What's the Sound Of A MethaneFall?
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.)
... the sound of a Methane Wind...
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
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!
Man, I really wanted to hear this too, all I'm getting is a bunch of static!
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 :-)