Did You Know? -- Sound

You're walking, or more accurately bouncing, on The Moon. You look over, and there's Earth -- a beautiful blue gigantic marble.

Suddenly, a gargantuan object rushes past you and obliterates Earth in a collision that results in a dazzling, titanic explosion. Earth is gone. Humanity wiped out.

Throughout all of that pandemonium, you don't hear a peep... and it has nothing to do with the spacesuit you're wearing.

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What we perceive as sound are vibrations that our ears turn into signals and send along to our brain. Vibrations have to have something to vibrate in, like water, air, or a solid.

When you look around, you mostly notice the visible objects, but we don't often think that there's a lot more something around us -- air. Yep, air is something.

There's no air in the vacuum of space. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anywhere else in the universe that has this special mix of elements that allows us to breathe.

So, the next time you're watching a movie, and a spaceship explodes with a deep, rumbling, sonorous, boom, you can say, "Wrongo!"

| Posted in » astrophysics, Did You Know, science, space