February 23, 2013

Tuning into the Sound of the Universe

Honor Harger, The Huffington Post


AP Photo

Images of space are ubiquitous in our lives. We have been surrounded by stunning portrayals of our own solar system and beyond for generations. But in popular culture, we have no sense of what space sounds like. And indeed, most people associate space with silence.

There are, of course, perfectly valid scientific reasons for assuming so. Space is a vacuum. But through radio, we can listen to the Sun's fizzling solar flares, the roaring waves and spitting fire of Jupiter's stormy interactions with its moon Io, pulsars' metronomic beats, or the eerie melodic shimmer of a whistler in the magnetosphere.

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TAGGED: astronomy, sound, solar flare, Universe

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