Earth’s Radiation Belt Sounds like Whale Song [Video]

Posted by Jason Fitzpatrick on How to geek See other posts from How to geek or by Jason Fitzpatrick
Published on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:00:01 GMT Indexed on 2012/10/04 15:42 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 802

Filed under:
|
|
|
|

The radio frequencies of Earth’s radiation belt have uncanny resemblance to a sort of whale/bird song remix. Check out this video to learn more about NASA’s efforts to explore the belts and listen to the Earth’s song.

When we hear the “song” of the Earth, exactly what are we hearing? Science@NASA explains:

Chorus is an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth’s radiation belts. For years, ham radio operators on Earth have been listening to them from afar. Now, NASA’s twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes are traveling through the region of space where chorus actually comes from–and the recordings are out of this world.

“This is what the radiation belts would sound like to a human being if we had radio antennas for ears,” says Kletzing, whose team at the University of Iowa built the “EMFISIS” (Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science) receiver used to pick up the signals.

He’s careful to point out that these are not acoustic waves of the kind that travel through the air of our planet. Chorus is made of radio waves that oscillate at acoustic frequencies, between 0 and 10 kHz. The magnetic search coil antennas of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes are designed to detect these kinds of waves.

HTG Explains: How Antivirus Software Works
HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It
HTG Explains: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break Keys on My Keyboard?


© How to geek or respective owner

Related posts about astronomy

Related posts about video