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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.)

4 of 31 comments (clear)

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

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

  2. 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 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. 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.