Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/07/listen-to-the-sound-of-win.html
…
3 Likes
8 Likes
This is really fucking cool - but - hasn’t anybody ever thought it might be a good idea to actually install a frickin’ microphone on one of these things? I mean: planet - atmosphere - wind - sound - duh. Also - this is SO fucking cool.
9 Likes
This is so exciting to my inner child from the 70s. Who remembers the horribly low res images from Mars from back then?
7 Likes
This is so awesome I’m not even going to post a crappy GIF!
Absolutely reminds me of vintage NASA dreams.
6 Likes
I don’t really do national pride stuff. But were I American I would be so fucking chuffed with NASA through my life.
As it is I’m a teensy bit vicariously proud as a human being.
6 Likes
I would guess because the soft sound of wind is all you’d ever hear. With such a thin atmosphere and no geological activity there’s not much going on and what is going on won’t make much of a noise. It’s probably not worth the cost of getting a microphone there. And space and weight is limited on these probes, there’s no doubt a more useful way to fill the quota.
5 Likes
yeah - but these sounds are dust devils dammit! [ parks curmudgeon - gets off ] - just a tiny mic, ‘at’s all i’m askin’
3 Likes
I wish the graphic was in the frequency domain.
4 Likes
The vast majority of lunar photographs are black and white, for similar reasons. There’s not enough color on the surface to make it worthwhile. Myself, I wonder what the inside of an airlock on the martian surface would smell like!
4 Likes
Probably not way too late to post this to Dead Celebrity (passed away August of this year), but posting it here seems appropriate. Check out her book “The Winds of Mars” (1995) listed under Published Works:
2 Likes
So an aeolean harp on Mars would not work very well?
1 Like
Interesting question. My guess would be nothing much at all. Perhaps a mild whiff of dirt.
2 Likes
Its been attempted before.The mars polar lander had a microphone but that mission failed.
6 Likes
So one device measured the changes in air pressure, the other measured vibrations caused by the wind. Why isn’t this sound, as opposed to “sound”? Raising infrasound to frequencies we can hear is manipulating sound, not creating it.
Goddammit I am listening to the sound of wind on fucking Mars!! It’s mindblowing! Don’t tell me it’s just the “sound”!!
2 Likes
2 Likes
That’s not wind. It’s the voices of people living in an alternative time-scale to ours.
4 Likes
As you should be. NASA is clear that this is about humans first and Americans second:
“To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind.”
What a wonderful institution. We are hearing the wind on another planet!
3 Likes
I’ve wondered that as well. That said - I don’t really get this fascination with visiting Mars. All surface pics look pretty much the same - would get old quickly. 
1 Like
Though the “sound” may be more like the movement of the lander in the wind, rather than the movement of a microphone element in the wind. In the former case you a lot of the signal is caused by the resonance of a large structure. A proper microphone would produce a better representation of the actual sound.
But then, wind doesn’t really make sound. Its only turbulence through the mic, so there is that.
2 Likes
