Eerie Sounds from Saturn

Mick Ohrberg writes "Scientists at NASA have now heard proof (called 'Saturn kilometric radiation') that Saturn has a phenomenon similar to the earths' Northern Lights (aurora borealis). Talking about the eerie sounding noise, Dr. Bill Kurth with the University of Iowa, says "We believe that the changing frequencies are related to tiny radio sources moving up and down along Saturn's magnetic field lines." It couldn't sound any spookier if they added a Theremin."

Comments

Just Because...

[daviq]

Just because the Saturnites are watching the twilight zone gives our scientists no reason to talk about electroical-magnetical-thingicals...

Re:Just Because...

[chriswaclawik]

Just because the Saturnites...

We prefer the term Saturnian, you insensitive clod!

Re:Just Because...

[Dunbal]

a million to one, they said.

"exactly a million to one, with any luck..."

Re:Just Because...

[Walt Dismal]

Brain...slugs...eating...my brain! Must.. resist! Spock, help me... find my ...8-track.. of Grateful Dead!!

Wahhh

[JeiFuRi]

I thought there was no sound in space?

Re:Wahhh

[Anonymous Coward]

These are radio emissions, electromagnitec waves that propagate undisturbed in vacuum and as such were detected by Cassini. Sound as you point out needs a medium such as air, as it required waves of a compressed medium, and our ears evolved to detect a portion of that frequency, typically 20 Hz to 20 kHz. The audio that you hear is just an artifact, it is just the "baseband" interpretation of that emission, and is useful to appreciate the richness of the emissions in the frequency spectrum and variation in time (which we appreciate as "tone" and "melody"). It was "transposed" by a factor of about 40, but this is arbitrary and can affect the quality of the "rendition".

Re:Wahhh

[fossa]

Question: at what level of vacuum does sound cease to propagate? I imagine "cease to propagate" might be subjective? Or perhaps there's a definite line like "when the mean free path of the gas molecules is large compared to the chamber dimensions" (a gas molecule hits the wall more often than it hits another gas molecule) (as in turbopumps, is that even correct?)... though what that would mean in outer space isn't clear to me.

Re:Wahhh

[Anonymous Coward]

At very low pressures such as the high altitudes of commercial flight routes you still obviuosly have significant propagation, I think that the limit is more theoretical than anything. I think you are in a good path with your reasoning, as the wavelength of a sound wave is the distance between 2 peaks of high pressure, which has a low pressure valley in between, in an extremely rarified environment, such as in deep space, the extremely large mean free path of the molecules would result in mind numbing wavelengths, and unsignificantly low frequencies. I leave the numerical exercise to the experts!

Ah. Whistlers, etc.

[gardyloo]

Did a project in college to detect and characterize some of these "noises", but in the Earth's atmosphere. They're really very interesting.

The "dawn chorus" (not recorded by me!) can be found here: ahref=http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/sounds/sou nds.htmlrel=url2html-7959http://image.gsfc.nasa.go v/poetry/sounds/sounds.html>

Re:Ah. Whistlers, etc.

[nherm]

I found here a sample of AKR emission from earth's magnetosphere. This sample has a higher frequency shift than the one from the first link in the fine article, but also I think they are similar, in both cases structures that oscilates with high to low-frequencies, and then high again, can be heard (that, or I need new earphones :)

Maybe you would like to compare the spectrograms:

Earth's AKR emission.

Saturn's AKR emission.

Also, one of the samples from cassini is very similar (IMO) to this sample of a chorus emission at earth's magnetosphere (more info here, in the sense that there are some structures rising from low to high-frequency.

Sadly, the spectrogram is not so clear, like the one from cassini

Very interesting stuff. Yes, I did some work in that area. No, I am not a space physicist. And finally, yes, I have this page in my bookmarks.

Forbidden planet

[Various Assortments]

Sounds like some of the effects from the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet!

http://imdb.com/title/tt0049223/

Geez!

[Cytlid]

And here I was going to trade in my Hyundai for a Saturn because it was making erie noises as well.

Alert the MPAA

[geophile]

The planet of Saturn has ripped off Man or Astroman.

Just Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Theremin the size of a planet, and all I get is a Slashdotting.

No wonder its eerie...

[NeoThermic]

>>Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44.

If you compressed the time of my voice down about 22 times and shifted its frequency down by a factor of 44, I think I would sound eerie as well!

Then again... you might not need to shift my voice to make it sound eerie...

NeoThermic

Re:No wonder its eerie...

[modecx]

Then again... you might not need to shift my voice to make it sound eerie...

So you're the one that keeps calling me at 1:00AM! You're gonna get it, buddy. *shakes fist*

Re:No wonder its eerie...

[Lord Marlborough]

So much for getting her interested in science.

That, sir, is why you lie.

INSPIRE

[geigertube]

If anyone's interested in listening to the Earth natural radio broadcasts, NASA has a nice page set up (with kits for making your own VLF receiver)here. Other planets here.

Fixed Link

[Adam9]

McGreevy ground-based VLF recordings

News?

[mendaliv]

This is news? Hippies have been hearing this sound since the 60s!

Aha!

[codewritinfool]

So THAT'S what has been keeping me awake at night. I'm calling NASA tomorrow and demanding that they turn that thing down.

Usually the erie sounds...

[glrotate]

come from Uranus.

Theremins are not obsolete!

[toeofdestiny]

You can still buy new ones from Moog.

Yeah, right...

[Solder Fumes]

I somehow get the feeling that some scientist were sitting around the lab drinking cheap beer, and wondered what they'd have to do to get the Saturn data to sound EXACTLY like something out of a poor-quality 50's space flick.

You can get strange sounds from almost any data

[czei]

As someone who's had a minor career in computer music, I've seen this type of thing again and again. You can take almost any sampled data and if it is something other than purely random you can massage the frequency response into the human hearing range. Its fun to do, but it usually doesn't tell you much.

Hoax

[kurt555gs]

That isn't Saturn, it's Altair, and those sounds were made by long dead Krell musicians

I am supprised we did not hear Robbie the Robot ask if we need something!

Saturn in 2001

[fm6]

In the original version of 2001, they had Saturn instead of Jupiter as the source of the Big Mystery. Clarke thought it was an "interesting coincidence" that Saturn's rings supposedly formed at about the same time the first humans evolved. (Can't verify whether that's accurate, and am dubious as to the meaning of "coincidence" at that time scale.) The extra difficulty of doing SFX with the rings was just a little bit too much, and they changed it to Jupiter. If they'd stuck with Saturn, imagine the silly comments that this discussion would have!

Re:Saturn in 2001

[Dogtanian]

In the original version of 2001, they had Saturn instead of Jupiter as the source of the Big Mystery.

Arthur C. Clarke actually retained Saturn as the destination in the novel (not a 'novelisation'; it was written concurrently in order to help develop the film). The novel also varies in several other areas; notably the "pod bay doors" scene in the film is handled differently, albeit to the same ends. The 'stargate' is also different.

The difference is as much one of tone and style, however. The novel is more ACC "factual" and explains things in a way the film never tries to.

Having seen the film some 6 years after first reading the book, I made what (in retrospect) I consider the mistake of treating them as the same thing in different form. At first, I saw the film as being similar to the book, but with less explanation; now I realise that at a deeper level the philosophy and approach of the book and film are fundamentally different, and to get the most out of the film, it's necessary to consider it on its own merits.

That's not to say I prefer the film; in some ways, I think it's overrated and pretentious (having initially given it an unconsidered free ride on my "favourites" list on the back of my liking of the novel, I realised that on its own merits I wasn't that keen on it).

The odd thing is the sequel, 2010. The novel of 2010 (which the 2010 film was based on) was an engrossing and natural sequel to the 2001 novel. This despite the fact it took the location of the action from the 2001 film (Jupiter) not the 2001 novel (Saturn); in terms of its logical style, and the quote "Oh my God... It's full of stars", it follows on from the novel, not the film.

The film 2010, which came later, perversely borrowed the "Oh my God" line from the novels (it never appeared in the original film), and the factual approach which worked in the novel combined with overly commercial sensibilities and a cheesey (and now very dated) cold-war subplot made the film less than brilliant and not a very naturalistic "sequel" to the first film.

At one stage I thought 2010 was a good film on its own merits (that is, if you hadn't seen 2001); although you need to know what happened in 2001 to get the most out of it, you could read the novel of it, so this isn't as stupid as it sounds.

My opinion of it has gone down somewhat, not because it ruins everything in 2001 by explaining it (2010:The Film is really the film of THE NOVEL of 2010; which was a sequel to THE NOVEL of 2001; it makes more sense that way than considering it as a simple sequel to the 2001 film). No, the problems I have with 2010 are:-

(a) Cheesy cold-war subplot (okay, ACC wrote this for the novel, but the sentimental aspects are ramped up in the film)....
(b) Hollywood Sentimentality (oh yeah, already mentioned that); not so much because it contrasts with the 2001 film's approach, but because it's formulaic
(c) Too much a straightforward sci-fi film; hasn't *tried* to do anything as original as Kubrick.
(d) ...which includes the technology. The original film does *not* have a 1960s tech look; some of the displays are very innovative and original for their time. If they look cliched, it's only because it influenced the look of subsequent films so much. 2010, on the other hand, although in some respects more realistic (less bright lighting) hasn't tried to escape its 1980s origins. As a result, we see Chandra accessing HAL through what looks like a keyboard from a TRS-80 home computer or something; so dull, unimaginative and dated compared to the look and feel that was put into the original (e.g. the memory modules when Dave is deactivating HAL). Ditto the calculator that Heywood uses in 2010. The whole thing looked more dated than 2001 even 10 years after it was made (and 2001 was 26 years old at the same time).
(e) Didn't they have sound in space in 2010? Yuk!