Saturn Hailstorm

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday July 11, 2004 @04:07AM from the wear-your-hard-hat dept.

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."

18 of 133 comments (clear)

Powerful Hull? by mfh · 2004-07-11 04:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

>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!

--
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
1. Re:Powerful Hull? by emorphien · 2004-07-11 04:15 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Agreed, I really wouldn't have expected it to be able to fly through the rings, particularly dish forward if the video is accurate. I would think that even the small particles would erode away at it more than would be acceptable.
  
  Obviously that's one tough schoolbus sized planet orbiting pretty picture taking probe.
  
  --
  
  Presently here, but not there.
2. Re:Powerful Hull? by dorlthed · 2004-07-11 04:35 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Well, there's a reason these things cost millions and millions of dollars. ;)
  
  Another example: I remember reading once about the modems they use on these things. Now a modem itself costs very, very little, but it costs them well over $10,000 to test hundreds and hundreds of modems, then make sure that they can function properly amidst the radiation, cold, etc. of space. And of course this is pennies next to the costs related to the rest of the spacecraft.
3. Re:Powerful Hull? by another_henry · 2004-07-11 04:43 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It didn't fly -through- the rings, rather through the gaps between them (which still have some crap in, but not really a huge amount of it). Also I think that it doesn't necessarily matter too much if the dish gets a few tiny holes - it should still behave the same, electrically.
  
  --
  "Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
4. Re:Powerful Hull? by Big+Sean+O · 2004-07-11 06:22 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Of course the modem's expensive!!! But just imagine how expensive the phone cord is...
  
  Billions and billions of meters!
  
  --
  My father is a blogger.
5. Re:Powerful Hull? by Stephen+Samuel · 2004-07-11 06:38 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  As they said, most of these impacts are dust particles the size of cigarette smoke.
  % units 'milligram-(45000mph)^2' grams-tnt * 0.087744895 / 11.396674
  In other words, for 1 milligras dust particles, each impact would have about the kinetic force of a large cap gun cap (or a very small firecracker).
  On the other hand, a 1-ounce pebble would have the kinetic force of about 5 pounds of TNT compressed into an impact point less than 1cm across..... Think hole straight tru the orbiter with lots of dead instruments.
  I'm guessing that the probe designers calculated the probability of a large-particle impact, and then just made the antenna as sturdy as they could afford to.
  
  --
  Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Amazing! by DakotaSandstone · 2004-07-11 04:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

I know it's pretty obligatory to say, but: DAMN! Will these NASA folks ever cease to amaze us with new, amazing, profound things?
I am so engaged by space exploration these days, it makes me really happy to be alive in the century I'm in. ...Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.

--
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
Old news by Roland+Piquepaille · 2004-07-11 04:24 · Score: 3, Informative

I've been able to hear Saturn hailstorms for quite some time now...
Re:Sound in Space? by dsanfte · 2004-07-11 04:32 · Score: 5, Informative

From the article:

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," says Gurnett, the intrument's principal investigator.

They were recording plasma, not actual sound.

--
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
On the bright side.. by murderlegendre · 2004-07-11 04:40 · Score: 3, Funny

...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.
Star Trek: Voyager Intro by prakslash · 2004-07-11 04:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you watch the intro sequence of ST: Voyager, you will notice that, during one of the scenes, the camera slowly cuts through the cryslline ice particles that make up the rings of Saturn. They put in a sound-effect to show what it would feel like. I always liked that sound. It was like being bathed by sounds of thousands little dusty bells tinkling.
You can (barely) hear it on this ST: Voyager Audio Clip . It occurs at time index 1:08.
About as meaningful as false-color images by Jonathan · 2004-07-11 04:47 · Score: 3, Informative

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.
Re:Why would anyone want to listen to this anyway? by f-matic · 2004-07-11 04:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

For fans of experimental music, this kind of "field recording" isn't that far removed from other practitioners in the field who utilize recordings of atmospheric phenomena as the basis of audio pieces, sometimes processed, sometimes just left in the raw unfiltered recordings. As someone who counts himself a fan of the work of labels like Mego and Antiopic , this recording isn't too far from the kind of stuff I would gladly add to my over-burdened record collection.
For some samples of people working with this kind of source material, check out these two artists:
Joyce Hinterding -- Australian cross media artist working in part with ecordings of magnetic fields and weather satellites.
Steven Mcgreevy -- VLF (Very Low Frequency) recordins of atmospheric phenomena -- very beautiful, with audio samples available from the site.

--
experimental audiovideo minimalism: Rebuild All Your Ruins
Oh, man by roman_mir · 2004-07-11 05:01 · Score: 3, Funny

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.
Dust cloud width by hlub · 2004-07-11 05:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

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?
Bang a gong. by twitter · 2004-07-11 05:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.
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.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Re:Sound in Space? by djmurdoch · 2004-07-11 05:52 · Score: 4, Funny

Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?

That's just because people always wear spacesuits that block the sound. This is an unmanned probe, so the sound can come through without a problem. You'd hear the same thing if you took off your helmet while you were out there.

You see this all the time in movies: the cameras are usually outside the suits, so they can hear the whoosh of the spaceships and the zapping sounds of the lasers.
No microphone by jgs · 2004-07-11 06:58 · Score: 5, Informative

What I don't really get is why they have friggin microphones on space traveling vehicles?

They don't. TFA to the rescue again:

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," says Gurnett, the intrument's principal investigator.

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.