Diamond Head Crater, Oahu, Hawaii.
Recreating the Sounds of Mars and Venus
Should we ever succeed in sending astronauts to Mars or Venus, it’s likely they would need to stay on the planets for several months, at least — or possibly set up permanent shop there. But how would they fill their leisure hours? Perhaps they could start a band! But the very different atmospheres of Mars and Venus would make their voices and instruments sound very different than they would on Earth.
Until now, we could only speculate about what those sounds might be. Only a couple of the probes we have sent into to space to explore our solar system have been equipped with microphones, and while sonification of the solar corona and the rings of Saturn offer haunting glimpses of the sounds of space, we have lacked any sense of sounds likely to be heard on the surfaces of other planets.
Enter Tim Leighton, an acoustician at the University of Southampton in England, who has ingeniously employed the physics and mathematical tools of his trade to create the natural sounds one would be likely to hear on the surface of Mars or Venus — things like lightning, or whirlwinds, or even ice volcanoes found on Saturn’s moon, Titan.
New isotope measurement could alter history of early solar system
The shorter half life of samarium-146 identified in this work has lead to the inference of a shorter time scale for cosmic events such as the formation of planets.
Assessing Astronomical Hazards
Pictured above is an illustration of a busy planetary system, showing the view of a planet ringed with space debris from a recently formed crater of an orbiting moon.
The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21 years has now been encircling the planet for a record-breaking 200 days.
First appearing as a tiny blemish on Dec. 5, 2010, the storm is still going strong today, surpassing the ringed giant’s previous longest tempest, which lasted 150 days back in 1903. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, has given astronomers a front-seat view of this enormous maelstrom and provided valuable data.
From its humble beginnings, the storm has grown to engulf the entire area between Saturn’s 30th and 51st north latitudes. From north to south, the tempest stretches about 9,000 miles — greater than diameter of the Earth — and covers two billion square miles, or eight times the surface area of our planet.
The storm marches through the planet’s atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from Cassini. Red and orange colors in this view indicate clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Yellow and green colors, most noticeable along the top edge of the view, indicate intermediate clouds. White and blue indicate high clouds and haze. The rings appear as a thin horizontal line of bright blue.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
(via WIRED)
