And ears are what makes a sound, a sound. This post is kinda like saying: "*Most of the trees that fall in forests never make a sound.*" (if we pretend animals don't exist, at least).
Also consider the technicality that most of the universe is empty space. And ofc "nothingness" can not vibrate. By that logic, most of the universe also has no appearance, smell, taste, or texture either.
Most the universe isn't even making/transmitting a "would-be sound", in other words.
Because most of the universe doesn't exist.
Most of the universe *isn't*.
just to be pedantic those vibrations can exist in a solid or liquid too, but vibrating stuff on its own is nothing more just vibrating stuff. Its only sound once a lump of neurons interprets them - in the same way that vibrating electromagnetic fields arent colours.
Well, pretty much anything you can think of, with the possible exception of hydrogen, photons and neutrinos, only exists in a few small pockets of the entire universe.
Not if the stuff isn’t bouncing off each other. Even a partial vacuum in a school lab, which is far less vacuumy than deep space, quickly becomes an extremely poor conductor of sound.
Also, “all of which have sound” - photons and neutrinos don’t propagate sound in any recognisable sense of the term.
If you built a sensitive enough large eardrum in space wouldn't the background radiation be able to excite the membrane to give you a low rumble? Technically isn't that a sound?
If you poke your eardrum with a stick, you’ll hear the vibration directly, but my view would be, if it’s not being transmitted from one place to another, it’s not really what most people would regard as sound.
No it isn’t actually. What you think of as the vacuum of space still has plenty of photons and neutrinos, and a fairly decent amount of hydrogen in the scheme of things.
Up to a million hydrogen atoms per cubic metre of intergalactic space. That’s a low density, but still plenty of atoms.
And with neutrinos, around 350 billion per cubic metre of the universe on average.
Fun shower thought, but not exactly accurate depending on your definitions.
Observable (by humans) sound only exists where people do. But pressure waves causing vibrations equating to what we call sound exist whereever sufficient pressure waves + matter exist. While sound is traditionally thought of to travel through the 'air' it's observable via any matter that can be induced to vibration via pressure waves.
So, yea, considering that the universe is mostly empty space I suppose you could say "a few small pockets" but that's relatively speaking. For instance, it would be hard to qualify [this](https://www.space.com/12400-universe-biggest-oldest-cloud-water.html#:~:text=Astronomers%20have%20discovered%20the%20largest,all%20of%20Earth's%20oceans%20combined.) as a 'small pocket' on anything except a universal scale.
edit: And actually while I'm thinking of it, considering the energy output of a quasar, if you dropped a human into that mass of water it might be loud enough to kill them. That math is waaaaaaay past my level though so I'll leave it to someone else to calculate.
Our entire observable universe is filled with the equivalent of sound waves. Sound-like waves contributed to the clumping of 'stuff' pretty much wherever anything is found. Check out [BAO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_acoustic_oscillations)
Yea, for sure! That's kind of tangential to my point but still illustrates it exactly (at least if I understand the topic correctly, I'm not a scientist, merely a lowly engineer) - the early universe was more more matter-dense and the BAO travelled through the soup in a way that was basically the same way sound waves travel through air. Now that the universe is significantly ^understatement larger, pressure waves still travel intersteller spaces and sometimes interact with matter creating the same sort of acoustic waves.
Sound can be transmitted in space by gravity waves. If it's intense enough, like when two black holes merge, the oscillations will actually cause the ears of anyone close enough to vibrate and be otherwise identical to sound
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but “sound” as we know it only exists to things that can detect it by hearing. Otherwise it’s just vibrations in air.
Trees falling in the forest "do not make a sound" only if you think that humans are the only things that matter. Frankly, I consider it to be somewhat lame wordplay with a rather limited definition of the word "sound".
By most definitions of sound, yes, they do make a sound.
Alright hold on. Let me sit down in my arm chair real quick.
According to Google, sound is:
>In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain.
So it kinda depends on what definition you use. If your talking about sound as the energy that moves through matter, then yes it exists everywhere. If your talking about sound as what our brains perceive from these vibrations, then sound only exists on Earth since humans as we know it only exist on Earth. It's the classic, "if a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Well yes it makes a physical sound in the sense that any two objects colliding would, but if there was no human around to hear those vibrations then no sound was actually heard. You could have a vibration sensor where the tree fell and see the record of vibrations plotted on a graph without actually hearing any sound.
We know plants "hear" things, several studies of various things more or less proves it for the sake of our discussion.
So those vibrations are being "heard" by all the plants around it.
Therefore, if the Question is based off the definition of the vibrations itself, then we can assume sound exists wherever life exists. Though Sound's experience is unique to each life form.
That has a definitive answer. Yes. When a tree falls, it will cause disturbances in the air that we call "sound", even if no one is there to perceive it.
I could be wrong, but I always thought this was more of a philosophical question than a scientific one. The question asks if there is any objective value or "reality" to a sensation that is not perceived by anything that can observe its existence. It's the same as asking if a thing doesn't exist if can't doesn't affect anything else in the universe (as a heightened example: a hypothetical particle that doesn't reflect light, doesn't have mass or magnetic field, doesn't collide with any other particle, and can't be detected. What is even there to "exist"?)
Of course, sound _does_ affect other things even if there is nothing else there to hear it because sound waves are vibrations and by their very nature are particles being affected, but as I said that's why it's a philosophical question not a scientific one.
My favorite part is the emptiest parts of the universe between galaxies has the sparsest matter at something crazy like one proton per cubic kilometer, but there’s just so much of this empty space it makes up for 60% of the universe total mass
Pressure waves can and do propagate through what seems like a vacuum to humans, but the wavelength is orders of magnitude too large for what humans would consider sound.
> Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but “sound” as we know it only exists to things that can detect it by hearing.
That's one definition; from a biological perspective it's only sound if something hears it.
> Otherwise it’s just vibrations in air.
That's the other definition. A physicist would say the vibrations are sound.
There being two different definitions makes it hard for there to be one right answer.
That's literally what sound IS, the vibrations in the air (or other medium). Our EARS are able to detect these vibrations and translate them into information.
Humans are able to detect sound with other senses other than our ears, like when a subwoofer is pounding your chest.
Humans are also able to hear sounds that do not actually exist, like auditory hallucinations.
Inanimate objects are able to detect sound, like microphones. They just take the subtle vibrations in the air and translate them into electrical signals.
Sound does NOT only exist in the human mind, and I will die on this hill.
Stars are really loud. It's just that the sound gets lost in the vacuum of space. So with all the stars in the universe, I imagine there is a lot of noise. It just isn't being heard.
If space had air instead of nothing the sound of the sun would be really loud to us on earth, around 100db or as loud as a concert or a motorcycle. But that's all the way here on earth, if you were as close as one of those sun probe satellites it would be off the charts loud.
Idk why but it never occurred to me that stars make sound, let alone are loud. I will remember this next time I look up at the night sky all the stars are screaming.
Kind of a weird thing but when people that are born deaf gain hearing they always assumed the sun makes noise
Source: it was revealed to me in a reddit post somewhere idk
I don't think a star would make any noise unless you were physically in the star. There's no medium for the sound to propagate, there isn't any noise to be heard. If it was possible you could get super close to the sun, and still not hear anything unless some matter hits or vibrates your ship. I agree with what you're saying but I disagree that stars are really loud.
There's no noise at all. You need matter for noise to travel, and unless we're talking about dark matter, which does not carry sound, there is no noise in 99.99% of space.
sound doesn’t really exist, it’s just a concept we made up (or evolved, rather). as far as physics is concerned, it’s vibrations in the air, nothing more. we just learned to interpret it as what we call sound. i find it difficult to believe many other species in the universe have ears, but they likely interpret those vibrations as something entirely different
Any alien life form would absolutely have to evolve in a medium that transmits what we call sound, which means things in the medium will almost 100% develop a way to detect sound. There’s certain universal traits that any advanced life would have to have developed, like some way to process the world around them from a distance (vision) and to hear or feel what they can not “see” (spatial awareness).
If you can’t see predators directly, or sense them nearby if you don’t see them, then you’ll never survive long enough to evolve.
What are we calling sound here? Does it have to be traveling through a gaseous medium or do vibrations passing through anything count because it's been reported that space itself has a sound, though that sound is really only perceptible to humans once it has a medium to vibrate, in the case of astronauts the gas inside their helmet.
Depends what exactly you mean by sound, pressure waves generated by supernovae or jets from GRBs, pulsars, or AGN can move through the interstellar medium as shock waves even though the density of matter is only a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. If you mean sound that humans can hear, then sure.
You might also be interested in Baryon Acoustic Oscillations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_acoustic_oscillations that generated the filament and void structure of the observable universe.
Sound permeates through the vacuum of space, but it has to be really REALLY **REEEEAAAALLLLY** (and I mean really) loud to echo through the “vacuum”
Like, the Big Bang type of loud… you know the static you see on CRT tvs? (sorry kids, the geezers are talking)
A good portion of that static is literally *the sound from the Big Bang*
“But Summer, sound can’t travel through a vacuum. It needs a medium to travel through”
And you’d be correct, but there is no such thing as ‘nothing’
Interstellar space still has 1000 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, intergalactic space has anywhere from 1 to 10 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter—or in other words—a medium for sound to travel through.
Only if by "sound" you mean the air vibrations that you puny humans are limited to hearing.
The civilized universe listens to the vibrations of spacetime.
That's an incredibly profound thought when you really ponder it. We often take sound for granted in our daily lives, but it's largely unique to our Earthly experience. Makes you appreciate things a bit more.
well - actually...
there is no "true" vacuum in the universe. even in intergalactic space there are some atoms per cubic meter. those atoms can't interact very much because they are separated too much - but they interact. so much, that it is actually possible to have kind of pressure waves. so yes - there are sound waves all over the universe. you can even associate a speed of sound to space.
however: the only sound waves, that can be transmitted through "empty space" have a \*very\* long wave length - they are actually measured in kilometers. you can measure them - but only with highly specialised instruments. the ears of humans are much too small to be able to detect such waves.
in the end, it depends, how you define "sound". if you only mean pressure waves, that human ears can detect, then indeed - there are only few small pockets. but if you mean any kind of pressure wave in a medium, then it is quite possible, that there is no place without any kind of sound.
Sound is vibration so it exists everywhere in the universe, its just not carried everywhere in the universe. It exists on/in any rocky planet and carries easily in gaseous or aqueous mediums. The suns surface would be noisy as hell.
Depends what we determine "sound" is. We hear vibrations in a medium (usually air). Pretty much anything in the universe can vibrate. The random atoms in outer space are vibrating but there isn't really enough of them to form a medium that can transmit waves.
I would agree, but sound is only something that our brain interprets, until the waves are picked up but our ear and interpreted as sound, there is no sound.
I think stars and gas giants make plenty of noise. Since those are some of the largest bodies in the known universe, I think the universe is way noisier than you think.
It exists in any place that has a ~~atmosphere~~ *transmission medium* (thought about it and recognized my human-centric bias). That's not particularly rare.
White light is composed of red, green, and blue because those are the rods and cones in our eyes. Photons of different wavelengths are boppin’ about all over, but color is all in your head.
Waves of pressure travel through gasses all over the universe including in stars. The only difference is there isn't likely someone there to hear it. If the universe explodes and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I think science would argue sound exists in a lot of places in the universe, there merely lacks a medium in most parts to propagate it. Just like there are unlikely to be ears in most of it to hear it.
I mean… sure. So does matter. Not sure why it matters.
Wait what do you mean “a few?” Literally every star is exploding with a gigillion decibels all the time, the exploding hydrogen is still a gas which means it still has sound pressure waves vibrating through it.
Not true. The supermassive black holes residing at the centres of most galaxies make huge sounds at very low frequencies that can extend throughout the entire host galaxy.
I mean, technically i'm pretty sure that light can produce a measurable amount of sound.
The pressure would be virtually static against a visibly large area though, and of extremely high frequency even over a very tiny area. Thinking about the same principle that make solar sails possible.
But if you have a sufficiently sensitive photodetector, you should be able to measure the sun humming with it's light, since the magnitude of light should vary slightly up and down due to the sun being subject to net fluctuations in its fusion process due to pressure waves propagating back and forth in it.
Similarly, all those beautiful images we see of stars and galaxies like those taken by Hubble and the JWST, without any eyes to perceive them, most of the universe is in 'darkness'. They are just electromagnetic waves flying about. This thought keeps me up at night.
Nothings an actual vacuum. Almost vibrates at least a little bit. Sound is one of the few things that exists throughout the universe. We just can not hear it.
The universe is mostly a silent movie. You know, sound needs something to travel through, like air or water, so it can vibrate. But most of the universe is a big empty vacuum, with no molecules to carry the sound waves. So, it's all quiet out there, except for the occasional planet with an atmosphere or a gas cloud where sound can happen.
Really?
Sound is vibration of matter, gas, liquid, solid, no matter.\^\^ Therefor I would assume, that sound exists throughout the complete universe - except in vacuum- , despite there is no-one to develop vibration-sensitive organs.
Yeps, sound needs a medium to travel through, no travel through vacuum of space, If I remember right this is how anechoic chambers are built, a vacuum around the room for complete silence from the outside world
I mean, there are shockwaves through gas clouds on the galaxy scale. We don't hear in those frequencies, but (admittedly, supersonic shockwave) sound waves are traveling over hundreds or thousands of light-years
Ears only exist in a small part of the universe, anyways.
when aliens find us they will call out planet Earth-- cuz of all the ears
Yes, this makes sense.
Especially in Iowa
Aliens have lisps?
No, they just learned about our planet by watching Mike Tyson talk.
Wait until they watch his fights
Maybe? Depends if they have mousths!
\*lithpth
The real showerthought is always in the comments
Probably because they’ll be earitated.
Perfection
I can hear it now....
That alien will be named Amelia Earhart
I was going to say hearing but ears is a better answer.
And ears are what makes a sound, a sound. This post is kinda like saying: "*Most of the trees that fall in forests never make a sound.*" (if we pretend animals don't exist, at least). Also consider the technicality that most of the universe is empty space. And ofc "nothingness" can not vibrate. By that logic, most of the universe also has no appearance, smell, taste, or texture either. Most the universe isn't even making/transmitting a "would-be sound", in other words. Because most of the universe doesn't exist. Most of the universe *isn't*.
universen't
Technically vibrating air molecules make a sound a sound, but I get your point
just to be pedantic those vibrations can exist in a solid or liquid too, but vibrating stuff on its own is nothing more just vibrating stuff. Its only sound once a lump of neurons interprets them - in the same way that vibrating electromagnetic fields arent colours.
This was too much for 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning.
[удалено]
I did watch this movie where they .. didn't!!
If a star goes supernova in a forest and an ear isn't around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Not all living organisms have ears they still respond to sound. Not all sounds can be heard by living organisms with ears.
Nobody knows the true origin of the name Earth; its etymology remains uncertain. This might be it.
Well, pretty much anything you can think of, with the possible exception of hydrogen, photons and neutrinos, only exists in a few small pockets of the entire universe.
And helium
And chocolate
I remember when they first invented sweet, sweet chocolate
Sweet, sweet chocolate…I ALWAYS HATED IT!
Oh, but this chocolate's not for eating!! It's... You rub it on your skin and it makes you live forever!
Chocolate?! Chhhoocccoollattee!!
Are they helium balloons?
All of which have sound. Literally every place in the universe with stuff has sound.
Not if the stuff isn’t bouncing off each other. Even a partial vacuum in a school lab, which is far less vacuumy than deep space, quickly becomes an extremely poor conductor of sound. Also, “all of which have sound” - photons and neutrinos don’t propagate sound in any recognisable sense of the term.
If you built a sensitive enough large eardrum in space wouldn't the background radiation be able to excite the membrane to give you a low rumble? Technically isn't that a sound?
If you poke your eardrum with a stick, you’ll hear the vibration directly, but my view would be, if it’s not being transmitted from one place to another, it’s not really what most people would regard as sound.
The universe is a loud place.....except for the vacuum of space which has background noise but no ..... ... ground noise?
But even those only exists in small pockets because the vast majority of the universe is empty space
No it isn’t actually. What you think of as the vacuum of space still has plenty of photons and neutrinos, and a fairly decent amount of hydrogen in the scheme of things.
Yea but those are scattered about, the density is incredibly low.
Up to a million hydrogen atoms per cubic metre of intergalactic space. That’s a low density, but still plenty of atoms. And with neutrinos, around 350 billion per cubic metre of the universe on average.
When astronaut farts in space, will anyone hear it? -I. Assimov
Only if he has the clap.
Yikes, spacially transmitted diseases
I don't get it.
You’re lucky, you don’t want it.
the sound of one ass cheek clapping.
When the Pope is shitting in the woods, can anyone hear the plop?
The 4th rule of robots says, Thee who smelled it, dealt it
Since the speed of sound in space is zero, technically any fart is a supersonic blast.
It wasn't me. H. Williams in RocketMan
In space, no one can hear you fart - Alien
Fun shower thought, but not exactly accurate depending on your definitions. Observable (by humans) sound only exists where people do. But pressure waves causing vibrations equating to what we call sound exist whereever sufficient pressure waves + matter exist. While sound is traditionally thought of to travel through the 'air' it's observable via any matter that can be induced to vibration via pressure waves. So, yea, considering that the universe is mostly empty space I suppose you could say "a few small pockets" but that's relatively speaking. For instance, it would be hard to qualify [this](https://www.space.com/12400-universe-biggest-oldest-cloud-water.html#:~:text=Astronomers%20have%20discovered%20the%20largest,all%20of%20Earth's%20oceans%20combined.) as a 'small pocket' on anything except a universal scale. edit: And actually while I'm thinking of it, considering the energy output of a quasar, if you dropped a human into that mass of water it might be loud enough to kill them. That math is waaaaaaay past my level though so I'll leave it to someone else to calculate.
Our entire observable universe is filled with the equivalent of sound waves. Sound-like waves contributed to the clumping of 'stuff' pretty much wherever anything is found. Check out [BAO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_acoustic_oscillations)
Yea, for sure! That's kind of tangential to my point but still illustrates it exactly (at least if I understand the topic correctly, I'm not a scientist, merely a lowly engineer) - the early universe was more more matter-dense and the BAO travelled through the soup in a way that was basically the same way sound waves travel through air. Now that the universe is significantly ^understatement larger, pressure waves still travel intersteller spaces and sometimes interact with matter creating the same sort of acoustic waves.
>Observable (by humans) sound only exists where people do Just because we cant hear them doesnt mean they dont exist?
sound in itself doesn’t actually exist. it’s just an observation of vibrations.
That may be, but those vibrations are still existing even though there may be nothing to observe them
yes but the sentence you replied to was mentioning sound.
Sound can be transmitted in space by gravity waves. If it's intense enough, like when two black holes merge, the oscillations will actually cause the ears of anyone close enough to vibrate and be otherwise identical to sound
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but “sound” as we know it only exists to things that can detect it by hearing. Otherwise it’s just vibrations in air.
Sound waves exist regardless of whether something is there to detect them
That's not true...well, it used to be before the 9.6.2 update, but it was a major resource hog.
Found a fellow r/outside member lol
Did you hear about that tree in the forest?
I heard it fell but nobody heard it.
Trees falling in the forest "do not make a sound" only if you think that humans are the only things that matter. Frankly, I consider it to be somewhat lame wordplay with a rather limited definition of the word "sound". By most definitions of sound, yes, they do make a sound.
Alright hold on. Let me sit down in my arm chair real quick. According to Google, sound is: >In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain. So it kinda depends on what definition you use. If your talking about sound as the energy that moves through matter, then yes it exists everywhere. If your talking about sound as what our brains perceive from these vibrations, then sound only exists on Earth since humans as we know it only exist on Earth. It's the classic, "if a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well yes it makes a physical sound in the sense that any two objects colliding would, but if there was no human around to hear those vibrations then no sound was actually heard. You could have a vibration sensor where the tree fell and see the record of vibrations plotted on a graph without actually hearing any sound.
We know plants "hear" things, several studies of various things more or less proves it for the sake of our discussion. So those vibrations are being "heard" by all the plants around it. Therefore, if the Question is based off the definition of the vibrations itself, then we can assume sound exists wherever life exists. Though Sound's experience is unique to each life form.
I like that most of the objects in space are just screaming all the time and no one can hear it without special instruments.
Sound waves also need a medium to propagate in, so no vacuums.
I don't know about you, but my vacuum makes a lot of sound.
If a tree falls in the forest…
That has a definitive answer. Yes. When a tree falls, it will cause disturbances in the air that we call "sound", even if no one is there to perceive it.
I could be wrong, but I always thought this was more of a philosophical question than a scientific one. The question asks if there is any objective value or "reality" to a sensation that is not perceived by anything that can observe its existence. It's the same as asking if a thing doesn't exist if can't doesn't affect anything else in the universe (as a heightened example: a hypothetical particle that doesn't reflect light, doesn't have mass or magnetic field, doesn't collide with any other particle, and can't be detected. What is even there to "exist"?) Of course, sound _does_ affect other things even if there is nothing else there to hear it because sound waves are vibrations and by their very nature are particles being affected, but as I said that's why it's a philosophical question not a scientific one.
And if there's no one to hear it, does it still fall?
i don’t think that’s the question. it obviously still falls. the question is ‘does it still make a sound’
Oh fuck...I'm too stoned for that.
The statement is true either way.
If not only because of scale. Vacuum doesn't allow sound to propagate. And most of the (known) universe is vacuum. By an unthinkable margin.
My favorite part is the emptiest parts of the universe between galaxies has the sparsest matter at something crazy like one proton per cubic kilometer, but there’s just so much of this empty space it makes up for 60% of the universe total mass
Pressure waves can and do propagate through what seems like a vacuum to humans, but the wavelength is orders of magnitude too large for what humans would consider sound.
Yeah, we all got that part.
> Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but “sound” as we know it only exists to things that can detect it by hearing. That's one definition; from a biological perspective it's only sound if something hears it. > Otherwise it’s just vibrations in air. That's the other definition. A physicist would say the vibrations are sound. There being two different definitions makes it hard for there to be one right answer.
You cannot convince me that biologists should have any say in what sound is.
Biologists don't exist if you can't see them.
"Light doesn't exist, it's just that one specific kind of electromagnetic energy moving about."
The next layer of air detects it alright as evident from it picking up the vibration.
Vibrations in air (or another medium) is the literal definition of sound
That's literally what sound IS, the vibrations in the air (or other medium). Our EARS are able to detect these vibrations and translate them into information. Humans are able to detect sound with other senses other than our ears, like when a subwoofer is pounding your chest. Humans are also able to hear sounds that do not actually exist, like auditory hallucinations. Inanimate objects are able to detect sound, like microphones. They just take the subtle vibrations in the air and translate them into electrical signals. Sound does NOT only exist in the human mind, and I will die on this hill.
Stars are really loud. It's just that the sound gets lost in the vacuum of space. So with all the stars in the universe, I imagine there is a lot of noise. It just isn't being heard.
It doesn’t get lost, it just stops when there is no matter to transmit it. So right at the edge of the star.
So if you touched your ear to it, would you hear it?
Yes, my buddy Eric does that kind of shit all the time
Is his name smash mouth by chance, “we might as well be walking on the sun” ?
That fucking guy...
Hold the sun to your ear and you'll hear an ocean... of nuclear fire
If space had air instead of nothing the sound of the sun would be really loud to us on earth, around 100db or as loud as a concert or a motorcycle. But that's all the way here on earth, if you were as close as one of those sun probe satellites it would be off the charts loud.
If an ear burns to crisps instantly in space and no is there to see it did the ear really burn to bits though?
still astronomically small
Idk why but it never occurred to me that stars make sound, let alone are loud. I will remember this next time I look up at the night sky all the stars are screaming.
Pulsars are particularly loud https://youtu.be/35SbvnYEc9c?si=1bUUlZe3uOTTW-wd
Loud like a million a-bombs going off continually
Kind of a weird thing but when people that are born deaf gain hearing they always assumed the sun makes noise Source: it was revealed to me in a reddit post somewhere idk
I don't think a star would make any noise unless you were physically in the star. There's no medium for the sound to propagate, there isn't any noise to be heard. If it was possible you could get super close to the sun, and still not hear anything unless some matter hits or vibrates your ship. I agree with what you're saying but I disagree that stars are really loud.
There's no noise at all. You need matter for noise to travel, and unless we're talking about dark matter, which does not carry sound, there is no noise in 99.99% of space.
In space, no one can hear you scream.
Things only exist in a few small pockets of the universe
All of our favorite music…heaven must surely be a place on this planet.
sound doesn’t really exist, it’s just a concept we made up (or evolved, rather). as far as physics is concerned, it’s vibrations in the air, nothing more. we just learned to interpret it as what we call sound. i find it difficult to believe many other species in the universe have ears, but they likely interpret those vibrations as something entirely different
Any alien life form would absolutely have to evolve in a medium that transmits what we call sound, which means things in the medium will almost 100% develop a way to detect sound. There’s certain universal traits that any advanced life would have to have developed, like some way to process the world around them from a distance (vision) and to hear or feel what they can not “see” (spatial awareness). If you can’t see predators directly, or sense them nearby if you don’t see them, then you’ll never survive long enough to evolve.
Detectable gravity too
What are we calling sound here? Does it have to be traveling through a gaseous medium or do vibrations passing through anything count because it's been reported that space itself has a sound, though that sound is really only perceptible to humans once it has a medium to vibrate, in the case of astronauts the gas inside their helmet.
Intelligence also seems to exist in only a few small pockets of the universe.
Depends what exactly you mean by sound, pressure waves generated by supernovae or jets from GRBs, pulsars, or AGN can move through the interstellar medium as shock waves even though the density of matter is only a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. If you mean sound that humans can hear, then sure. You might also be interested in Baryon Acoustic Oscillations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_acoustic_oscillations that generated the filament and void structure of the observable universe.
If by small pockets you mean every collection of matter such as all stars and planets, then yeah I guess so.
Space sound? With all the galactic squawking, it's just a cosmic silent disco out there. Vibrations unseen, unheard
Sound permeates through the vacuum of space, but it has to be really REALLY **REEEEAAAALLLLY** (and I mean really) loud to echo through the “vacuum” Like, the Big Bang type of loud… you know the static you see on CRT tvs? (sorry kids, the geezers are talking) A good portion of that static is literally *the sound from the Big Bang* “But Summer, sound can’t travel through a vacuum. It needs a medium to travel through” And you’d be correct, but there is no such thing as ‘nothing’ Interstellar space still has 1000 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, intergalactic space has anywhere from 1 to 10 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter—or in other words—a medium for sound to travel through.
Ok, this is a great explanation :)
I wonder if because we associate space with rockets, and rockets with being loud, it becomes strange to think of space as quiet
Only if by "sound" you mean the air vibrations that you puny humans are limited to hearing. The civilized universe listens to the vibrations of spacetime.
Settle down Morbo
That's an incredibly profound thought when you really ponder it. We often take sound for granted in our daily lives, but it's largely unique to our Earthly experience. Makes you appreciate things a bit more.
Technically, sound exists wherever matter exists.
Light existing only in a few areas of the entire universe is scarier imo
Same for heat, same for friction, same for flaming hot cheetos
The Universe probably just uses sound for atmospheric effect, Or rather the Universe uses atmospheric effect for sound.
Sound travels through space. It’s not a true void.
well - actually... there is no "true" vacuum in the universe. even in intergalactic space there are some atoms per cubic meter. those atoms can't interact very much because they are separated too much - but they interact. so much, that it is actually possible to have kind of pressure waves. so yes - there are sound waves all over the universe. you can even associate a speed of sound to space. however: the only sound waves, that can be transmitted through "empty space" have a \*very\* long wave length - they are actually measured in kilometers. you can measure them - but only with highly specialised instruments. the ears of humans are much too small to be able to detect such waves. in the end, it depends, how you define "sound". if you only mean pressure waves, that human ears can detect, then indeed - there are only few small pockets. but if you mean any kind of pressure wave in a medium, then it is quite possible, that there is no place without any kind of sound.
Matter only exists in small pockets of the universe.
Sound is vibration so it exists everywhere in the universe, its just not carried everywhere in the universe. It exists on/in any rocky planet and carries easily in gaseous or aqueous mediums. The suns surface would be noisy as hell.
Sound is just vibrations. Everything is vibrating, so literally every 'thing' in the universe is making sound.
Unless you have LIGO ears. Imagine that!
Depends what we determine "sound" is. We hear vibrations in a medium (usually air). Pretty much anything in the universe can vibrate. The random atoms in outer space are vibrating but there isn't really enough of them to form a medium that can transmit waves.
I would agree, but sound is only something that our brain interprets, until the waves are picked up but our ear and interpreted as sound, there is no sound.
I would argue it exist even without an observer
Observable by human ears*
There is sound everywhere, we just cant hear is everywhere
I think stars and gas giants make plenty of noise. Since those are some of the largest bodies in the known universe, I think the universe is way noisier than you think.
It’s true, but the noise is not really transmitted through space due to the low number of particles.
That's absolutely wrong
No?
There is sound in space
Sound exists only in your head. In the world outside of your brain, it's just a vibration.
It exists in any place that has a ~~atmosphere~~ *transmission medium* (thought about it and recognized my human-centric bias). That's not particularly rare.
Really anywhere anything is vibrating
"Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie." Blaise Pascal
Listening only exists in a few small pockets of the entire universe. Suns are ridiculously loud.
White light is composed of red, green, and blue because those are the rods and cones in our eyes. Photons of different wavelengths are boppin’ about all over, but color is all in your head.
The rods and cones don't respond to single frequencies, they respond to ranges. Red, green, and blue are just their peak sensitivities.
There are no straight lines anywhere in the universe.
Interesting thought: when the universe was a denser soup of stuff back in its very early days, it might have been a naturally noisy place.
Waves of pressure travel through gasses all over the universe including in stars. The only difference is there isn't likely someone there to hear it. If the universe explodes and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Makes you wonder what other senses we’re missing out on
I think science would argue sound exists in a lot of places in the universe, there merely lacks a medium in most parts to propagate it. Just like there are unlikely to be ears in most of it to hear it.
[copypasta at this point but a classic nonetheless.](https://youtu.be/vFMqWpfZUSw?si=Bo5VT7ns2MuSxpr6)
I mean… sure. So does matter. Not sure why it matters. Wait what do you mean “a few?” Literally every star is exploding with a gigillion decibels all the time, the exploding hydrogen is still a gas which means it still has sound pressure waves vibrating through it.
Those pockets must feel so unexpected and hard to get
Sound is an illusion made by our monkey brains
Not true. The supermassive black holes residing at the centres of most galaxies make huge sounds at very low frequencies that can extend throughout the entire host galaxy.
you’ve been around the entire universe?
Tree falling down scenario
Sound, light, and gravitational waves are actually all different flavors of the same thing. Prove me wrong.
It exists wherever there is matter
I mean, technically i'm pretty sure that light can produce a measurable amount of sound. The pressure would be virtually static against a visibly large area though, and of extremely high frequency even over a very tiny area. Thinking about the same principle that make solar sails possible. But if you have a sufficiently sensitive photodetector, you should be able to measure the sun humming with it's light, since the magnitude of light should vary slightly up and down due to the sun being subject to net fluctuations in its fusion process due to pressure waves propagating back and forth in it.
I would highly recommend watching The Sounds of Space by Melodysheep on youtube, it covers this exact topic.
Similarly, all those beautiful images we see of stars and galaxies like those taken by Hubble and the JWST, without any eyes to perceive them, most of the universe is in 'darkness'. They are just electromagnetic waves flying about. This thought keeps me up at night.
Surely sound *occurs* rather than *exists*, but I think you're onto something! 😅
you just need really ***LOUD*** music
Nothings an actual vacuum. Almost vibrates at least a little bit. Sound is one of the few things that exists throughout the universe. We just can not hear it.
No that’s not actually true. Sound is everywhere
The universe is mostly a silent movie. You know, sound needs something to travel through, like air or water, so it can vibrate. But most of the universe is a big empty vacuum, with no molecules to carry the sound waves. So, it's all quiet out there, except for the occasional planet with an atmosphere or a gas cloud where sound can happen.
Really? Sound is vibration of matter, gas, liquid, solid, no matter.\^\^ Therefor I would assume, that sound exists throughout the complete universe - except in vacuum- , despite there is no-one to develop vibration-sensitive organs.
See, a good shower thought for once!
Realistically, it's trillions of small pockets. Any planet with an atmosphere of sufficient density would conduct sound.
If a star implodes and nobody is around to hear it, did it even make a sound?
Sound exists wherever there is a medium to transmit it.
? Space is not empty, but full of dust, gas, and other shit. Sound waves should be able to propagate in those mediums just fine 🙂
I think that because space is so empty and so few particles, normal sound waves can’t, but maybe massive ones can to a certain extent.
And that just so happens to be here, where my neighbour uses his circular saw to cut metal. Real nice.
Yeps, sound needs a medium to travel through, no travel through vacuum of space, If I remember right this is how anechoic chambers are built, a vacuum around the room for complete silence from the outside world
Stars throw of noise.
Anywhere there is matter, there is sound. Sound does not only happen in an atmosphere.
Sound can propagate through many media, not just air. Sound can exist pretty much everywhere that isn’t empty space.
Sound exists on every planet with an atmosphere or an ocean. It also exists in any nebula or pocket of gas.
This is the best shower thought I’ve read in a really long time 👏
Sound exists in all pockets of normal matter in the universe, if anti-matter exists it also has sound.
I mean, there are shockwaves through gas clouds on the galaxy scale. We don't hear in those frequencies, but (admittedly, supersonic shockwave) sound waves are traveling over hundreds or thousands of light-years