08-02-2014, 08:52 AM
a followup discussion on reddit:
1) How are these different from electromagnetic radiation such as light and xrays?
2) These are soundwaves, which are generated from vibration. The movement of the electromagnetic waves reflecting off whichever planet generates this vibration, or (I'm guessing here) the vibration of the planet from spinning combined with the electromagnetic waves' vibrations are what make the sound. In any case, the vibrations from the em waves and how the planets are reflecting them are what makes the sounds.
3) Actually, as I understand it, they aren't sound waves at all. What they are doing is recording radio radiation emitted by different bodies (the planets), and then simply mapping the different frequencies of radio waves to sound.
So if they detect a 1kHz EM signal being emitted by a planet, they represent that signal with a 1kHz audio tone. Kind of like how IR radiation is "colorized" when viewing an IR camera or filter.
Of course, I could also be completely wrong, so please set me straight if that is the case.
4) This sounds more realistic. It's like false coloring xray radiation, but instead of outputting an image, they are outputting sound waves.
So basically this is scientifically useless, but good for publicity?
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