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Space

Saturn Hailstorm 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wear-your-hard-hat dept.
crmartin writes "NASA has released a web story about the sounds recorded aboard the Cassini spacecraft as it pased through the Rings. The story includes a Quicktime file of the hailstorm-like sounds of Ring particles impacting."
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Saturn Hailstorm More

Saturn Hailstorm

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  • Powerful Hull? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:09PM (#9666786) Homepage Journal
    >No damage was done, but it sounded exciting.

    You have to give them credit. These bits of dust were going 45,000 mph! You'd think they would have decimated that antenna, but I guess not? I would have to disagree, however. To the average non-PHD, this dust sounds like nothing more than some static mixed with klinking noises. To me it sounds like SPACE DUST!

    • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by emorphien ( 770500 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:15PM (#9666835)
      Agreed, I really wouldn't have expected it to be able to fly through the rings, particularly dish forward if the video is accurate. I would think that even the small particles would erode away at it more than would be acceptable.

      Obviously that's one tough schoolbus sized planet orbiting pretty picture taking probe.

      • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:4, Informative)

        by another_henry ( 570767 ) <.ten.bjc.mallahyrneh. .ta. .todhsals.> on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:43PM (#9667013) Homepage
        It didn't fly -through- the rings, rather through the gaps between them (which still have some crap in, but not really a huge amount of it). Also I think that it doesn't necessarily matter too much if the dish gets a few tiny holes - it should still behave the same, electrically.

        • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by emorphien ( 770500 )
          True, it won't affect the performance of the antenna, but with enough interstellar bugs hitting the proverbial windshield, it could wear out chunks of the structure and cause it to collapse. Now that I think about it, it's not very likely, but still there's the risk of a larger object whacking it.

          Pretty cool either way, I like schoolbuses.

    • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:4, Informative)

      by dorlthed ( 700641 ) <mxc511@p[ ]edu ['su.' in gap]> on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:35PM (#9666977)

      Well, there's a reason these things cost millions and millions of dollars. ;)

      Another example: I remember reading once about the modems they use on these things. Now a modem itself costs very, very little, but it costs them well over $10,000 to test hundreds and hundreds of modems, then make sure that they can function properly amidst the radiation, cold, etc. of space. And of course this is pennies next to the costs related to the rest of the spacecraft.

      • What I don't really get is why they have friggin microphones on space traveling vehicles?

        I can understand that it's a cheap thing to just throw in there, but really what's the point? Is it for data monitoring of 'hull integrity' for example (detecting collisions and vibrations?).

        • No microphone (Score:5, Informative)

          by jgs ( 245596 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @02:58PM (#9667906)
          What I don't really get is why they have friggin microphones on space traveling vehicles?

          They don't. TFA to the rescue again:
          Each time a dust particle hit Cassini, the impact produced a puff of plasma--a tiny cloud of ionized gas. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was able to count these clouds; there were as many as 680 puffs per second. "We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof," says Gurnett, the intrument's principal investigator.

          In other words, the sound is a representation of other data, slightly akin to false color images as an earlier poster pointed out.

          I can understand that it's a cheap thing to just throw in there

          I don't think anything with mass is cheap to add to a space probe. I don't recall what the per-kilo launch costs are for one of those things, but it's not small.

        • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:2, Informative)

          by Ariane 6 ( 248505 )
          RTFA. It wasn't a microphone, but rather one of the probe's charged particle detectors that picked up the plasma from the vaporizing dust as it impacted.

          They converted its signal to audio.
      • Of course the modem's expensive!!! But just imagine how expensive the phone cord is...

        Billions and billions of meters!
    • Space dust? Really? Here is what I heard. [jonathonrobinson.com]
    • I would have to disagree, however. To the average non-PHD, this dust sounds like nothing more than some static mixed with clinking noises. To me it sounds like SPACE DUST!

      Yeah, ok, that explains the static and the clinking noises, but what was that *THUMP*THWACK* sound at the end?

      Somebody told me it was Cassini running into a big black monolith full of stars thing.

      What's that all about?

    • uhhhmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ShadowRage ( 678728 )
      the dust would be more damaging if the probe were statically sitting there, like absolutely still.
      or if the space craft were going against the particles. however, it's prollygoing either just a little slower or faster than the particles, so the speed of them hitting it is somewhere in the hundreds range to the thousand range.
      • so the speed of them hitting it is somewhere in the hundreds range to the thousand range.

        You don't give units, but assuming you're talking MPH you're off by an order of magnitude. TFA sez:
        they plowed into the spacecraft at a relative speed of approximately 20 km/s. That's 45,000 mph!
      • It was going against the particles. The particles are "stationary" in orbit around Saturn, while Cassini was flying at 50,000 mph relative on a course from Earth relative to Saturn. In addition, it was flying at an angle "up" through the rings, instead of just matching their orbit and floating around next to them.

    • Re:Powerful Hull? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Stephen Samuel ( 106962 ) <samuel@bcgre e n . com> on Sunday July 11, 2004 @02:38PM (#9667769) Homepage Journal
      As they said, most of these impacts are dust particles the size of cigarette smoke.
      % units 'milligram-(45000mph)^2' grams-tnt
      * 0.087744895
      / 11.396674
      In other words, for 1 milligras dust particles, each impact would have about the kinetic force of a large cap gun cap (or a very small firecracker).

      On the other hand, a 1-ounce pebble would have the kinetic force of about 5 pounds of TNT compressed into an impact point less than 1cm across..... Think hole straight tru the orbiter with lots of dead instruments.

      I'm guessing that the probe designers calculated the probability of a large-particle impact, and then just made the antenna as sturdy as they could afford to.

  • But (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In space, nobody can hear you scream!
    • Strangely enough though, how was the satellite able to pick up the sound of the rings if in theory you are unable to hear things within a vacuum?

      • Re:But (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cecil ( 37810 )
        Sound is a manifestation of vibration, or more specificially shockwaves through an aurally conductive medium. It is impossible, therefore, that sound would transmit through a vacuum, since there is no such medium in a vacuum. This is not a theory, by the way.

        As it said in the article, the sound was generated by using data from an instrument onboard that measured the impacts of the particles. It's an artificial sound, created by NASA engineers to simulate what you might hear if you were inside the probe (an

  • hmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    680 puffs per second.

    sounds like fun

  • Amazing! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DakotaSandstone ( 638375 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:16PM (#9666837)
    I know it's pretty obligatory to say, but: DAMN! Will these NASA folks ever cease to amaze us with new, amazing, profound things?
    I am so engaged by space exploration these days, it makes me really happy to be alive in the century I'm in. ...Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.
    • I so agree!

      Too bad I'm not about 30yrs older, to have experienced the "First man on the moon" too...
      Can't wait to read and see more from this mission!

      • Re:Amazing! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Too bad you're not thirty years younger then you could experience the first man on Mars, the heated probe mission into Europa, Pluto Express and the launch of Deep Space 2 which reaches Alpha Centauri in 2043 using an ion engine.
      • it was cool to watch the first man on the moon on TV, live. Plus hearing about Sputnik in the first grade. However, it definately wasn't worth the 30 years! |-)
    • I just wish i could be around to see what we can do in a few hundred or a thousand years, what we know, and where we can go.
    • Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.

      That is precisely the reason why there is so much media attention to this, as well as to the Mars rovers, and the much-hyped plans for sending men to Mars again.

      For a cross-section of the populace it covers up a lot of the administration's fuck-ups and tries to focus attention away from them. (Obviously, there's a lot of people who couldn't give a rats ass about this one way or another.) But to people like you and me, it's a big deal. And intere
    • If they can only make a car that won't fall apart in a few years, or make a noiseless cpu fan. Why can't they fix my crown tooth permanently, or get my monitor mirror from unsticking and falling down.
  • I doubt it will make the number #1 hitlists. Pictures and video are nice, sure, and Nasa is doing amazing things. But "the sound of space"? I'd rather listen to ABBA.

  • Sound in Space? (Score:1, Informative)

    by artlu ( 265391 )
    Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community

    • Re:Sound in Space? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dsanfte ( 443781 ) * on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:32PM (#9666953) Journal
      From the article:

      Each time a dust particle hit Cassini, the impact produced a puff of plasma--a tiny cloud of ionized gas. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was able to count these clouds; there were as many as 680 puffs per second. "We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof," says Gurnett, the intrument's principal investigator.


      They were recording plasma, not actual sound.

    • Re:Sound in Space? (Score:1, Redundant)

      by dorlthed ( 700641 )

      Certainly not, but you can hear the sound of the particles hitting the craft as it resonates through the metal (or whatever) that makes up the craft.

      If you were trying to listen to it with an open-air microphone, though, well that obviously wouldn't make any sense.

    • I would guess the microphone (-analogue) recorded the vibrations of the spacecraft body caused by the particles.
    • Sound needs a physical medium to propagate. Since the sensors and the probe are all attached together physically, the vibrations can travel across the probe to the sensors. However, of course, if you were standing next to it you couldn't hear anything.

      --

      • Re:Sound in Space? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        if you were standing next to it you couldn't hear anything.

        I imagine that listening for particles hitting the exterior of the probe would be the last thing on your mind as your lungs explode and your blood starts to boil and your eyes start popping out of your skull like in that Schwartzenager movie.

    • Re:Sound in Space? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Your going to hear something when little bits of it are slaming into you at 40,000+ mph.

      Basicly the stuff hits the spaceship, the sound travels thru the solid mass of the thing to the audio receivers.

      You couldn't hear 2 things smashing into each other, but you can hear when things smash into you.
    • My first reaction was "They put a friggin microphone on a spacecraft (with my second being 'and it worked??!!").
      Then I read the article and found out that they were recording the em pulses resulting from the space dust being turned to plasma by the force of the impact.

      As for the high gain antenna being that tough --- yeah. they seem to have designed it that way... Remember that they turned the bus (er, spacecraft) to use the antenna as a shield as they went thru the gap.It makes sense to put an extra

      • It's the same kind of design they put into APCs and tanks -- put the extra armor where you're most likely to get hit, then try and take any hits there. (if you're ever unfortunte enough to have to take out an APC, don't bother shooting at the front, where they have a couple extra inches of armor. Aim at the sides.)

        Thus explaining the unfortunate success of Iraqi IEDs ("improvised explosive devices"), i.e. those damned roadside bombs that tend to explode as the vehicles are passing, not when they're appro

      • My first reaction was "They put a friggin microphone on a spacecraft (with my second being 'and it worked??!!"). Then I read the article and found out that they were recording the em pulses resulting from the space dust being turned to plasma by the force of the impact.

        I believe the Huygens lander has a microphone. When I first saw the title I thought that's what they had used.

        I doubt it would have heard anything anyway.
    • well , the concept we learned in school is that sound is a mechanical vibration in some kind of matter (liquids, solids, gases and why not the 4th state of matter : plasma).
      from what i read in the news , the spacecraft has only captured the vibration generated by the plasma clouds when a particle hit the hull.
      the vibration captured was then sent to NASA and just then the researchers converted the eletrical vibe to "air-sounds". So we all can appreciate!

    • Re:Sound in Space? (Score:5, Funny)

      by djmurdoch ( 306849 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @01:52PM (#9667447)
      Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?

      That's just because people always wear spacesuits that block the sound. This is an unmanned probe, so the sound can come through without a problem. You'd hear the same thing if you took off your helmet while you were out there.

      You see this all the time in movies: the cameras are usually outside the suits, so they can hear the whoosh of the spaceships and the zapping sounds of the lasers.

  • Old news (Score:3, Informative)

    by Roland Piquepaille ( 780675 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:24PM (#9666911)
    I've been able to hear Saturn hailstorms [msdn.com] for quite some time now...

  • My TV (Score:3, Funny)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:35PM (#9666976) Homepage Journal

    Last month, some rain water seeped into the cable outlet box outside and for 2 days, all I could hear on my TV was the exact same sound as Saturn Hailstorm (except that the video didn't show the spacecraft travelling around saturn).

    I think aliens from Saturn were trying to use me to send a message.... *smack on the head* if only I had known then..

    • I think aliens from Saturn were trying to use me to send a message.... *smack on the head* if only I had known then..

      Thay are sending a message.

      Decoded it reads.

      'ALL OF YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US'

  • On the bright side.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by murderlegendre ( 776042 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:40PM (#9666999)

    ...there is going to be one wicked-ass scratch & dent sale on astronomical probes, at Crazy Vaklav's on Saturn.

  • Star Trek: Voyager Intro (Score:4, Interesting)

    by prakslash ( 681585 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:41PM (#9667005)
    If you watch the intro sequence of ST: Voyager, you will notice that, during one of the scenes, the camera slowly cuts through the cryslline ice particles that make up the rings of Saturn. They put in a sound-effect to show what it would feel like. I always liked that sound. It was like being bathed by sounds of thousands little dusty bells tinkling.

    You can (barely) hear it on this ST: Voyager Audio Clip [fsnet.co.uk]. It occurs at time index 1:08.

  • About as meaningful as false-color images (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @12:47PM (#9667032) Homepage
    If you read the article, you'll find out that this isn't recorded by a microphone inside the spacecraft or anything like that, but is only a representation of impact data. That is, if someone wanted to make the impacts sound like bells, or cow moos or dog barks, those would be equally as valid representations as the "hail" sounding impacts.

    • Bang a gong. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @01:12PM (#9667191) Homepage Journal
      That is, if someone wanted to make the impacts sound like bells, or cow moos or dog barks, those would be equally as valid representations as the "hail" sounding impacts.

      That might give you a better impresion of what your space ship would sound like as you passed the rings if you used dogs or cows for your hull.

      When I imagine the puffs of plasma translating into vibrations that might be heard by a traveler, I get something more like what was presented.

  • How about those bright "spots" on Titan the size of Arizona. Looks like a city to me. They say it's clouds but they don't look like the other clouds around it. Conspiracy, I say.

  • Oh, man (Score:4, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @01:01PM (#9667133) Homepage Journal
    was that just amazing, I just listened to it and it sounded ... so ... I can't find the word ... the wow factor ... it's like these cigarete smoke sized particles ionized by hitting against my brain directly.
    I need another puff of that magic dust

  • Dust cloud width (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hlub ( 153437 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @01:03PM (#9667141)
    I would have expected a much narrower peak in the dust distribution - sounding rather like a short "swoosh" - given the thickness of the rings which is less than 1 km according to most estimates.

    Could anyone explain why the observed dust cloud was so much wider?

    • Re:Dust cloud width (Score:3, Informative)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 )
      thickness of the rings increases with distance from saturn from meters to >1000Km for the outer rings. It's a gap in the outer rings that cassini passed through.
    • My guess is that the rings have a certain falloff? The 1 km thickness may be for objects worth measuring; some are large enought to destroy the craft, there are even "moons" in the rings: bodies small enough not to be broken by the Roche Limit [umass.edu]. I would guess that small dust particles would make a noticeable plasma puff at those speeds and that the dust stretches vertically much more than the 1 km "standard" ring size.
  • oh, no... wait... we heard you... nevermind.

    No one ever expects the Cassini spacecraft!
  • For all you Cassini watchers who own DirecTV. They recently added NASA TV to their free lineup for total choice subscribers. I noticed it about a day after the Venus transit last month.

    It has been great for keeping up with the Cassini stuff though. I had it on during the entire SOI burn. It beats the crap out of a /.ed webcast.
  • if one remebers in Author C Clarks 3001 the final odesy when dave boarded that guys space craft to go out to that icy moon, you know which one i'm talking about.. he had to have his armor replaced to shield against microscopic particles at .13 of C.
  • ..Mixed in with the static was the faint broadcast of someone frantically yelling:

    "Goddamit Sulu, sheilds up!! sheilds up!!"

  • Recording wind sound on Mars (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Sunday July 11, 2004 @03:16PM (#9668039) Journal
    This isn't the first time NASA have had this idea -- they have tried to record [nasa.gov] actual sounds on Mars from wind blowing (and this wasn't supposed to be a simulation of the sound, like these effects are). However, the space craft with this equipment was unfortunately the Mars Polar Lander which crashed due to the infamous metric conversion mistake [canoe.ca]. :-(
    • Considering how trivial it is to get a microphone into an intrument package, and how comparatively small PCM data alone could be, I'm curious why this didn't make it onto the Mars Rover project?

      I know that it would have taken a little bit more power, space, etc., so maybe that answers the question. Still, it would be nice.

      I guess that on the next launch window to Mars it will be going, this time with the French.
  • going to mix that with some pan flute music and make a relaxation tape out of it. Go into Borders and listen to "Sounds of Saturn" while drinking my Vanilla Chai.
  • That all that beowolf clusters at NASA aint worth much against the Atack Of Teh Slahsdot Uberfiends
  • More interesting sounds collected from Cassini: http://www.uiowa.edu/~ournews/2003/october/103003s olar-noise.html
  • Finally got an article accepted.
  • ""Each time a dust particle hit Cassini, the impact produced a puff of plasma--a tiny cloud of ionized gas. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was able to count these clouds; there were as many as 680 puffs per second. "We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof,."

    Which means they could have also converted them into audible sounds that resembled a dog barking. Or maybe a cat meowing. Fuck, plasma puffs hitting the antenna could have resembled a Van H
  • The fact that we have these complex machines doing our bidding a few million miles away.

    Absolutely incredible.
  • I didn't LTTFA but I wonder if they recorded it for real or just nicked the sound off the Voyager intro where the ship is travelling across some rings that the camera moves through.

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