What does the sun sound like?

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On 13 Sep 2006 14:09:56 -0700, "Radium" wrote:

Okay. Would the reactions in the sun generate any sound between 20 hz
and 20 khz?

I'm sure they do. That's the simple question. The more difficult one is
figuring out what we'd actually hear after that sound propagated 93
million miles through the atmosphere you propose.

My gut tells me we'd hear something like static (white noise, or
weighted noise). It also tells me the amplitude might be sufficient to
rupture cells.

Have a listen:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/singing/singing.html

It is speeded into the audible range.

George

"Gareth Slee" wrote in message
.. .
TopBanana wrote:

On 12 Sep 2006 16:06:55 -0700, "Radium" wrote:

If all layers of earths atmosphere had the same thickness of air and
the atmosphere somehow grew large enough in diameter to include the
sun, would we hear the sounds produced by the sun? If so, what would
they sound like?

Something like a falling tree I should think.


Ah... but if it falls and no ones there, does it make a sound?


Hang on, I've got a cat in this box; I'll see if he heard anything.

Since your original question was "What does the sun sound like?" I think
it's fair to exclude sound outside the range of human hearing. After
all, most of the sound all around us here on the Earth is similarly
outside our hearing range. It's sound, but it doesn't sound like
anything at all.


That brings up that silly-assed high school English class question:
"If a tree in a forest falls over but nobody is around to hear it, did
it make a sound?". Answer is in your definition of the word "sound".
Some definitions involve a set of human ears...

As the "surface" of the Sun is constantly churning over (like as in a
pot of boiling water), it probably sounds somewhat like the rushing
noise from a smokestack spewing lots of pollution, or like a waterfall.
Or a nuke bomb just after it goes off. Probably extremely loud.

I probably remember this incorrectly, but doesn't the Sun's corona get
superheated from acoustic energy (sound)?

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

-- Walt Whitman

--
Ahmed Ouahi, Architect
Best Regards!


"robert casey" wrote in message
link.net...


Since your original question was "What does the sun sound like?" I think
it's fair to exclude sound outside the range of human hearing. After
all, most of the sound all around us here on the Earth is similarly
outside our hearing range. It's sound, but it doesn't sound like
anything at all.


That brings up that silly-assed high school English class question:
"If a tree in a forest falls over but nobody is around to hear it, did
it make a sound?". Answer is in your definition of the word "sound".
Some definitions involve a set of human ears...

As the "surface" of the Sun is constantly churning over (like as in a
pot of boiling water), it probably sounds somewhat like the rushing
noise from a smokestack spewing lots of pollution, or like a waterfall.
Or a nuke bomb just after it goes off. Probably extremely loud.

I probably remember this incorrectly, but doesn't the Sun's corona get
superheated from acoustic energy (sound)?

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:18:05 GMT, robert casey
wrote:

That brings up that silly-assed high school English class question:
"If a tree in a forest falls over but nobody is around to hear it, did
it make a sound?". Answer is in your definition of the word "sound".
Some definitions involve a set of human ears...

But by far the most common definition is simply compressional waves
traveling in some medium, without regard to human ears, especially in
the scientific context I assume given the forums where the question was
asked.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Just for the fun of it once, a friend and I got a large 10ft spherical dish and

put a microphone at the focus, hook up an amp and a recorder and pointed
it at storms approaching. It really was quite a kick. Thunder was unreal!
We gave the tape to a guy who was producing a movie and he loved it.
One warm summer night we hooked it up and pointed at nearby woods and
the grass - have you ever heard crickets at 120 db! ? I swear you could
almost hear worms crawling. Try it sometime. (BTW all credit goes to a
university public radiostation who supplied the old dish).

jerry





Radium wrote:

Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article , Wally wrote:


Radium wrote:

Hi:

If all layers of earths atmosphere had the same thickness of air and
the atmosphere somehow grew large enough in diameter to include the
sun, would we hear the sounds produced by the sun? If so, what would
they sound like?

Thanks,

Radium

Your question deserves a question - what are you looking for?
The sound of God? Some sound that has never been heard on Earth
before? Some sound humongous? The anger of the Gods?

We already have such a natural sound - it's called "thunder"......
The weekday Thursday is the "day of Thor", the "god of thunder"....

Whati f the
answer was: 'the same sound you hear on Earth listening to the winds
etc,
which happens to be moving precisely because of Solar activity
distributed
over the Earth's surface" ??? You tell me!

Perhaps he was just curious and wanted to know how we might
perceive it? You seem a little provoked by the question itself....


Anyway....


It would most likely be inaudible infra-sound, i.e. sound with
frequencies well below 20 Hz. What does distant thunder sound like?
Quite low-pitched, like a rumble - right?

Wouldn't the extreme heat also produce high-pitched sounds above our
hearing range? AFAIK, by the time the sound reaches earth, the
frequency and amplitude would probably decrease due to dissapation of
energy.

And that distant thunder is
just only about 10 km away -- the effect would be even more pronounced
for a source of sound some 150 million km away!!!!

The distance would probably soften the loudness of the sound. However,
the sounds generated by the sun would probably be louder [at least at
the source] than lightning from the same distance because the sun has
so much more power than lightning.

Another factor to consider: the sound waves would need some 140 years
to propagate from the Sun to the Earth! This is based on the
(unrealistic) assumption of a speed-of-sound the same as in out
atmosphere. But an atmosphere reaching as far as the Sun would
probably consist mostly of hydrogen, and also be much hotter. These
two effects would make the sound propagate much faster - but it would
still need at least some 10-15 years to propagate from the Sun to the
Earth!

So if sound waves really could propagate all the way from the Sun to
the Earth, the "solar sounds" we would "hear" now (or, more likely,
detect with equipment sensitive to infrasound) would have been
generated about one sunspot cycle ago!

Perhaps the "sounds from the Sun" would be similar to (but maybe
weaker than) the changing air pressure when high pressure and low
pressure centers pass by us. Since sound is nothing but changes in
air pressure, these slow changes in air pressure can be considered a
very low-pitched "sound" with a cycle time of several days, i.e. with
a frequency of a few micro-Hertz!

Would the sounds be similar to the "cosmic noise" we can hear on
equipment designed for radio-astronomy? These devices can receiving
radio signals produced by the sun and increase the frequency to where
it would be audible to the human ear.


--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

Radium wrote:
Hi:

If all layers of earths atmosphere had the same thickness of air and
the atmosphere somehow grew large enough in diameter to include the
sun, would we hear the sounds produced by the sun? If so, what would
they sound like?


Thanks,

Radium

Probably a continuous roar like a muffled waterfall or TV tuned to a
dead
channel, but I'm not sure. Look up "brown noise".

http://soi.stanford.edu/results/sounds.html

Cheers
"Sjouke Burry" wrote in message
...
Radium wrote:
Hi:

If all layers of earths atmosphere had the same thickness of air and
the atmosphere somehow grew large enough in diameter to include the
sun, would we hear the sounds produced by the sun? If so, what would
they sound like?


Thanks,

Radium

"sun sondwaves" ,179000 google hits.

In article om,
Radium wrote:

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On 13 Sep 2006 12:50:33 -0700, "Radium" wrote:

Wouldn't the extreme heat also produce high-pitched sounds above our
hearing range?

Since your original question was "What does the sun sound like?" I think
it's fair to exclude sound outside the range of human hearing. After
all, most of the sound all around us here on the Earth is similarly
outside our hearing range. It's sound, but it doesn't sound like
anything at all.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Okay. Would the reactions in the sun generate any sound between 20 hz
and 20 khz?

A source of sound of some wavelength cannot be much larger than the
wavelength itself. The wavelength of audible sound varies between
some 17 meters and 17 millimeters. The energy producing regious
of the Sun is much larger than that.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

In article ,
George Dishman wrote:

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On 13 Sep 2006 14:09:56 -0700, "Radium" wrote:

Okay. Would the reactions in the sun generate any sound between 20 hz
and 20 khz?

I'm sure they do. That's the simple question. The more difficult one is
figuring out what we'd actually hear after that sound propagated 93
million miles through the atmosphere you propose.

My gut tells me we'd hear something like static (white noise, or
weighted noise). It also tells me the amplitude might be sufficient to
rupture cells.

Have a listen:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/singing/singing.html

It is speeded into the audible range.

George

Yep, it's speeded up by a factor of 42,000. So if our ears had
an audible range not of 20 Hz to 20 kHz but instead of 0.5 mHz
(milli-Hertz) to 0.5 Hz, then that might be what we would hear.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/