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Space Science

What's the Sound Of A MethaneFall? 31

Posted by timothy from the remember-no-one-is-around-to-hear-it dept.
Kevin Nichols writes "Ever wonder what a "waterfall" on Titan might sound like? Professor Tim Leighton, of Southampton University, worked out what the sound of a methane and/or ethane fall might sound like. You can listen to a .wav file of the sound here: ISVR - Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The Cassini-Huygens mission will carry a microphone with the Huygens lander. Perhaps we'll find out if he's right." (Here's a direct link to the simulated Titan fall, slightly buried in the text.)
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What's the Sound Of A MethaneFall? More

What's the Sound Of A MethaneFall?

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  • But we already know... (Score:5, Funny)

    by philntc ( 735836 ) <info@[...]loosystems.com_water_in_gap> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:28PM (#9583416) Journal
    ... the sound of a Methane Wind...

  • interesting... (Score:4, Funny)

    by hal9000 ( 80652 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @12:44PM (#9583618) Homepage
    Sounds sort of like Saturn's radio emissions [uiowa.edu]...
    Does everything around Saturn sound the same? Perhaps it's all eminating from a single source? I dunno, maybe some sort of black rectangular monolith?

  • Sounds like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spokehedz ( 599285 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:32PM (#9584180)
    chipmunks on speed, gnawing away at my eardrums.

    Seriously though... this is interesting stuff. I mean, if we can simulate physics for the earth, and its weather patterns... then why couldn't we simulate the physics of sound?

    Sound is, after all, just vibrations from things hitting/passing each other... One would think that on a powerful enough computer, you could simulate the liquid methane flowing down over and crashing into... whatever.

    I mean, I'd for one like to see a game where the sound wasn't pre-recorded stuff played when two objects collide their meshes together... Could you imagine having a game engine advanced enough where depending on what kind of shoes your wearing--and how fast your walking/running--the sound would change automatically from click-click on tile to the soft pad on carpet? All without any programming?

    And then there's the whole car crashes, and gunshots, and echoes... That stuff's hard to program normally. And the best thing is, because its all generated at 'runtime' if you will... the sounds never get repetitive. Its always exactly how its supposed to sound, for exactly where you are.

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hal9000 ( 80652 )
      Sounds like a fine idea. How do you mean "all without any programming" though? You'd have to have the code which determines sound based on the defined properties of all objects/surfaces involved, no?

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ALeavitt ( 636946 ) <aleavitt@gmail . c om> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:57PM (#9585951)
      Ok, I know someone already posted a response similar to this under another topic somewhere recently, but I don't remember where, so I'm going to paraphrase and recap.

      The reason sound can't be simulated quickly in a game is the same reason light can't. Sure, there are games that have dynamic lighting and so forth, but in terms of actual raytracing, we're just approaching the possibility of having a playable real-time raytraced game - and that would require a behemoth of a machine.
      Now, think about sound. If I drop a penny in a perfectly cubic room, the penny deforms a bit, as does the floor. The distortion (and return to normal) causes the sound wave. This wave then bounces off of all of the surfaces in the room, including the penny, overlapping, creating harmonics, etc. Even that would be tough to simulate. Now, imagine, for instance, a FPS. Complex, moving, 3D objects, all interacting, all creating sounds that bounce around. While this wouldn't be impossible to simulate, I wouldn't expect it to happen in realtime anytime soon.

      • Re:Sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Spokehedz ( 599285 )
        I didn't say that it would be possible tomorrow--I'm saying that when you program in some of the more base physics, then the other stuff kinda falls into place.

        having friction and gravity present in a world will allow a tire to push/pull a cart along, without any additional 'vehicle' code whatsoever. Just like if you have air density, and the physics of the interaction of that air to surfaces, then aircraft become available. Jet engines would react like a jet engine, and a propeller engine would react like
    • All without any programming?
      haha, owned.
    • Could you imagine having a game engine advanced enough where depending on what kind of shoes your wearing--and how fast your walking/running--the sound would change automatically from click-click on tile to the soft pad on carpet? All without any programming?

      EAX does exactly that; simulates those kinds of environmental audio effects... it doesn't really simulate mesh-mesh interactions, but you DO load in a 3D model of the space and it even accounts for reverb and echo off of the various surfaces, as well

  • Really interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:41PM (#9584298)
    I'm not totally convinced that it's completely accurate. At the site, they have recordings of their technique applied to recreate sounds of waterfalls on Earth--i.e., artificial Earth waterfall sounds. Those artificial sounds bear only a modest resemblance to actual waterfall sounds (which they have a recording of also).

    The actual terrestial waterfall sounds seem to have more low-frequency noise than is reproduced by their technique. The high-frequency noise of an actual waterfall, moreover, seems to be more complex--it seems to have a more "springy" or "reverbatory" quality.

    There is a resemblance between the actual waterfall sounds and their simulated sounds--I don't mean to suggest they're radically different. It's just that the artificial earth sounds are different enough from the actual earth sounds, that I can't tell what to expect the actual Titan methane sounds to be like.

    While I appreciate them being honest and straightforward about what their technique is, and what it produces, I'm a little skeptical of how realistic it is.

    I'm also a bit surprised they took such a deductive, basic-physics approach to doing the simulation, rather than taking a more inferential, data-compression approach.

    Oh well. Interesting, but seems to raise as many questions as it answers.
    • without having read the article...

      it seems to me that any real-wrold recording is going to miss some of the acoustic frequencies, as the medium can only catch so much. However, what it does catch one might imagine as pebble-drop-ripples moving toward the edge of a plane of water (which when it gets to the edge, it 'crops' the ripple rather than reverberating it). Visually observing this phenomenon our brain can extrapolate what would happen beyond the edge of the plane. I presume acoustically our brain
    • They have a bit of the motivation on *why* they think this is a pretty reliable method if they find a signal what they're looking for here [soton.ac.uk].

      Those artificial sounds bear only a modest resemblance to actual waterfall sounds

      To respond to your comment, no, I don't think it sounds exactly like the right waterfall, but the resemblance is strong enough that if you listen to the artificial one alone, you go, "Oh, that's a waterfall." Play the real one, and you'd say "Oh, that's a waterfall." You might say they'

    • Acutally, I think that these folks went at it the right way. In the future, we will want systems/robots/androids that can discerne what the different things are that they hear. the only real way is to break things apart and then recombine them. If you take the example of their waterfall vs. a real one, the differences are made by a real physical world. As these folks tear it apart and figure out what is making the difference, they will not be able to reproduce it, but they will be able to hear multiple soun

  • Physical Environment (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theslashdude ( 656154 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:00PM (#9584486)
    Wouldn't the sound of a specific fall greatly depend on the size and shape of the fall, the volume of material flowing, what it's flowing over and into, etc...? Otherwise, all waterfalls on earth should sound the same and I know that is not the case.
    • I didn't see mentioned whether the atmosphere was modeled in. Things sound different in different atmospheres as we all know from breathing in too many party balloons as kids.

      What we really want to hear is what it would sounds like if a human ear managed to get into that environment somehow.
  • Either the codec in my wav player is screwy or that is the gorram scariest liquid noise I have ever heard.

  • Wasn't this in a Star Trek movie? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dexter riley ( 556126 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:10PM (#9585332)
    Lieutenant Uhuru...adjust the pressure to 1.6 bars...surface temperature to -178C...atmospheric composition to a Nitrogen/Methane mix...

    My god! It sounds like whales! Mister Sulu, lay in a course for Titan! Mister Chekov, break out the tartar sauce!

  • Obligatory Hendrix reference (Score:3, Informative)

    by Randym ( 25779 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @04:13PM (#9586120)
    ...Way down by the methane sea...

    From Voodoo Chile or Voodoo Child (Slight Return) from Electric Ladyland.

  • Either that, or the rocks under the methanefall on Titan are all made up of hollow tin (or maybe, the sound is close, Replicators from Stargate SG-1).
  • My computer at work loads up Windows Media Player with visualization non other than...

    Ambience: water
  • Man, I really wanted to hear this too, all I'm getting is a bunch of static!
    • I think that's what it's supposed to sound like. I'm underwealmed. On another note, with all the hydrocarbons on Titan (they say it rains gasoline there), does anybody know if it is a reducing atmosphere and why? How many chemistry nerds like me are here?

  • If only they had... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Andy Mitchell ( 780458 ) on Friday July 02, 2004 @06:29AM (#9590629) Homepage

    I suspect some very clever people have put many months of effort into this simulation software to generate those 9 precious seconds of audio.

    I would like to believe that they chose to release their 9 second audio clip as a .wav file because they felt their work was so accurate that to compress the data in any way would detract from the quality of their fine work.

    However, being a "cynical git", I'm inclined to think we are downloading a 976KB file as a result of them just not bothering to encode it as an mp3 :-)

    • I think your comment was intended to be funny, but I would like to point out that if you change the file extension in the wav link to mp3 you will get the mp3 version.

      Cheers,
      the_crowbar
  • now im able to recognize a MethaneFall if i ever go to Titan. you know you cant always trust your eyes. =)
  • If Methane falls on Titan, and nobody is around to hear it (assuming there's no sentient life there), does it make a sound?
    Apparently yes, and it sounds like an angry weasel.

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