plutonium warherd flying through space inadvertedly leads to saturn ring music discovery

From New Scientist:

Cassini discovers music of the rings

14:05 09 November 04

NewScientist.com news service

Saturn's magnificent ring system - a huge disc resembling an old gramophone record - turns out to share another property with the LP: it constantly emits a melodic series of musical notes.

The surprising discovery was made by radio and plasma wave detectors on board the Cassini spacecraft as it passed over Saturn's rings during its arrival at the planet in July.

The tones are emitted as radio waves. Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa says his team reduced their frequencies by a factor of five to bring them into the range of human hearing. Gurnett says he was �completely astonished" when he heard the musical notes.

The tones are short, typically lasting between one and three seconds, and unlike the ethereal sliding tones associated with other cosmic processes, every one is quite distinct. The evidence suggests that each tone is produced by the impact of a meteoroid on the icy chunks that make up the rings.

Each hit, Gurnett says, creates a pulse of energy that is focused along the surface of a cone from the point of impact. By estimating the energy involved, he calculates that the impacting objects are about 1 centimetre across - although he cautions that his estimate could be out by as much as a factor of 10.

The findings were reported on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences.
--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

correction above
--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

And those sounds could probably be heard via the link labelled:

CASSINI BOOMING SOUNDS FROM BOW-SHOCK CROSSING

at the bottom of the page posted by Robert Walker:

http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040703titanpix.html

except for the fact that listening to those sounds seems to require a
subscription. Does anyone have a subscription already?

However this article seems to have a different take on the sounds of saturn,
and has a link to an mp3 that you can listen to:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1425596.htm

Definitely worth listening too. Supposedly similar to earth sounds, which
I've also never heard. But some short sounds can also be heard amidst the
long ones, and I wonder of those are the distinguishing featuers of the
saturn sounds.

-Kurt

on 11/18/04 11:05 PM, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...> wrote:

> From New Scientist:
>
> Cassini discovers music of the rings
>
> 14:05 09 November 04
>
> NewScientist.com news service
>
> Saturn's magnificent ring system - a huge disc resembling an old
> gramophone record - turns out to share another property with the LP: it
> constantly emits a melodic series of musical notes.
>
> The surprising discovery was made by radio and plasma wave detectors on
> board the Cassini spacecraft as it passed over Saturn's rings during its
> arrival at the planet in July.
>
> The tones are emitted as radio waves. Don Gurnett of the University of
> Iowa says his team reduced their frequencies by a factor of five to
> bring them into the range of human hearing. Gurnett says he was
> ³completely astonished" when he heard the musical notes.
>
> The tones are short, typically lasting between one and three seconds,
> and unlike the ethereal sliding tones associated with other cosmic
> processes, every one is quite distinct. The evidence suggests that each
> tone is produced by the impact of a meteoroid on the icy chunks that
> make up the rings.
>
> Each hit, Gurnett says, creates a pulse of energy that is focused along
> the surface of a cone from the point of impact. By estimating the energy
> involved, he calculates that the impacting objects are about 1
> centimetre across - although he cautions that his estimate could be out
> by as much as a factor of 10.
>
> The findings were reported on Monday at the annual meeting of the
> American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences.