Smoke on the Solar System
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From "New Scientist":http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2007/05/love-hard-rock-then-get-yourself-on.html
Love hard rock? Then get yourself on the next available mission to Saturn’s largest moon Titan. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to after listening to the guitar riff from "Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water as it would sound played on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan":http://www.acoustics.org/press/153rd/audio_smokes.mp3. [MP3]It’s all to do with the way sound waves travel through alien atmospheres. Physicist Andi Petculescu at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and mechanical engineer Richard Lueptow of Northwestern University in Evanston have developed a model that predicts the acoustic properties of gas mixtures, which depend on the composition of the gas as well as its pressure, density and temperature.Titan is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere worth its salt. The moon’s surface is perishing cold at 90 Kelvin, and its nitrogen-methane atmosphere is slightly thicker than Earth’s. As Petculescu and Lupetow have found, all this means that Titan’s atmosphere absorbs the least acoustic energy. In the audible frequency range, the attenuation is at least 100 times lower than on Earth, making Smoke on the Water sound louder, with a rich, thumping bass.Forget trying to listen on Mars, though. The Martian atmosphere is 95 per cent carbon dioxide, a chilly 220 Kelvin and very wispy indeed, which effectively kills the sound.The riff doesn’t sound quite so bad on Venus. Even though the composition of Venus’s atmosphere is similar to Mars, the temperature is a searing 730 Kelvin and the pressure at ground level is 90 times as crushing as on Earth - equivalent to the pressure about 1 kilometre deep in terrestrial oceans. This gives the Venusian atmosphere a similar acoustic attenuation to terrestrial atmosphere at very low frequencies, but it increases sharply as the frequency rises. Here Smoke on the Water is just about audible, though nothing comes close to Titan.But what about the crowd surfing?
Love hard rock? Then get yourself on the next available mission to Saturn’s largest moon Titan. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to after listening to the guitar riff from "Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water as it would sound played on Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan":http://www.acoustics.org/press/153rd/audio_smokes.mp3. [MP3]It’s all to do with the way sound waves travel through alien atmospheres. Physicist Andi Petculescu at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and mechanical engineer Richard Lueptow of Northwestern University in Evanston have developed a model that predicts the acoustic properties of gas mixtures, which depend on the composition of the gas as well as its pressure, density and temperature.Titan is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere worth its salt. The moon’s surface is perishing cold at 90 Kelvin, and its nitrogen-methane atmosphere is slightly thicker than Earth’s. As Petculescu and Lupetow have found, all this means that Titan’s atmosphere absorbs the least acoustic energy. In the audible frequency range, the attenuation is at least 100 times lower than on Earth, making Smoke on the Water sound louder, with a rich, thumping bass.Forget trying to listen on Mars, though. The Martian atmosphere is 95 per cent carbon dioxide, a chilly 220 Kelvin and very wispy indeed, which effectively kills the sound.The riff doesn’t sound quite so bad on Venus. Even though the composition of Venus’s atmosphere is similar to Mars, the temperature is a searing 730 Kelvin and the pressure at ground level is 90 times as crushing as on Earth - equivalent to the pressure about 1 kilometre deep in terrestrial oceans. This gives the Venusian atmosphere a similar acoustic attenuation to terrestrial atmosphere at very low frequencies, but it increases sharply as the frequency rises. Here Smoke on the Water is just about audible, though nothing comes close to Titan.But what about the crowd surfing?
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