Stars May Generate Sound, Physicists Say

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: MasterOfTheDamned
my first thoughts too.
WOW, a mass of super heated plasma churning so viciously that it periodically ejects part of it's mass at high speed isn't completely silent, really?

Really. Within the gas of the star itself, I'm sure there's sound. Out in space away from the star, not one bit.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?
From my understanding sound is vibrations, just because those vibrations have no medium to propagate away from their source does that mean they don't exist? If you were to build a microphone that is able to withstand the extreme temperatures and throw it onto the surface of the sun are you saying that it wouldn't pick up anything at all?

edit: sorry somehow read your next post then replied to this one without noticing it, weird, now that I read it, I don't understand the disagreement

originally posted by: MasterOfTheDamned

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: MasterOfTheDamned
my first thoughts too.
WOW, a mass of super heated plasma churning so viciously that it periodically ejects part of it's mass at high speed isn't completely silent, really?

Really. Within the gas of the star itself, I'm sure there's sound. Out in space away from the star, not one bit.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it still make a sound?
From my understanding sound is vibrations, just because those vibrations have no medium to propagate away from their source does that mean they don't exist?

Ask Schrödinger's cat.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: moonweed
Astrophysicist Dr Fiorella Terenzi already experimented with this kind of thing..

Well, again, it's one of those things that sounds appealing but it's not quite as billed.

Her records had nothing at all to do with sound from other galaxies, since none can reach us through a vacuum, and certainly even if space transmitted sound as well as air, it would never reach us before the end of the Universe.

What she did was make some arbitrary transform between radio signals and sound, and rendered radio noise as something you could hear acoustically.

eta: NASA does this sort of thing a lot, it confuses the hell out of people. But I suppose it is an attempt to make what you're doing more understandable to taxpayers in that case, or to make some spending money in Terenzi's case.

Okay....now that i've had time to catch up to this.........before anyone goes shooting off at the mouth saying "that's irrelevant......" do some research...........her research was pioneering work.....long before anyone else was doing it.......so...get off my ass about it.....she was way ahead of her time.......and should be respected for her work.

I would think of it as; our eyes can only see a limited field of the light spectrum. - why would it not be the same for ears?

Our ears are Limited to a certain range on the sound spectrum. As dogs and cats hear things we cannot.

Our ears may not be tuned into the frequency range the sun is emitting, I would think of its sound as a heartbeat, radiating a specific frequency - which could be heard of if; A) we were closer to the sun to hear it lol B) if our ears could pick up on that sound wave or whatever nature it would be (Suns emitting sound?)

It makes more sense in my head and how I see it in my mind... hopefully others understsnd what I'm saying lol!

All celestial bodies could produce sound if that which it CREATED can; the human heartbeat , burping, voice, weird sounds we make. ..

This topic makes me think of this, which I have said before;

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god and the word was god"

"In the beginning was a sound and the sound was with the creator, and the sound is of the creator"

The Suns "heartbeat frequency" is the beat of life on Earth possible the sound that formed our world

The Sun, a star, is our creator within this universe. All that sun worship in ancient past to present, probably has its share of good reasons.

Go science! One step closer to finding out what those stars are saying! I bet they are talking about how messed earth is feeling sorry for Sol

S+F, thanks

a reply to: Elementalist

Sound requires a medium to propagate in. Like air. Space is chock full of nothing. It does not support sound propagation. Therefore, you'll never hear it on Earth.

a reply to: Bedlam

Pretty sure I said something along those lines

" A) if we were close enough to hear it"

" our ears can only pick up on a certain range of the sound spectrum "

I don't think of it making this beastly celestial music reverberating the solar system like a speaker, ha!

I would think of it like subtle humming of a vibration, a subtle beat of sound. As our heartbeat makes sound in our chest but is not heard from ears outside the body (unless your close to a beating chest)

Sunbeat. . Ya

How can't a star make sound; but almost everything it creates does? :

a reply to: Elementalist

But we're not talking subtle beats or sound that's outside the range of human hearing. There won't be anything at all. Not even a hum.