Charles Thomas wrote in message ...
I'm confused.

How "low" can you really get? I mean... 1 hz is just a pulse every
second. It's not really a "tone".

You perceive it as a pulse because human hearing apparatus can't
resolve a 1Hz tone. Theoretically another lifeform could. (In fact,
don't elephants hear down into the sub-single digit frequencies?)


Isn't everything below about 20 hz just a bunch of pulses in decreasing
frequency? It's not going to be heard as a "note" of any kind is it?


Not by humans, no. But we can extrapolate the note if we agree that
any periodic vibrations in an elastic medium can be called "sound". My
problem with the article is with the notion that regularly recurring
EM pulses are the same thing as periodic vibrations...

and even if we can agree that "star plasma" (or whatever the goo
that's getting compressed & rarefacted by these EM pulses is called)
constitutes an elastic medium, there's no continuous elastic medium
between this black hole and our solar system, so it's kind of a If A
Tree Falls In The Forest thought experiment at best. The "note", even
if our hearing apparatus could resolve a frequency that low, is a
localized phenomenon. It's not being broadcast towards Earth, it's
confined to that (very) distant neighborhood.

Nice sentiment, though.