it's most likely not in our traditional three dimensions. Latest research indeed indicates that it just goes on and on looping around on itself (in all three directions, the bending is in higher order dimensions), so if I lift off the Earth in my rocket ship and travel in a straight line in any direction, I will eventually end up back at Earth on the opposite side (or at least where Earth happened to be when I left for my trip).

Although we have no theories about what might be "outside" the universe, it's pretty impossible to form any theories because we can't see it, we have zero evidence that anything outside the universe exists, and if we did go there, perhaps our physical laws (unique to our universe) may well have no meaning.

If there is nothingness outside the universe, it does not mean a big black void. Nothingness is not something you can stand around in. Nothingness means NOTHINGNESS, no time, no length, no height, no breadth, no nothing. It doesn't exist. Not existing is not the same as being empty, unfortunately true nothingness is not a concept our human minds can deal with because our monkey ancestors never encountered it in their day-to-day lives.

Cosmic drum 'n Bass

[Potor]

I hope this is not too OT, but here is the sound of a pulsar, xi Hydrae (eos.org; realaudio), as captured by a team from my university (KULeuven). The link comes from this page (eso.org).

Enjoy some truly cosmic drum 'n bass!

Re:Cosmic drum 'n Bass

[TaoJones]

I hope this is not too OT, but here is the sound of a pulsar

Actually, according to the link xi Hydrae is not a pulsar. It is a large star (about 10 times that of the Sun) that is getting ready to start expanding into a red giant. They are converting the changing radial velocity of the solar upper atmospheric layers into sound. Not a pulsar at all, but it does have a good dance beat...

MP3 version.

Amazing....

[AgentGray]

No one was there to listen to it, but we've proven it was a hum. Let alone, we've never proved that there was a big bang to begin with.

People will believe what they hear if they hear it over and over and over and over and over...

No, I didn't intend to troll...I won't post any replies to this post.

Re:so this really is....

[krlynch]

Actually, we have very accurate data telling us what the spectrum of acoustic oscillations or "sound" was at the time of the "decoupling" of photons and matter, which was only about 350,000 years after the big bang. You might want to check out the technical papers coming out of the WMAP project, to which I have no affiliation. They've produced the most accurate maps of this acoustic noise, and this is the data that was used to make the "sound recordings". Seems kosher to me, and IAANP, so you can trust me :-)

Faster than the speed of light?

[D-Cypell]

From these variations, he could calculate the frequencies of the sound waves propagating through the Universe during its first 760,000 years, when it was just 18 million light years across.

Can this be correct? If the universe was 760'000 years old and 18 million light years across that would mean that the matter was traveling over 10 times the speed of light. If it travelled at the speed of light surely it would only reach 760'000 light years in each direction. That doesnt add up to 18 million to me. Did i miss something?

Re:Faster than the speed of light?

[Anonymous Coward]

Space itself streched, the matter did not move apart. Think of a ballon with dots on it, as you inflate the balloon, the dots move apart due to the stretching of the medium they are embedded in. There are no constraints that we know of on the speed that space can stretch at.

Re:Faster than the speed of light?

[mysticgoat]

Space itself streched, the matter did not move apart. Think of a ballon with dots on it, as you inflate the balloon, the dots move apart due to the stretching of the medium they are embedded in. There are no constraints that we know of on the speed that space can stretch at.

Ah! Now I understand warp drive technology. It is simply a method of partially relaxing a selected region of current space from its stretched state to a state that is more like its original condition. Hummm, it will require developing some warp field coils to contain the energy released in relaxation until it can be bled off into somebody's power grid, but that's just a SMOE (small matter of engineering).

(Now where did I put the US Patent Office address?)

I keep telling people...

[Ribald]

The reason you can't hear sound in space is because it's almost a vacuum. Back around the time of the Big Bang, matter was packed much closer together and density was far higher. Much higher, for example, than the density of the Earth's atmosphere. So yes, sound vibrations could propagate around in the early universe.

All you people who keep complaining that 'You couldn't really hear a TIE Fighter like that!', or 'The Death Star couldn't really make a shockwave like that--it's in a vacuum!'--this is why.

After all, it was, "A long time ago..."

--Ribald

Re:I keep telling people...

[rpresser]

X-Wing fighter pilots have never been proven to be capable of thinking.

Buddha was right.

[The Ape With No Name]

Remember the sound of the Universe is:

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

No big deal

[Black Perl]

This is just taking energy fluctuations and "resampling" and scaling into the narrow band of frequencies (approx. 20Hz-20KHz) that we perceive as sound.

You can do this with anything--I wouldn't be surprised if some site somewhere lets you "hear" the Sun's recent plasma ejection.

This is not what you would have heard if you had "been there", folks.

This kind of pseudo-science is even more useless than the "what color is the universe" articles. I guess people love to be able to relate to hard-to-comprehend things with their senses.

Nothing to see here, folks, lets just move along and go back to our arguments about whether the universe is shaped like a donut or a soccer ball.

mirror of the bigbang

[millette]

Here's an ogg format of the sound file:
http://tools.waglo.com/bigbang.ogg

Re: Pop-Science standard Units of measure

[blizzardsoup]

Sound: jet engines

Distance: football fields

Mass: Volkswagons (a 16" gun can shoot a volkswagon 20 miles).

Amount of data: Number of Library of Congresses.

Re:Does not compute

[Waffle Iron]

Well, you're wrong. The speed-of-light limitation only applies to objects embedded within space. It doesn't apply to space itself.

I can only swim about 3 miles per hour. If you put the swimming pool on the back of a truck, I could still only swim at 3 mph within the water, but that doesn't mean that there would be a 3 mph limit on the truck moving the pool itself.

Whaddaya know...

[illuminatedwax]

The Buddhists were right!!
For those who may not know, the "AOM" sound that people make when they are meditating (you know, "a-ummmmmmm") is supposedly the sound the universe made when it was created.

Chalk one up for them, I suppose.

--Stephen

Some observations

[somepunk]

First of all, this sound is based on observations of the microwave background radiation, which didn't come into existence until 300,000 years after the big bang. You will note that the article states "when it [the universe] was just 18 million light years across" Imagine beating a drum that big, and you'll see why the pitch is so low. So the big bang may or may not have been a "bang" but 300,000 years later, the sound made was a hum.

Really, the relevant signal to listen to is the background signal of gravitational waves. These actually correspond rather directly to (faint) sound waves, since they induce mechanical disturbances as they pass through matter. By now, of course, most of these will have stretched to the dimensions of the universe, and be more or less undetectable, even in principle. Some theories predict the existence of higher frequency waves going back to the first moments of the big bang. We can look forward to detecting some higher frequency waves in the next five to ten years, from the various interferometers coming online. This is serious science, and could provide insights into not only the origins of the universe, but also supernovae, and the dynamics of black holes and neutron stars. Not to mention curiosities that may occur unheralded. Something akin to the advent of radio astronomy may be in store for us.

There's also (presumably) a neutrino background, from about one second after the big bang. This will be very hard to detect, until we build a big sister to AMANDA covering icy orb, perhaps ganymede :) Some folks seem to be trying to detect it indirectly via the microwave background.

Physicists are entitled to a little fun now and then, anyway. It also helps to bring cosmology a little closer to the general public. It certainly isn't as if this researcher had to get a peer reviewed grant of many thousands of dollars to produce such "trivial" results: he simply did some starightforward processing on data that was already available, quite possibly in his spare time on his own computer. Oh, and I would definitely classify this as more useful/pertinent then that (admittedly a bit silly) "color of the universe stuff"!

It is not the case that "any" sound can be created, or that there is no relationship to the original, when scaling by 100,000. Many (most) relationships are preserved in this sort of operation. Indeed, a familiar example would be to speed up or slow down normal speech; it remains understandable.

Science starts with the presumption of ignorance, and then proceeds to discover what the universe can tell us about itself. Many slashdotters could take a lesson from this.

The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison

Another stupid question

[scharkalvin]

What did the big bang smell like?

"4 parsics, close enough to smell them!" - Checkov
"Ensign, smells do not propagate through the vacuum of space" - Spock

Re:Location

[orangesquid]

In recent news, Atari has sued God for patent infringement. Patent #6,370,256,375 covers a "two-dimensional wrap-around domain," such as the one in Pac-Man. A spokesman for Atari is reported as stating, "Although this violation appears to be in three dimensions, we beleive it is a close derivative and still covered by the patent." When it was pointed out that the patent was not issued until the late 1900s C.E., Atari responded with, "It may be very well that God created this before we did, but there is no prior art since the evidence did not surface until after our patent was granted. If it were the case that clear evidence was given beforehand, our patent would be invalidated. However, here, the patent holds."

Re: Pop-Science standard Units of measure

[escher]

Shouldn't that read: 'A 16" gun can shoot a Volkswagon 352 football fields'?

Re:sound?

[JabberWokky]

So, tell me again how jet planes sound different in the middle of the night as opposed to, say, at 10 am?

Well, I wasn't the first one to tell you, but commercial jet planes landing past certain hours modulate the landing to produce less noise. I'm sure that somebody with more knowledge can elaborate, but due to regulations around airports, night passes have the much tighter rein on engine power and/or "shuttering" (I have no idea the technical term). In addition, they are fined at most airports for coming in after a deadline.

I lived right next to PBI (and thus one of America's two numbers stations) for a couple years. The deadline there was 10pm. Right at 9:45, you had a flurry of planes coming in, and if you listened to the whine, you could tell if it was after 10pm.

--
Evan

Believing in the Big Bang

[curious.corn]

The Big Bang was a Troll against catholic physicits pushing a scientifically viable theory to creationism: the primordial egg was proposed by a gesuit priest. Try reading E. J. Lerner's "The big bang never happened", it's a wonderful book and gives pretty sensible explanations to cosmological data; shame that no scientific institution wants to question the enstablishment... perhaps those that run the business built their careers on these theories?

Re:Believing in the Big Bang

[rknop]

See this website:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.ht ml

This is an in-depth analysis of the arguments that Lerner presents in his book.

Lots of scientists question the Big Bang theory, all the time. Most of them come away with their questions answered by it. Many others come away thinking that there are still questions that science needs to address. A very few come away believing that their questions haven't been adequately answered, or that there is a better answer. It's just that the Big Bang theory is a simple, straightforward theory that happens to describe the observations we see, and does a very good job of explaining a number of disparate observations. Some still disagree with it, and indeed one of them wrote a review article in the latest issue of "Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics". They aren't ignored; they just don't have the weight of evidence on their side at the moment!

There's no conspiracy going on here. Move along.

-Rob

Other Cramer material

[hawkfish]

Check out the Transactional Interpetation of Quantum Mechanics. Critiques of all the well known interpretations (CI, MWI) and others you may not have heard of.

Turtles, all the way down.

[runlvl0]

Stephen Hawking in A Brief History Of Time starts with the anecdote. A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a
public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

(ripped off from http://www.the-funneled-web.com/hawking.htm)