Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Scream Aliens Hear From the Earth

Posted by kdawson on from the ice-cream dept.

onehitwonder writes "Astronomers have discovered that the Earth emits awful, ear-piercing chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, according to an article up at Space.com. The sounds are created by charged particles from the solar wind colliding with Earth's magnetic field. This article explains more about the sounds and links to an audio recording of it."

2 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I thought by Simian+Road · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm afraid that's not true. Assuming that a sound wave could travel (particle to particle) in a gas density like that of outer space (1x10^-11 Pa), quantum effects would completely destroy any signal contained years before one particle could collide into the next.

  2. Re:I thought by Gospodin · · Score: 5, Informative

    So let's see. Middle C is about 260 Hz (with Bb slightly lower). 57 octaves lower is 2^-57 * 260 Hz, which is 5.5 x 10^14 seconds per cycle, or about 17.4 million years per cycle. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that humans aren't going to hear this signal.

    --
    ...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...