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What's the Sound Of A MethaneFall?

Posted by timothy on from the remember-no-one-is-around-to-hear-it dept.

Kevin Nichols writes "Ever wonder what a "waterfall" on Titan might sound like? Professor Tim Leighton, of Southampton University, worked out what the sound of a methane and/or ethane fall might sound like. You can listen to a .wav file of the sound here: ISVR - Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The Cassini-Huygens mission will carry a microphone with the Huygens lander. Perhaps we'll find out if he's right." (Here's a direct link to the simulated Titan fall, slightly buried in the text.)

31 comments

  1. But we already know... by philntc · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the sound of a Methane Wind...

  2. interesting... by hal9000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sounds sort of like Saturn's radio emissions...
    Does everything around Saturn sound the same? Perhaps it's all eminating from a single source? I dunno, maybe some sort of black rectangular monolith?

    --
    Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
    1. Re:interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      jeez, everyone knows it's jupiter, not saturn, you oaf! didn't you see the movie?

      what next? gigantic diamonds at the core of gas giants? gold bars on german submarines?

      - a.c.

    2. Re:interesting... by hal9000 · · Score: 1

      It was Saturn in the book. Kubrik chose Jupiter for the film because they couldn't get Saturn's rings to look real enough.

      --
      Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
  3. Sounds like... by Spokehedz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    chipmunks on speed, gnawing away at my eardrums.

    Seriously though... this is interesting stuff. I mean, if we can simulate physics for the earth, and its weather patterns... then why couldn't we simulate the physics of sound?

    Sound is, after all, just vibrations from things hitting/passing each other... One would think that on a powerful enough computer, you could simulate the liquid methane flowing down over and crashing into... whatever.

    I mean, I'd for one like to see a game where the sound wasn't pre-recorded stuff played when two objects collide their meshes together... Could you imagine having a game engine advanced enough where depending on what kind of shoes your wearing--and how fast your walking/running--the sound would change automatically from click-click on tile to the soft pad on carpet? All without any programming?

    And then there's the whole car crashes, and gunshots, and echoes... That stuff's hard to program normally. And the best thing is, because its all generated at 'runtime' if you will... the sounds never get repetitive. Its always exactly how its supposed to sound, for exactly where you are.

    1. Re:Sounds like... by hal9000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds like a fine idea. How do you mean "all without any programming" though? You'd have to have the code which determines sound based on the defined properties of all objects/surfaces involved, no?

      --
      Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
    2. Re:Sounds like... by ALeavitt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ok, I know someone already posted a response similar to this under another topic somewhere recently, but I don't remember where, so I'm going to paraphrase and recap.

      The reason sound can't be simulated quickly in a game is the same reason light can't. Sure, there are games that have dynamic lighting and so forth, but in terms of actual raytracing, we're just approaching the possibility of having a playable real-time raytraced game - and that would require a behemoth of a machine.
      Now, think about sound. If I drop a penny in a perfectly cubic room, the penny deforms a bit, as does the floor. The distortion (and return to normal) causes the sound wave. This wave then bounces off of all of the surfaces in the room, including the penny, overlapping, creating harmonics, etc. Even that would be tough to simulate. Now, imagine, for instance, a FPS. Complex, moving, 3D objects, all interacting, all creating sounds that bounce around. While this wouldn't be impossible to simulate, I wouldn't expect it to happen in realtime anytime soon.

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    3. Re:Sounds like... by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 1
      All without any programming?
      haha, owned.
      --
      [o]_O
    4. Re:Sounds like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      its all generated at 'runtime'

      "it's".

    5. Re:Sounds like... by Spokehedz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I didn't say that it would be possible tomorrow--I'm saying that when you program in some of the more base physics, then the other stuff kinda falls into place.

      having friction and gravity present in a world will allow a tire to push/pull a cart along, without any additional 'vehicle' code whatsoever. Just like if you have air density, and the physics of the interaction of that air to surfaces, then aircraft become available. Jet engines would react like a jet engine, and a propeller engine would react like a propeller engine.

      Ask any pilot if there's a difference between those two, and if any flight simulator comes close to what either of those feel like in the game... Chances are, they are going to say "well yea, nothing feels like the real thing!" but what if it could?

      I mean, the propellers aren't going to be perfectly aligned on those planes... so there going to wobble a bit. what if the vibration was made from the actual propellers on the engine, it travelled through the framework of the aircraft, to arrive at the controls to cause the vibration--all the while, making sounds as it went, because of the vibration.

      I truly think that the next "Big Blur" as I call it in video games will come at the addition of Real Time sounds, and lower level physics added to the game.

      Imagine pneumatics acting like pneumatics, with a bit of natural give in their travel... gears and pulleys acting like themselves... levers of all classes acting like real levers.

      They have to code that all in now, or do some hacks with scripted events to make it look like its supposed to... but then the game will always be the same in those parts. Guys will always run out from around that corner... Your gun will always fire the bullets in the same grouping formation... the car will always have a maximum speed... etc. etc. Oh well--were getting waaaay OT here.

      Oh, and one final thing: You'll note that I never mentioned anything close to what kind of system would be required to play this. I simply said that it would be very cool to see it done.

      You can at least agree with me that it might be possible to simulate one waterfall on Titan with realistic sound based on physics of sound with the current hardware of today, right? Much like raytracing, this 'soundtracing' would take some time, but it'd be possible.

    6. Re:Sounds like... by daveashcroft · · Score: 0

      I know what the parent is saying, but what we usually want in a game is a *simulation* of what we would expect in the real world, NOT an accurate recreation. I think that we are talking decades (at least) until we are going to have home computer systems that can come close to recreating *real* environments in realtime.

    7. Re:Sounds like... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you would also have to consider advancing the interface as well. It may be conceivable to produce a real time animation, with built in physics or "real" sound, but playing through a gamepad would be a bit of a let down. Bring on the Holodecks!

    8. Re:Sounds like... by merlin_jim · · Score: 1

      Could you imagine having a game engine advanced enough where depending on what kind of shoes your wearing--and how fast your walking/running--the sound would change automatically from click-click on tile to the soft pad on carpet? All without any programming?

      EAX does exactly that; simulates those kinds of environmental audio effects... it doesn't really simulate mesh-mesh interactions, but you DO load in a 3D model of the space and it even accounts for reverb and echo off of the various surfaces, as well as positioning the mixer channel properly.

      The demo is pretty fun; footsteps walking down a hall behind your head, with a door to your left, then proceeding through the room. Even when the footsteps are to your right in the hallway, you still hear them as they echo down the hall and come through the open doorway.

      As for the muffling effect you are speaking of, I'm not sure if they model that accurately or not... but EAX devices have a DSP in them, you could create a piece of code that runs on the DSP to do that level of simulation... basically each surface would have a particular filter applied to any sounds that emanate from interactions with that surface...

      --
      I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
  4. Really interesting, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not totally convinced that it's completely accurate. At the site, they have recordings of their technique applied to recreate sounds of waterfalls on Earth--i.e., artificial Earth waterfall sounds. Those artificial sounds bear only a modest resemblance to actual waterfall sounds (which they have a recording of also).

    The actual terrestial waterfall sounds seem to have more low-frequency noise than is reproduced by their technique. The high-frequency noise of an actual waterfall, moreover, seems to be more complex--it seems to have a more "springy" or "reverbatory" quality.

    There is a resemblance between the actual waterfall sounds and their simulated sounds--I don't mean to suggest they're radically different. It's just that the artificial earth sounds are different enough from the actual earth sounds, that I can't tell what to expect the actual Titan methane sounds to be like.

    While I appreciate them being honest and straightforward about what their technique is, and what it produces, I'm a little skeptical of how realistic it is.

    I'm also a bit surprised they took such a deductive, basic-physics approach to doing the simulation, rather than taking a more inferential, data-compression approach.

    Oh well. Interesting, but seems to raise as many questions as it answers.

    1. Re:Really interesting, but... by shpoffo · · Score: 1

      without having read the article...

      it seems to me that any real-wrold recording is going to miss some of the acoustic frequencies, as the medium can only catch so much. However, what it does catch one might imagine as pebble-drop-ripples moving toward the edge of a plane of water (which when it gets to the edge, it 'crops' the ripple rather than reverberating it). Visually observing this phenomenon our brain can extrapolate what would happen beyond the edge of the plane. I presume acoustically our brain can do the same thing with recorded sound - 'holographing' in the stuff that it extrapolates should be there. Whereas with this simulated methan rain recording, the simulation has been designed to 'fit' the acoustic space of the recording - I PRESUME. All of this falls apart if the engineers considered something like this already.

      I think it is this 'extrapolation space' that we hear in a live recording that makes it more convincing than a simulation

      .
      -shpoffo

    2. Re:Really interesting, but... by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Acutally, I think that these folks went at it the right way. In the future, we will want systems/robots/androids that can discerne what the different things are that they hear. the only real way is to break things apart and then recombine them. If you take the example of their waterfall vs. a real one, the differences are made by a real physical world. As these folks tear it apart and figure out what is making the difference, they will not be able to reproduce it, but they will be able to hear multiple sounds and figure out what each is. Think in terms of ray-tracing.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  5. Physical Environment by theslashdude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wouldn't the sound of a specific fall greatly depend on the size and shape of the fall, the volume of material flowing, what it's flowing over and into, etc...? Otherwise, all waterfalls on earth should sound the same and I know that is not the case.

    1. Re:Physical Environment by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I didn't see mentioned whether the atmosphere was modeled in. Things sound different in different atmospheres as we all know from breathing in too many party balloons as kids.

      What we really want to hear is what it would sounds like if a human ear managed to get into that environment somehow.

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  6. terrifying, actually by Jtheletter · · Score: 1

    Either the codec in my wav player is screwy or that is the gorram scariest liquid noise I have ever heard.

    --
    -- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
  7. but the Science sounds good! by Pi_0's+don't+shower · · Score: 2, Insightful
    They have a bit of the motivation on *why* they think this is a pretty reliable method if they find a signal what they're looking for here.
    Those artificial sounds bear only a modest resemblance to actual waterfall sounds
    To respond to your comment, no, I don't think it sounds exactly like the right waterfall, but the resemblance is strong enough that if you listen to the artificial one alone, you go, "Oh, that's a waterfall." Play the real one, and you'd say "Oh, that's a waterfall." You might say they're different waterfalls, but they sound similar enough to me. Same thing here, if you hear the "(m)ethane-fall" signal and play it next to the simulation, you would conclude they're two of the same phenomena, just not identical examples of it.
  8. Wasn't this in a Star Trek movie? by dexter+riley · · Score: 2, Funny

    Lieutenant Uhuru...adjust the pressure to 1.6 bars...surface temperature to -178C...atmospheric composition to a Nitrogen/Methane mix...

    My god! It sounds like whales! Mister Sulu, lay in a course for Titan! Mister Chekov, break out the tartar sauce!

  9. Obligatory Hendrix reference by Randym · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...Way down by the methane sea...

    From Voodoo Chile or Voodoo Child (Slight Return) from Electric Ladyland.

    --
    DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
  10. My codec's messed up too by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    Either that, or the rocks under the methanefall on Titan are all made up of hollow tin (or maybe, the sound is close, Replicators from Stargate SG-1).

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  11. little tidbit :) by mingust · · Score: 1

    My computer at work loads up Windows Media Player with visualization non other than...

    Ambience: water

    --
    ~mingust
  12. My Speakers are broken! by evilmuffins · · Score: 2, Funny

    Man, I really wanted to hear this too, all I'm getting is a bunch of static!

    1. Re:My Speakers are broken! by AaroneousMaximus · · Score: 1

      I think that's what it's supposed to sound like. I'm underwealmed. On another note, with all the hydrocarbons on Titan (they say it rains gasoline there), does anybody know if it is a reducing atmosphere and why? How many chemistry nerds like me are here?

  13. If only they had... by Andy+Mitchell · · Score: 3, Funny

    I suspect some very clever people have put many months of effort into this simulation software to generate those 9 precious seconds of audio.

    I would like to believe that they chose to release their 9 second audio clip as a .wav file because they felt their work was so accurate that to compress the data in any way would detract from the quality of their fine work.

    However, being a "cynical git", I'm inclined to think we are downloading a 976KB file as a result of them just not bothering to encode it as an mp3 :-)

    1. Re:If only they had... by the_crowbar · · Score: 1

      I think your comment was intended to be funny, but I would like to point out that if you change the file extension in the wav link to mp3 you will get the mp3 version.

      Cheers,
      the_crowbar
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  14. Great! by brunokummel · · Score: 1

    now im able to recognize a MethaneFall if i ever go to Titan. you know you cant always trust your eyes. =)

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  15. Zen on Titan by Man+of+E · · Score: 1

    If Methane falls on Titan, and nobody is around to hear it (assuming there's no sentient life there), does it make a sound?
    Apparently yes, and it sounds like an angry weasel.

    --
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