{"id":257,"date":"2017-05-11T15:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themedemos.webmandesign.eu\/icelander\/?p=257"},"modified":"2023-12-23T02:22:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-23T02:22:56","slug":"post-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/post-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Sounds from Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The recording starts with the patter of a summer squall. Later, a drifting tone like that of a not-quite-tuned-in radio station rises and for a while drowns out the patter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Last Train\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/1og2qz7IPpMHQllIKJFBQ9?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>These are the sounds encountered by NASA\u2019s <strong>Cassini spacecraft<\/strong> as it dove through the gap between Saturn and its innermost ring on April 26, the first of 22 such encounters before it will plunge into Saturn\u2019s atmosphere in September. What Cassini did not detect were many of the collisions of dust particles hitting the spacecraft as it passed through the plane of the rings. <em>&#8220;You can hear a couple of clicks,\u201d<\/em> said William S. Kurth, a research scientist at the University of Iowa who is the principal investigator for Cassini\u2019s radio and plasma science instrument.<\/p>\n<div class=\"outdent-content\">\n<h2>Recording dust hits<\/h2>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"StockSnap 15134A07A3 448x252\" class=\"wp-image-514 size-thumbnail alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/themedemos.webmandesign.eu\/icelander\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/SAMPLE\/_StockSnap_15134A07A3-448x252.jpg\" alt=\"Our office\" width=\"448\" height=\"252\" \/>The few dust hits that were recorded sounded like the small pops caused by dust on a LP record, he said. What he had expected was something more like the din of <em>&#8220;driving through Iowa in a hailstorm,\u201d<\/em> Dr. Kurth said.<\/p>\n<p>Since Cassini had not passed through this region before, scientists and engineers did not know for certain what it would encounter. Cassini would be traveling at <strong>more than 70,000 miles per hour<\/strong> as it passed within 2,000 miles of the cloud tops, and a chance hit with a sand grain could be trouble.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The analysis indicated that the chances of such a collision were slim, but still risky enough that mission managers did not send Cassini here until the mission\u2019s final months. As a better-safe-than-sorry precaution, the spacecraft was pointed with its big radio dish facing forward, like a shield.<\/p>\n<div class=\"outdent-content\">\n<p class=\"display-1 h2\">Not only was there nothing catastrophic, there was hardly anything at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The few clicking sounds were <strong>generated by dust the size of cigarette smoke<\/strong> particles about a micron, or one-25,000th of an inch, in diameter. To be clear: <em>Cassini did not actually hear any sounds.<\/em> It is, after all, flying through space where there is no air and thus <strong>no vibrating air molecules to convey sound waves<\/strong>. But space is full of radio waves, recorded by Dr. Kurth\u2019s instrument, and those waves, just like the ones bouncing through the Earth\u2019s atmosphere to broadcast the songs of Bruno Mars, Beyonc\u00e9 and Taylor Swift, can be converted into audible sounds.<\/p>\n<h2>Bottom line<\/h2>\n<p>Dr. Kurth said the background patter was likely oscillations of charged particles in the upper part of Saturn\u2019s ionosphere where atoms are broken apart by solar and cosmic radiation. The louder tones were almost certainly &#8220;whistler mode emissions\u201d when the charged particles oscillate in unison.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nSpace is full of radio waves, and those waves, just like the ones bouncing through the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere, can be converted into audible sounds.\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/post-4\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Sounds from Earth&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/post-4\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Sounds from Earth&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7830,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/7830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifadishop.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}