is there sound in space? if yes, can it be heard from inside the shuttle?

Originally posted by TheStev

Originally posted by Devino
Is it true that they are within the same range of human hearing (20 to 20,000 cycles per sec.)?

Unfortunately, the answer is 'no':

Originally posted by DragonsDemesne
It seems to me like a few are confused on this point, so I'll mention it. Sound waves and radio waves are two fundamentally different phenomena. They aren't just different frequencies. Sounds are vibrations, and need something to vibrate against. Radio waves are electromagnetic, and can propagate even in vacuum.

I know that there is a difference between sound and radio waves but my question has to do with their frequencies. Sound travels much slower then radio waves but some radio waves have the same frequency as sound. The ranges of ELF to VLF radio waves oscillate at around the same frequencies as audible sound does, my question is are the radio waves Cassini recorded from Jupiter in the frequency range of 20hz-20khz as that YouTube video I linked claims. I do understand that the signal would still have to be converted to sound to be audible.

My confusion is in the difference between frequency of a wave and the speed that it travels. I also do not understand how EM waves can self propagate. I have read up a little about wave-particle duality, which is confusing in itself, but I just can't imagine an EM wave becoming a particle and bumping itself out in space and then converting back to a wave so it can oscillate on it's own particles. If that isn't enough how can an EM wave be slowed way down in a thick medium, like glass or super cooled gas, and then pop back to it's original speed after it comes out the other side, all on it's own.

Adhering to Ockham's razor it might seem that EM waves cannot self propagate and actually need a medium. This "self propagation" theory was accepted after the search was abandoned for a medium in space.

[edit on 7/23/2008 by Devino]

Originally posted by DragonsDemesne
Sound cannot travel in vacuum. Sound requires some kind of physical medium to travel, and outer space is too empty. Yes, there are a few molecules or little rocks or dust or whatever, but it isn't enough for sound to travel.

But, space isn't a true vacuum. Is it? Even where we thought there was no matter, there still is dark matter present. Is it possible that sound might somehow travel through dark matter? This could suggest how it is possible that the astronauts heard that "space music".

These ancient intuitive ideas are echoed in scientific creation theory: In the beginning was the Void. Sound waves originated in the first instant of the universe’s life, when the cosmos underwent an extraordinary expansion. No one really knows what drove it, but by stretching the very fabric of space, it magnified a weird subatomic phenomenon – the spontaneous materialization of particles from a complete vacuum. Vacuum fluctuation underlies both cosmology and quantum processes.

Vacuum-spawned particles flickering into existence from the void were energized by the Big Bang to remain in the real world. This sudden influx of countless particles from the vacuum was like throwing a stone into the dense particle pond of the early universe. It sent out ripples. These pressure waves rippling through the gas were nothing more than sound waves. The entire universe rang like a bell.

The particle fog cleared and the universe became transparent. There was no longer enough pressure to support the sound waves. But now photons traveled freely through space, (“Let there be Light”). Before fading forever, those echoes of creation’s thunder left their mark on the cosmic microwave background. These sound waves compressed the particle soup in some regions of the cosmos and rarefied it in others. The resulting temperature patterns show the universe just as it was when the particle fog – and the sound waves – vanished.

The first moments of cosmic history show the ambient energy was so great that the entire universe was in a false vacuum state. The energy of the false vacuum acts as a kind of antigravity, and caused space to balloon at an exponential rate. During inflation the universe was nearly empty, its energy content having been swallowed up into the false vacuum.

Once it decayed to a classical vacuum, its excess energy precipitated like raindrops into the myriad hot particles of the Big Bang. The universe has never stopped inflating and is actually accelerating space and expanding the cosmos faster than we believed likely before 1998.

When scientists look backward in deep time and try to look through the Big Bang, they cannot apply normal rules. Even the bizarre notions of quantum mechanics don’t apply, let alone the mechanistic rules of Newton. Some speculate that our universe came either from a void, or a white hole -- a singularity (Hawking).

Others suggest it is the result of the collision of two bubble universes in a frothing stew of similar self-contained bubbles (Linde). Still others contend it comes from a non-material realm of pure information (Siegfried). Bohm’s implicate order is actually a quantum fuzz or superdense quantum vacuum. We know the Big Bang happened because the universe is still expanding, even accelerating (Goldsmith).
Quantum Physics

Or just ask Michio Kaku