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  #1   Report Post  
Rob Adelman
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for
billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing,
astronomers said this week.

  #2   Report Post  
shawn
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Cool! What would it take to put one of those things in the trunk of my
low-rider with the tinted windows?

Rob Adelman wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for
billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing,
astronomers said this week.



  #3   Report Post  
Charles Thomas
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

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".

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?

CT
  #4   Report Post  
LeBaron & Alrich
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

shawn wrote:

Cool! What would it take to put one of those things in the trunk of my
low-rider with the tinted windows?


Everything, as you now know it.

Rob Adelman wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html


WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for
billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing,
astronomers said this week.


--
ha
  #5   Report Post  
area242
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"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".


It's a "tone" to any entity that can hear it, I would say.


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 it won't. But that doesn't matter really. I tone is a tone.
Many animals right here on our own planet hear "tones" that we don't. Yet,
they still exist and are considered tones non the less.




  #6   Report Post  
Harvey Gerst
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

(Michael Dines) wrote:
Charles Thomas wrote:


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".
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?


And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio waves.
And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so how do they
propagate this hum?


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced to hum;
without light, they can't see the lyrics.

Harvey Gerst
Indian Trail Recording Studio
http://www.ITRstudio.com/
  #7   Report Post  
Buster Mudd
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

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.
  #9   Report Post  
area242
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"shawn" wrote in message
...
LeBaron & Alrich wrote:
shawn wrote:
Rob Adelman wrote:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat
for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let
alone sing, astronomers said this week.

Cool! What would it take to put one of those things in the trunk of
my low-rider with the tinted windows?


Everything, as you now know it.


Good point. And with those light-swallowing properties, I guess the

tinted
windows aren't strictly necessary.



Depends on what side of the hole you're on.
LOL...I feel like we all just smoked a ton of weed. :-P


  #10   Report Post  
WillStG
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

wrote...
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".

They say 57 octaves below middle C... Is that 1hz? For some reeason the
sceintists say the intensity of the the tone is comparable to human speech.

Well if black holes where matter ends is a Bb, may where matter enters the
Universe produces an F note. Five - One resolution and such.



Will Miho
NY Music & TV Audio Guy
Fox And Friends/Fox News
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits





  #11   Report Post  
Hal Laurent
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"WillStG" wrote in message
...

They say 57 octaves below middle C... Is that 1hz?


No, it's much lower than that. It's approximately 0.000000000000003 Hz.

Hal Laurent
Baltimore


  #12   Report Post  
squeeziechum
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"Buster Mudd" wrote in message
om...
snip
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...

I have a VLF (Very Low Frequency) receiver that converts EM radiation in the
range of ~ 20 kHz and under into acoustic energy so a human can hear it.
Out in the wopwop, far enough from electrical power lines, you can listen to
the sounds of earth's atmosphere. It's mostly from distant lightning
strikes and sounds like sizzling bacon. Consider the possibility that some
creature, somewhere, might have an organ or two that could do what my VLF
receiver+amp+ears do; that is, "hear" the EM radiation.

Bleeps,
Phil / Houston

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.



  #13   Report Post  
jslator
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

I could have the math wrong, but I think 57 octaves below middle C
works out to about one cycle every 16 million years or so. For some
reason, I'm not all that impressed.


Charles Thomas...
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?

  #14   Report Post  
Bob Cain
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected



Michael Dines wrote:

And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio waves.
And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so how do they
propagate this hum?


I'm going to take this up on sci.physics to be sure but I
don't believe this is a sound wave. It may be the relic or
fossil of one but I am pretty sure that the density of
intergalactic gas (and this is intergalactic, not
interstellar) is insufficient for there to be anything like
an acoustic pressure or the pressure differential which is
necessasary for there to be an acoustic wave. The molecules
there are at the level of one (or thereabouts) per cubic
meter, IIRC, and at that distance from each other they just
couldn't exert the mutual electrostatic repulsion and
interaction that causes pressure. OTOH, if they were ions
rather than molecules I suppose it could be possible.

I'll bet it is just density striations that are propegating
inertially away from whatever gave them that inertia rather
than true acoustic waves. They could possibly be a frozen
sound field from a time when the medium was dense enough to
support sound but intuition tells me that such a wave would
have damped out first rather than being frozen.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein
  #15   Report Post  
Sean S
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Harvey Gerst laid this on me:

(Michael Dines) wrote:
Charles Thomas
wrote:


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".
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?


And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio
waves. And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so
how do they propagate this hum?


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are
forced to hum; without light, they can't see the lyrics.

Harvey Gerst
Indian Trail Recording Studio
http://www.ITRstudio.com/


The scientific information available on this noosgroop is
overwhelming at times.

Sean


  #16   Report Post  
Bob Smith
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Rob Adelman wrote:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for
billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing,
astronomers said this week.


Great. More research will probably reveal they hum Louie, Louie, just
down 57 octaves.

Bob Smith
BS Studios
we organize chaos
http://www.bsstudios.com
  #17   Report Post  
Willie K.Yee, M.D.
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 16:31:30 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:

It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced to hum;
without light, they can't see the lyrics.


What's the best mic for recording a black hole in space?

--

Willie K. Yee, M.D. http://www.bestweb.net/~wkyee
Developer of Problem Knowledge Couplers for Psychiatry http://www.pkc.com
Webmaster and Guitarist for the Big Blue Big Band http://www.bigbluebigband.org

  #18   Report Post  
LeBaron & Alrich
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Harvey Gerst wrote:

(Michael Dines) wrote:


Charles Thomas wrote:


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".
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?


And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio waves.
And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so how do they
propagate this hum?


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced to
hum; without light, they can't see the lyrics.


Wow, that's straight outta the Pope Chute!

--
ha
  #19   Report Post  
LeBaron & Alrich
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Willie K.Yee, M.D. wrote:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 16:31:30 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced
to hum; without light, they can't see the lyrics.


What's the best mic for recording a black hole in space?


Easy, one that works to pick up action in gas down to
point-fuggedaboutit hertz. No biggie. I think Gerst & Dorsey might could
do it.

--
ha
  #20   Report Post  
tim perry
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
.. .
Willie K.Yee, M.D. wrote:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 16:31:30 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced
to hum; without light, they can't see the lyrics.


What's the best mic for recording a black hole in space?


Easy, one that works to pick up action in gas down to
point-fuggedaboutit hertz. No biggie. I think Gerst & Dorsey might could
do it.

--
ha


id try a contact mic... but you would have to glue it to the exterior of the
black hole




  #21   Report Post  
tim perry
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
...
Bob Smith wrote:

Great. More research will probably reveal they hum Louie, Louie, just
down 57 octaves.


So you'll only need one mic!

--
ha


they must be stoned if they hum because they forget the words to louie
louie.


actully if you speed it up and play it backwards it says "elvis is here"


  #22   Report Post  
John L Rice
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"tim perry" wrote in message
et...

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
.. .
Willie K.Yee, M.D. wrote:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 16:31:30 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:


It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are

forced
to hum; without light, they can't see the lyrics.


What's the best mic for recording a black hole in space?


Easy, one that works to pick up action in gas down to
point-fuggedaboutit hertz. No biggie. I think Gerst & Dorsey might could
do it.

--
ha


id try a contact mic... but you would have to glue it to the exterior of

the
black hole


Don't forget to invert the phase to counteract all that sucking going on . .
..

John L Rice



  #23   Report Post  
area242
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"Bob Cain" wrote in message
...


Michael Dines wrote:

And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio waves.
And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so how do they
propagate this hum?


I'm going to take this up on sci.physics to be sure but I
don't believe this is a sound wave. It may be the relic or
fossil of one but I am pretty sure that the density of
intergalactic gas (and this is intergalactic, not
interstellar) is insufficient for there to be anything like
an acoustic pressure or the pressure differential which is
necessasary for there to be an acoustic wave. The molecules
there are at the level of one (or thereabouts) per cubic
meter, IIRC, and at that distance from each other they just
couldn't exert the mutual electrostatic repulsion and
interaction that causes pressure. OTOH, if they were ions
rather than molecules I suppose it could be possible.

I'll bet it is just density striations that are propegating
inertially away from whatever gave them that inertia rather
than true acoustic waves. They could possibly be a frozen
sound field from a time when the medium was dense enough to
support sound but intuition tells me that such a wave would
have damped out first rather than being frozen.


That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. LOL...
Actually, I was thinking something along the lines of "my head hurts...I
wonder if Taco Bell is still open"


  #24   Report Post  
Tracy Johnson
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Rob Adelman wrote in message ...
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) -- Big black holes sing bass. One
particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for
billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing,
astronomers said this week.


Look here...
http://body-mind.com/bmrpg2aa.html Site sells cd's

or he http://www.hobbyspace.com/MultiMedia/index.html#Sounds
for cool links/info/audio samples...

I have one cd with a bunch of this kind of this stuff on it... I love
it, picked it up for about 3 bucks one time in the New-age section of
course...
I don't really recall the title of said release right now but I guess
mine is kind of a "Best of..." like "Yaweh... Live at the Milky
Way..."
  #25   Report Post  
Bob Cain
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected



area242 wrote:

"Bob Cain" wrote in message

I'll bet it is just density striations that are propegating
inertially away from whatever gave them that inertia rather
than true acoustic waves. They could possibly be a frozen
sound field from a time when the medium was dense enough to
support sound but intuition tells me that such a wave would
have damped out first rather than being frozen.


That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. LOL...


Hey, this is some serious ****, dude. ;-)


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein


  #26   Report Post  
John Cafarella
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"Willie K.Yee, M.D." wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 16:31:30 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:

It's precisely because light waves can't escape, black holes are forced

to hum;
without light, they can't see the lyrics.


What's the best mic for recording a black hole in space?


Willie K. Yee, M.D. http://www.bestweb.net/~wkyee


I reckon a VACUUM tube mic might do the job...
--
John Cafarella
EOR Studio
Melbourne Australia
[ cafarellaj at powertel dot com dot au ]




  #27   Report Post  
Ryan Mitchley
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

So what's the best mic under $500 to record a black hole?


  #28   Report Post  
Buster Mudd
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Charles Thomas wrote in message ...


If that's the case then isn't something that pulses only once every
billion or so years really putting out a very low note?


In the very simple abstract sense, yes.

Well, if it just "pulses" once every billion years that not might fit
the description, but if it oscillates with a period of 1,000,000,000
years that _would_ count

Though since music as a concept is almost entirely a human endeavor,
perhaps it is misleading to refer to any frequency outside the range
of human hearing as a "note". It's probably easier to grasp if you
substitute the word "tone" for "note". (And I'm fairly confident that
if the astronomers could record this black hole & then transpose it up
30-some octaves, what we would hear would not sound much like a Bb
note, but more like a melange of noise & garbage that had a resonant
peak in the Bb neighborhood.)

Again, it's a thought experiment: If you can't hear it (or if you
aren't there to hear it) does it make a sound? Does music by
definition have to be heard?
  #29   Report Post  
Buster Mudd
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

"John L Rice" wrote in message ...


Don't forget to invert the phase to counteract all that sucking going on . .
.


Damn, no wonder all my band recordings come out lousy: I forgot to
invert the phase to counteract all that sucking going on!
  #30   Report Post  
John L Rice
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected


"Buster Mudd" wrote in message
om...
"John L Rice" wrote in message

...


Don't forget to invert the phase to counteract all that sucking going on

.. .
.


Damn, no wonder all my band recordings come out lousy: I forgot to
invert the phase to counteract all that sucking going on!


LOL!




  #31   Report Post  
LeBaron & Alrich
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Buster Mudd wrote:

Charles Thomas wrote...


If that's the case then isn't something that pulses only once every
billion or so years really putting out a very low note?


In the very simple abstract sense, yes.


Well, if it just "pulses" once every billion years that not might fit
the description


Seems like it'd work fine for lotsa rap.

--
ha
  #34   Report Post  
Ben Bradley
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

In rec.audio.pro, "area242" wrote:


"Bob Cain" wrote in message
...


Michael Dines wrote:

And, since black holes aren't in an atmosphere there's no audio waves.
And because of their gravity light waves can't escape - so how do they
propagate this hum?


I'm going to take this up on sci.physics to be sure but I
don't believe this is a sound wave. It may be the relic or
fossil of one but I am pretty sure that the density of
intergalactic gas (and this is intergalactic, not
interstellar) is insufficient for there to be anything like
an acoustic pressure or the pressure differential which is
necessasary for there to be an acoustic wave.


You may be thinking of audible frequencies. I'm sure anything near
or above 1 Hz, or even one cycle per day, would be way too high to
propagate.

The molecules
there are at the level of one (or thereabouts) per cubic
meter, IIRC, and at that distance from each other they just
couldn't exert the mutual electrostatic repulsion and
interaction that causes pressure.


I can see how this would be an "acoustic" wave, because it's such a
low frequency that it CAN propagate. At the 'peak' the density could
be 1.2 molecules per cubic meter. Admittedly this is still low, but
you don't have to have interactions very often to 'push up' the
density of the gas further away over the centuries, then the 'trough'
comes along and the density is only 0.8 molecules per cubic meter, and
likewise this """partial vacuum""" will eventually propagate.

OTOH, if they were ions
rather than molecules I suppose it could be possible.

I'll bet it is just density striations that are propegating
inertially away from whatever gave them that inertia rather
than true acoustic waves. They could possibly be a frozen
sound field from a time when the medium was dense enough to
support sound but intuition tells me that such a wave would
have damped out first rather than being frozen.


That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. LOL...
Actually, I was thinking something along the lines of "my head hurts...I
wonder if Taco Bell is still open"


So did the person at the Taco Bell drive-thru know?

  #36   Report Post  
LeBaron & Alrich
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

Ben Bradley wrote:

This reminds me of the tree-falling-in-the-forest question: Is
there a species out in space that's long-lived enough and with hearing
that goes low enough to hear this 'tone'?


What if the universe is a life form?

--
ha
  #39   Report Post  
Chris Hornbeck
 
Posts: n/a
Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:39:11 -0500, Harvey Gerst
wrote:

(Ben Bradley) wrote:


We better record it at exactly midnight every 36,525 days. Just
recording it "every 100 years" by the calendar would add jitter from
leap years and such. You wouldn't want to be at the end of a 500
million year recording and then find out it has jitter.


Naw, I'm just gonna make it into an .mp3 anyway, so jitter's not all that
important.


You kids turn that racket DOWN!

God

  #40   Report Post  
Chris Smalt
 
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Default Black hole hums deepest note ever detected



Hank wrote:

What if the universe is a life form?



A life form with tinnitus?


Chris


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