‘Sound in space’ research on The Sky At Night
Sound in space research by Professors Tim Leighton and Paul White from ISVR and their MSc student Nikhil Banda will feature on BBC Four’s The Sky At Night on Sunday 9 March at 10pm.
The programme shows the invention the team developed, which constructs and plays sounds as they should appear on other worlds in the solar system. The sounds include the sound of lightning on Venus, of dust devils of Mars, of ‘waterfalls' of methane on Saturn's moon Titan. Of particular interest was the ability of the device to take the voice of a human speaker and transform the words to produce the sound the speaker would make on these other worlds (if they could speak and survive).
Tim says: "I was delighted to be called up by The Sky At Night Team. I was a big fan of the show when I was younger, and all these years later often set up a telescope with my children at night. We were delighted that our invention received this attention. There was a serious side to the research, in that if we can predict the sounds of another world we can design appropriate instruments to measure that sound. Furthermore, by understanding how those sounds are made, we can better interpret any sounds we do record, for example working out the wind speeds in (and mass of dust carried by) a Martian dust devil, or calculating the distance, height, and shape of lightning on Venus."
The team had previously licensed the invention to the Astrium Planetarium, at Winchester Science Centre, who used it to give the world's first ‘sound in space' planetarium show in April 2012. The research featured in national and international media, including the Discovery Channel TV, on radio shows in New Zealand, Ireland and Germany and featured as a question in the 2012 Dutch Nation Quiz. Professor Leighton also advised on extraterrestrial sound for a major motion picture.
Tim adds: "There was always also an element of outreach in this, particularly in the work with the sound of voices and musical instruments on other worlds, as we really wanted to help children become interested in science and engineering. Our work with the Astrium planetarium in setting up demonstrations and exhibits and the shows they gave, was a great partnership and we are grateful to them for their interest and support. Some people asked me how we justify spending tax dollars on this, so I can reassure them we never did - this work was unfunded, and after Paul and I had worked out the basic physics (in collaboration with my friend Dr Andi Petculescu of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), the work was implemented by two students as part of their MSc training, Benoit Berges and Nikhil Banda."
