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Saturn Hailstorm
crmartin writes "NASA has released a web story about the sounds recorded aboard the Cassini spacecraft as it pased through the Rings. The story includes a Quicktime file of the hailstorm-like sounds of Ring particles impacting."
>No damage was done, but it sounded exciting.
You have to give them credit. These bits of dust were going 45,000 mph! You'd think they would have decimated that antenna, but I guess not? I would have to disagree, however. To the average non-PHD, this dust sounds like nothing more than some static mixed with klinking noises. To me it sounds like SPACE DUST!
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In space, nobody can hear you scream!
Were they golf ball sized or grapefruit sizes Saturn hail?
IronChefMorimoto
Anyone got anything OTHER than QT?
How do you feel now? Thought you were cool giving Lucas and his ilk a hard time eh? "There's no sound in space, it's a vacuum." Muhahahahahaha.
680 puffs per second.
sounds like fun
I know it's pretty obligatory to say, but: DAMN! Will these NASA folks ever cease to amaze us with new, amazing, profound things? ...Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.
I am so engaged by space exploration these days, it makes me really happy to be alive in the century I'm in.
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
I doubt it will make the number #1 hitlists. Pictures and video are nice, sure, and Nasa is doing amazing things. But "the sound of space"? I'd rather listen to ABBA.
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Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?
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I've been able to hear Saturn hailstorms for quite some time now...
Last month, some rain water seeped into the cable outlet box outside and for 2 days, all I could hear on my TV was the exact same sound as Saturn Hailstorm (except that the video didn't show the spacecraft travelling around saturn).
I think aliens from Saturn were trying to use me to send a message.... *smack on the head* if only I had known then..
Oh dear. Looks like we'll have to recall Cassini back to Earth, remove the 'Cassini' nameplate, attatch a nameplate that has been mutually agreed by Microsoft and NASA, and then go on another 7 year voyage back. However, with luck, we could use 'delaying tactics' to prevent this recall from happening until after Huygens has been released. If Microsoft has any problems with Huygens, they are welcome to send their lawyers in a space-ship towards that frozen hydrocarbon soup of a moon.
Yes I am master of the obvious.
These SOUNDS were not recorded as implied but rather
tiny clouds of ionized gas were counted as they were caused by the impacting dust. then...
"We converted these into audible sounds"
...there is going to be one wicked-ass scratch & dent sale on astronomical probes, at Crazy Vaklav's on Saturn.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
You can (barely) hear it on this ST: Voyager Audio Clip . It occurs at time index 1:08.
If you read the article, you'll find out that this isn't recorded by a microphone inside the spacecraft or anything like that, but is only a representation of impact data. That is, if someone wanted to make the impacts sound like bells, or cow moos or dog barks, those would be equally as valid representations as the "hail" sounding impacts.
How about those bright "spots" on Titan the size of Arizona. Looks like a city to me. They say it's clouds but they don't look like the other clouds around it. Conspiracy, I say.
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Mods, why is this a troll? Offtopic yes, but troll? Pull the Fretoes bags back from your face. THIS is a troll.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
was that just amazing, I just listened to it and it sounded ... so ... I can't find the word ... the wow factor ... it's like these cigarete smoke sized particles ionized by hitting against my brain directly.
I need another puff of that magic dust
You can't handle the truth.
I would have expected a much narrower peak in the dust distribution - sounding rather like a short "swoosh" - given the thickness of the rings which is less than 1 km according to most estimates.
Could anyone explain why the observed dust cloud was so much wider?
That might give you a better impresion of what your space ship would sound like as you passed the rings if you used dogs or cows for your hull.
When I imagine the puffs of plasma translating into vibrations that might be heard by a traveler, I get something more like what was presented.
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oh, no... wait... we heard you... nevermind.
No one ever expects the Cassini spacecraft!
the dust would be more damaging if the probe were statically sitting there, like absolutely still.
or if the space craft were going against the particles. however, it's prollygoing either just a little slower or faster than the particles, so the speed of them hitting it is somewhere in the hundreds range to the thousand range.
For all you Cassini watchers who own DirecTV. They recently added NASA TV to their free lineup for total choice subscribers. I noticed it about a day after the Venus transit last month.
/.ed webcast.
It has been great for keeping up with the Cassini stuff though. I had it on during the entire SOI burn. It beats the crap out of a
Oh, geez, not even as a joke! You'll get Richard Hoagland started!
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I have no words to describe how cool this is. I heard space dust from the Saturn rings hit a spaceprobe. Amazing.
...sort of like Space Quest II!
...IF these sounds from the impact of dust particles hit Cassini were audible through space, we're probably getting to listen to it "before" those sound waves were to reach Earth.
You mean Fritos?
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You don't give units, but assuming you're talking MPH you're off by an order of magnitude. TFA sez:
They don't. TFA to the rescue again:
In other words, the sound is a representation of other data, slightly akin to false color images as an earlier poster pointed out.
I can understand that it's a cheap thing to just throw in there
I don't think anything with mass is cheap to add to a space probe. I don't recall what the per-kilo launch costs are for one of those things, but it's not small.
if one remebers in Author C Clarks 3001 the final odesy when dave boarded that guys space craft to go out to that icy moon, you know which one i'm talking about.. he had to have his armor replaced to shield against microscopic particles at .13 of C.
..Mixed in with the static was the faint broadcast of someone frantically yelling:
"Goddamit Sulu, sheilds up!! sheilds up!!"
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This isn't the first time NASA have had this idea -- they have tried to record actual sounds on Mars from wind blowing (and this wasn't supposed to be a simulation of the sound, like these effects are). However, the space craft with this equipment was unfortunately the Mars Polar Lander which crashed due to the infamous metric conversion mistake. :-(
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going to mix that with some pan flute music and make a relaxation tape out of it. Go into Borders and listen to "Sounds of Saturn" while drinking my Vanilla Chai.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
That all that beowolf clusters at NASA aint worth much against the Atack Of Teh Slahsdot Uberfiends
NO SIG
More interesting sounds collected from Cassini: http://www.uiowa.edu/~ournews/2003/october/103003s olar-noise.html
If you passed the signal through this guy's old phone line, you could hear it today!
nothing but the rain ;-)
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Finally got an article accepted.
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3) put down the crack pipe.
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""Each time a dust particle hit Cassini, the impact produced a puff of plasma--a tiny cloud of ionized gas. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was able to count these clouds; there were as many as 680 puffs per second. "We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof,."
Which means they could have also converted them into audible sounds that resembled a dog barking. Or maybe a cat meowing. Fuck, plasma puffs hitting the antenna could have resembled a Van Halen guitar solo for all we know.
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The fact that we have these complex machines doing our bidding a few million miles away.
Absolutely incredible.
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That might "sound" silly but sounds propagates throught "air" or gazes ... how could there be sounds in the interplanetary vacuum ????
Hail, hail, hail Hailstone..., er, Hailstorm!
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If they can only make a car that won't fall apart in a few years, or make a noiseless cpu fan. Why can't they fix my crown tooth permanently, or get my monitor mirror from unsticking and falling down.
I didn't LTTFA but I wonder if they recorded it for real or just nicked the sound off the Voyager intro where the ship is travelling across some rings that the camera moves through.