[HN Gopher] The sound of Earth's magnetic field
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The sound of Earth's magnetic field
Author : cellover
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-10-24 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esa.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esa.int)
| sidcool wrote:
| ELI5. What does it mean for magnetic field to have sound?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Read the 2nd sentence of the article, and you'll get it.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| IMHO the 2nd sentence is still pretty vague and maybe
| misleading.
|
| IIUC, they took a model of earth's magnetic field over the
| past 100,000 years, fed it into (some magic box that the
| article doesn't explain), and turned it into a public art
| exhibit.
| queuebert wrote:
| One simple answer is that electricity run through a loudspeaker
| makes sound. And physics tells us that changing magnetic fields
| cause electricity. You could run that electricity through a
| speaker and "hear" the Earth's changing magnetic field.
|
| You would necessarily have to speed it up because we don't have
| 20,000 years to listen.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of sound effects from David Lynch's Twin Peaks:
| The Return
| aaroninsf wrote:
| As a sound artist who specialized in actual field recordings, and
| took their honest representation and provenance seriously,
|
| it is a recurring gripe of mine when media relations and pop sci
| writers assert that this sort of thing is the "the sound of."
|
| It is not remotely that. It is _sonification_ , which is a fine
| and noble art in its own right,
|
| but it represents an often _very_ arbitrary transformation of one
| set of signals, into some audio form consumable by humans.
|
| FTA for example:
|
| "The team used data from ESA's Swarm satellites, as well as other
| sources, and used these magnetic signals to manipulate and
| control a sonic representation of the core field."
|
| Some correlation is there, no doubt--but it would be very helpful
| for people to be educated about what sonification is, and, what
| they are hearing in this particular effort, e.g. given a sense of
| scale and timescale and medium transformation...
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| As someone who writes electronic music and is pretty familiar
| with synths, effects and DSP in general, I call bullshit on the
| title of the article. It should read:
|
| "A whole bunch of synths and/or samplers, stereo panned and
| processed with a whole stack of effects, using a sped-up
| recording of Earth's magnetic field as a trigger of said
| generators".
|
| This is not even _remotely_ the sound of Earth 's magnetic field.
| queuebert wrote:
| Can you link to where you found their methods? I can't find
| anywhere where they said what they did.
|
| (Generously assuming you're not just sh*tting on them for no
| reason.)
| [deleted]
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| I hear what they did. There are distinct generators placed in
| various places in the sound stage, with reverbs on them, with
| sound that is characteristic of granular synthesis.
|
| Even if you are not familiar with these methods, just think
| about it: even if soumeone would genuinely just bring the
| inaudible frequencies of a recording of magnetosphic waves
| into audible domain by speeding it up, without any
| processing, where would this lush stereo imaging come from?
| It would be plain and simply monophonic.
|
| Moreover, they don't quite make it secret that this is not
| the actual sound of the magnetosphere:
|
| > _Musician_ and project supporter Klaus Nielsen, from the
| Technical University of Denmark, explains, "The team _used
| data_ from ESA's Swarm satellites, as well as _other sources_
| , and used these magnetic signals to _manipulate and control
| a sonic representation_ of the core field.
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| Here is what genuine recording would sound like, for
| example:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llXu9pSvF54
|
| I do realize though, that many people won't hear any
| difference.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Well the last 2 seconds were interesting, sounded just
| like an iMovie sound effect!
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's very reminiscent of underwater recordings where the flow is
| causing cables/chains/etc to move around on a ship wreck. Makes
| for interesting background noise. Will definitely be fun as a
| sound design for a movie.
| O__________O wrote:
| Direct link to audio clip:
|
| https://soundcloud.com/esa/the-scary-sound-of-earths-magneti...
| aaron695 wrote:
| m3kw9 wrote:
| How is this different than saying here, this is the sound of
| light.
| jamesdwilson wrote:
| How does it demonstrate the fluctuation from the last 100k years?
| (per article)
| nomel wrote:
| > The rumbling of Earth's magnetic field is accompanied by a
| representation of a geomagnetic storm that resulted from a
| solar flare on 3 November 2011
|
| It's art.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Instantly going into my next techno track.
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