There are two kinds of scifi movies – the ‘serious’ kind, where there is no sound in space and the other kind, with zooms and crashes and laserblasts. The older versions of those types of scifi movies also included all sorts of spooky, theremin-flavored space noises… and now it turns out they were right.
Astronomers working at the University of Sheffield have recorded the sounds of the magnetic field of the outer atmosphere of the sun, and it sounds like the outer space noises of just about every black and white scifi movie ever made. It’s spooky and it’s cool and it’s putting me in the mood to watch some Forbidden Planet.
via Neil Gaiman’s Twitter
19 comments
Wow! That is so cool… on a very geeky level… who would have thought this to be true? Thanks, Dev!
freaking amazing!
Holy shit, that first clip sounds like it has the distress signal from the Icarus I in there, just a bit. I guess Sunshine was right?
Moog synthesizers were made using alien technology found at Area 51!
Seeing I love both types of films equally this is great fun. Thanks Devin!
Take that Harlan Ellison!
In space no one can hear you scream!
Aw, bullshit.
It's no different than when then color-code the Hubble pictures to make them look cool for the general public.
It's sci fi.
Beyond awesome.
That isn't the noise of sun flares. It's a warning. A potential declaration of war. Because 12-20-2012 is coming and the aliens will bring this world to an end! Run for your lives! RRRRUUUUNNNN!!!!!!!!
#3 – That is exactly what I thought of as well!
Totally. You think a guy with a name like "Moog" was from Earth? No way…
The first one totally sounds like the THX logo sound.
you do all realize that this is very low frequency vibration, sped up to a frequency range more comfortable to the human ear. you could probably get a similar effect from the earth's vibration or any large object that moves, really. nothing special.
Similar sounds from Jupiter, Saturn's rings, etc, have been around for a little bit. They sound eerily similar to the wailing heard when the black monolith is present in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Gah, don't you hate it when nerds come along and spoil geeks' fun. Who cares if you can get a similar effect from any large object? It's cool.
Or the Higg's boson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm
#14, seriously, just shut up.
Beauty, especially the first photos
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