7 ms·

The voice of Utah's arches – Ambient seismic vibration sped up 25x

202 points by NotAWorkNick 5y ago

Kalanos 5y ago
going to utah for pycon. this got me stoked up on it
- seanw444 5y ago
  It's a beautiful place. It's very cold right now, though.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    Pycon isn't for another 8 weeks though, at which point it will be the perfect time of year to go see a lot of these things.
    - freedomben 5y ago
      May and October are my favorite seasons in Utah. The other two are Summer and Winter which can be brutal.
- projproj 5y ago
  Depending on the time of year you go, make sure you get a reservation: https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/permitsandreservations.htm https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/permitsandreservation...
- __mharrison__ 5y ago
  Just a note. Arches is a good 4 hour drive from Salt Lake City. (Not to try and discourage your visit. I'm from Utah and I've often thought of trying to arrange some sort of Python/Data desert or ski outing.)
  - scsilver 5y ago
    It's worth renting an SUV in SLC and some camping gear from REI on the way to arches, and driving through to Denver, dropping off the gear at REI and going home on the plane. You could probably even get some skiing in at Arapahoe Basin.
cturtle 5y ago
Strange there isn't a page for the Delicate Arch. That's got to be the most iconic arch in Utah. Very interesting project though! I think my favorite is the Rainbow Arch (not bridge). If you click through the links to Sketchfab there are 3D scans of the arches to get a better view than the pictures provide. Also, I highly recommend seeing the Arches and other landmarks in Southern Utah if you have the chance. Some of my favorite places on this planet.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Discovering that some of the arches have links for 3D scan was a wonderful bonus.
funwares 5y ago
The first arch [0] has a note that says: > this feature and the sounds of its vibration are sacred to Native American Tribes of the four corners region, and they ask that you listen and share with according respect. Does anyone happen to know if this means they were actually hearing these vibrations in some way? (Only 25 times slower and less audible) [0] https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/RainbowBridge.html https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/RainbowBridge.html
- coltonmorris 5y ago
  When you visit this arch, there are many signs telling you to treat it with respect as the natives do. They probably just got permission from the tribe to do the recording with the caveat that they treat the arch with similar respect. It's an incredible arch, but one of the harder ones to get to.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    It used to be easy to get to. Lake Powell came within a quarter mile of it when I was a kid. When it hit full pool, I think the lake actually extended under the arch. At that time, nobody was particularly concerned with Native American sentiments about the arch. I mean, we didn't do anything that was obviously disrespectful to us, but I don't know how the Native Americans felt about us just walking up to and under it. (And, technically, it's a bridge instead of an arch, since it goes across the watercourse.)
    - gkop 5y ago
      That's neat! Since Lake Powell was formed in 1966, it must have only been for a small number of decades in all of history that the bridge was easy to get to.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  There were the lunkheads a few years back to pushed over a rock formation at another Utah park so as obvious as showing respect might seem, adding a reminder might get a few more people into the proper state of mind instead of thinking they're at Disneyland.
geocrasher 5y ago
This is wonderful! I can't help but to be reminded of the book (and excellent movie) The Hunt For Red October, where a [edit] "caterpillar" drive on The Red October sounds like seismic activity, but when sped up is clearly mechanical. This is not he same, I know, but it has the same vibe. https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/BigArrowhead.html https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/BigArrowhead.html has a distinctly underwater sound to it. Whoever thought to do this... Kudos to you! (And I... was never here...)
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's similar to what the astronomy people do with the data from probes floating in space collect [0]. They keep trying to find ways to make the data interesting as opposed to just numbers in a spreadsheet. [0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17045-voyager-captures-sounds-of-interstellar-space https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17045-voyager-captures-so...
- ceocoder 5y ago
  Yes! That's exactly what came to my mind! minor nit: Red October had caterpillar drive
dylan604 5y ago
Oh, the internet! Following links at the bottom of the submitted page, there is a tonne of information on how this data was collected. There are animations of the different ways the rocks move due to the vibration.[0] I'm assuming the visuals are exaggerated, but that's just my uneducated on the subject mindset of rocks don't move like that. The pure science/learning/hold my beer/etc aspect of this is pretty awesome. [0] https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/data/Rainbow/ms01.mp4 https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/data/Rainbow/ms01.mp4
ChuckMcM 5y ago
I love Arches National Park, great hikes and fabulous geology. Now to learn that it sings, wow.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Well, it's more like they forgot the words and are just humming.
Cerium 5y ago
I worked on a seismic monitoring system for civil engineering structures. We recorded data at 200 Hz (though all the interesting content is in the zero to 15 Hz range). Once I tried this experiment with some of the data from a bridge in a harbor. It was very cool, you could hear so much going on in the bridge. Ambient seismic vibration is something of a hidden world around use. With a very sensitive accelerometer you can measure the shaking in a concrete pad due to cars a block a way. Looking in the frequency domain things like when rush hour is and which day is the weekend pop out like a sore thumb.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  In between the acceptance of electronic intelligence and the dawn of everything being computer based, spooks spent a lot of time inventing ways to get this kind of info from dumb sensor data. At one point MI5 could apparently lift crypto keys from the noise of the cipher machine through a wall. Obviously being MI5 this was to spy on the French and not the Russians, but still.
- mateo1 5y ago
  Also depending on the scale, seismic surveys are seriously affected by nearby roads and construction, where "nearby" can mean several km in some cases.
mwattsun 5y ago
Song of Sand by Suzanne Vega If sand waves were sound waves What song would be in the air now What stinging tune Could split this endless noon And make the sky swell with rain If war were a game that a man or a child Could think of winning What kind of rule Can overthrow a fool And leave the land with no stain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzNyao--tuY
McKayDavis 5y ago
For more Utah arch vibration content, check out Prof. Jeff Moore's twitter feed @UtahGeohaz (Jeff is in the same department as the link). Here's some very cool visualizations showing exaggerated vibrations of natural wonders: https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1451218202621399043 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1451218202621399043 (Colonnade Arch) https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 (The Matterhorn) https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 (not sure which arch)
- davidmurdoch 5y ago
  I remember a project that would amplify videos of very subtle movement. I wonder if that sort of tech could be applied here.
  - genmon 5y ago
    Video magnification -- I've always been surprised that this hasn't been commercialised. Would be valuable in e.g. infant monitors, or as a diagnostic tool in remote video medical consultations. https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ There's sample code on that site, and an online version linked too: http://lambda.qrilab.com/site/ http://lambda.qrilab.com/site/
deadbeeves 5y ago
Are these really seismic in origin? They sound suspiciously like wind.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I agree that they sound like wind, but not suspiciously so -- they've been sped up 25x.
noizejoy 5y ago
I find it one of the more amazing things, that so much of our physical world has a time/frequency dimension. And our bodies have at least a couple of obvious senses (vision and hearing) to experience some frequency ranges. And with modern computing power, many natural phenomena on our planet and across the universe can be morphed into ranges we can see or hear. And this in turn not only aids in scientific understanding, but also allows (some of) us to respond emotionally. And that keeps me awestruck, even when other properties of our species can be utterly depressing.
- k__ 5y ago
  It's also interesting that these senses work logarithmically instead of linear.
  - willis936 5y ago
    And have dynamic ranges. A lot of bad ways of sensing have been selected against,.
- scott113341 5y ago
  You reminded me of this scene from Battlestar Galactica that has stuck with me since I watched it (spoiler alert). Conversely, the character laments the sensory limitations of the human body :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc&t=73s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc&t=73s
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  One way of looking at it is that everything in the universe is vibrations.
deutschew 5y ago
I wonder if these weird sounds heard around the world are really just due to underground rocks or gas escaping? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=081FuoN8K40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=081FuoN8K40
carapace 5y ago
I long time ago I had an audio cassette of recordings from, I think it was Voyager, of the ambient interplanetary EM signals it encountered transposed somehow into audio. It was eerie and wonderful, a little like whalesong, and one of the most haunting and beautiful things I've ever heard.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  Symphonies of the Planets, perhaps? https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/various-artists/symphonies-of-the-planets-1-nasa-voyager-recordings/ https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/various-artists/symp...
  - carapace 5y ago
    Cheers! That sounds like it but it's hard to be sure after so long. https://archive.org/details/VoyagerRecordings-SymphoniesOfThePlanets15CompleteRecordings https://archive.org/details/VoyagerRecordings-SymphoniesOfTh...
julienchastang 5y ago
Related: "Arch Rivals Quarrel Over Quirky Geological Formations" https://www.wsj.com/articles/arch-rivals-quarrel-over-quirky-geological-formations-11568989797 https://www.wsj.com/articles/arch-rivals-quarrel-over-quirky...
jmiskovic 5y ago
Is there a name for shifting the recorded phenomena into the part of spectrum where humans can directly sense it? Or for converting signals into different medium, so that we can hear or see signals that we couldn't sense otherwise? I'd like to know the name so that I can hunt for more examples and applications. A good example is Dwingeloo radio telescope where they convert pulsar signals into audio in realtime so that you can listen to it using headphones. Another example is playing a sound every time your runtime preforms garbage collection, to gain first-hand intuition for internal operation (like you can pick up any abnormalities in the car engine sound).
- npteljes 5y ago
  In case of images, hyperspectral imaging[0] maybe. NASA, when publishing the Sinister Sounds of the Solar System, called the technique Sonification[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification
- frumiousirc 5y ago
  I think this is simply using one rate for sampling and another for playback. Another comment suggests seismic samples like these are taken at 200 Hz. That is comfortably above the rock vibration frequencies of a few Hz. If one simply plays back these samples 100x faster the result would appear as 20 kHz sampling and the signal power that was originally around a few Hz would be heard at a few 100 Hz. The audio sounds a bit higher in frequency so perhaps these numbers are not precisely what were actually used but they give the idea. That's just the shifting. Accelerometers are used for the original sampling so there must also be some sort of pre-processing in the original sampling domain (the example 200 Hz time base) to convert acceleration information into displacement. This is a 3D displacement so then some other transform must be applied to represent the 3D vibrations with a 1D model.

202 points by NotAWorkNick 5y ago

Kalanos 5y ago

going to utah for pycon. this got me stoked up on it

seanw444 5y ago
It's a beautiful place. It's very cold right now, though.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  Pycon isn't for another 8 weeks though, at which point it will be the perfect time of year to go see a lot of these things.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    May and October are my favorite seasons in Utah. The other two are Summer and Winter which can be brutal.
projproj 5y ago
Depending on the time of year you go, make sure you get a reservation: https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/permitsandreservations.htm https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/permitsandreservation...
__mharrison__ 5y ago
Just a note. Arches is a good 4 hour drive from Salt Lake City. (Not to try and discourage your visit. I'm from Utah and I've often thought of trying to arrange some sort of Python/Data desert or ski outing.)
- scsilver 5y ago
  It's worth renting an SUV in SLC and some camping gear from REI on the way to arches, and driving through to Denver, dropping off the gear at REI and going home on the plane. You could probably even get some skiing in at Arapahoe Basin.

cturtle 5y ago

Strange there isn't a page for the Delicate Arch. That's got to be the most iconic arch in Utah. Very interesting project though! I think my favorite is the Rainbow Arch (not bridge). If you click through the links to Sketchfab there are 3D scans of the arches to get a better view than the pictures provide. Also, I highly recommend seeing the Arches and other landmarks in Southern Utah if you have the chance. Some of my favorite places on this planet.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Discovering that some of the arches have links for 3D scan was a wonderful bonus.

funwares 5y ago

The first arch [0] has a note that says: > this feature and the sounds of its vibration are sacred to Native American Tribes of the four corners region, and they ask that you listen and share with according respect. Does anyone happen to know if this means they were actually hearing these vibrations in some way? (Only 25 times slower and less audible) [0] https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/RainbowBridge.html https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/RainbowBridge.html

coltonmorris 5y ago
When you visit this arch, there are many signs telling you to treat it with respect as the natives do. They probably just got permission from the tribe to do the recording with the caveat that they treat the arch with similar respect. It's an incredible arch, but one of the harder ones to get to.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It used to be easy to get to. Lake Powell came within a quarter mile of it when I was a kid. When it hit full pool, I think the lake actually extended under the arch. At that time, nobody was particularly concerned with Native American sentiments about the arch. I mean, we didn't do anything that was obviously disrespectful to us, but I don't know how the Native Americans felt about us just walking up to and under it. (And, technically, it's a bridge instead of an arch, since it goes across the watercourse.)
  - gkop 5y ago
    That's neat! Since Lake Powell was formed in 1966, it must have only been for a small number of decades in all of history that the bridge was easy to get to.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
There were the lunkheads a few years back to pushed over a rock formation at another Utah park so as obvious as showing respect might seem, adding a reminder might get a few more people into the proper state of mind instead of thinking they're at Disneyland.

geocrasher 5y ago

This is wonderful! I can't help but to be reminded of the book (and excellent movie) The Hunt For Red October, where a [edit] "caterpillar" drive on The Red October sounds like seismic activity, but when sped up is clearly mechanical. This is not he same, I know, but it has the same vibe. https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/BigArrowhead.html https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/tones/BigArrowhead.html has a distinctly underwater sound to it. Whoever thought to do this... Kudos to you! (And I... was never here...)

dylan604 5y ago
It's similar to what the astronomy people do with the data from probes floating in space collect [0]. They keep trying to find ways to make the data interesting as opposed to just numbers in a spreadsheet. [0] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17045-voyager-captures-sounds-of-interstellar-space https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17045-voyager-captures-so...
ceocoder 5y ago
Yes! That's exactly what came to my mind! minor nit: Red October had caterpillar drive

dylan604 5y ago

Oh, the internet! Following links at the bottom of the submitted page, there is a tonne of information on how this data was collected. There are animations of the different ways the rocks move due to the vibration.[0] I'm assuming the visuals are exaggerated, but that's just my uneducated on the subject mindset of rocks don't move like that. The pure science/learning/hold my beer/etc aspect of this is pretty awesome. [0] https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/data/Rainbow/ms01.mp4 https://geohazards.earth.utah.edu/data/Rainbow/ms01.mp4

ChuckMcM 5y ago

I love Arches National Park, great hikes and fabulous geology. Now to learn that it sings, wow.

dylan604 5y ago
Well, it's more like they forgot the words and are just humming.

Cerium 5y ago

I worked on a seismic monitoring system for civil engineering structures. We recorded data at 200 Hz (though all the interesting content is in the zero to 15 Hz range). Once I tried this experiment with some of the data from a bridge in a harbor. It was very cool, you could hear so much going on in the bridge. Ambient seismic vibration is something of a hidden world around use. With a very sensitive accelerometer you can measure the shaking in a concrete pad due to cars a block a way. Looking in the frequency domain things like when rush hour is and which day is the weekend pop out like a sore thumb.

mhh__ 5y ago
In between the acceptance of electronic intelligence and the dawn of everything being computer based, spooks spent a lot of time inventing ways to get this kind of info from dumb sensor data. At one point MI5 could apparently lift crypto keys from the noise of the cipher machine through a wall. Obviously being MI5 this was to spy on the French and not the Russians, but still.
mateo1 5y ago
Also depending on the scale, seismic surveys are seriously affected by nearby roads and construction, where "nearby" can mean several km in some cases.

mwattsun 5y ago

Song of Sand by Suzanne Vega If sand waves were sound waves What song would be in the air now What stinging tune Could split this endless noon And make the sky swell with rain If war were a game that a man or a child Could think of winning What kind of rule Can overthrow a fool And leave the land with no stain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzNyao--tuY

McKayDavis 5y ago

For more Utah arch vibration content, check out Prof. Jeff Moore's twitter feed @UtahGeohaz (Jeff is in the same department as the link). Here's some very cool visualizations showing exaggerated vibrations of natural wonders: https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1451218202621399043 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1451218202621399043 (Colonnade Arch) https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 (The Matterhorn) https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 https://twitter.com/UtahGeohaz/status/1473692964216057865 (not sure which arch)

davidmurdoch 5y ago
I remember a project that would amplify videos of very subtle movement. I wonder if that sort of tech could be applied here.
- genmon 5y ago
  Video magnification -- I've always been surprised that this hasn't been commercialised. Would be valuable in e.g. infant monitors, or as a diagnostic tool in remote video medical consultations. https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ There's sample code on that site, and an online version linked too: http://lambda.qrilab.com/site/ http://lambda.qrilab.com/site/

deadbeeves 5y ago

Are these really seismic in origin? They sound suspiciously like wind.

klyrs 5y ago
I agree that they sound like wind, but not suspiciously so -- they've been sped up 25x.

noizejoy 5y ago

I find it one of the more amazing things, that so much of our physical world has a time/frequency dimension. And our bodies have at least a couple of obvious senses (vision and hearing) to experience some frequency ranges. And with modern computing power, many natural phenomena on our planet and across the universe can be morphed into ranges we can see or hear. And this in turn not only aids in scientific understanding, but also allows (some of) us to respond emotionally. And that keeps me awestruck, even when other properties of our species can be utterly depressing.

k__ 5y ago
It's also interesting that these senses work logarithmically instead of linear.
- willis936 5y ago
  And have dynamic ranges. A lot of bad ways of sensing have been selected against,.
scott113341 5y ago
You reminded me of this scene from Battlestar Galactica that has stuck with me since I watched it (spoiler alert). Conversely, the character laments the sensory limitations of the human body :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc&t=73s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc&t=73s
chrisweekly 5y ago
One way of looking at it is that everything in the universe is vibrations.

deutschew 5y ago

I wonder if these weird sounds heard around the world are really just due to underground rocks or gas escaping? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=081FuoN8K40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=081FuoN8K40

carapace 5y ago

I long time ago I had an audio cassette of recordings from, I think it was Voyager, of the ambient interplanetary EM signals it encountered transposed somehow into audio. It was eerie and wonderful, a little like whalesong, and one of the most haunting and beautiful things I've ever heard.

aahortwwy 5y ago
Symphonies of the Planets, perhaps? https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/various-artists/symphonies-of-the-planets-1-nasa-voyager-recordings/ https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/various-artists/symp...
- carapace 5y ago
  Cheers! That sounds like it but it's hard to be sure after so long. https://archive.org/details/VoyagerRecordings-SymphoniesOfThePlanets15CompleteRecordings https://archive.org/details/VoyagerRecordings-SymphoniesOfTh...

julienchastang 5y ago

Related: "Arch Rivals Quarrel Over Quirky Geological Formations" https://www.wsj.com/articles/arch-rivals-quarrel-over-quirky-geological-formations-11568989797 https://www.wsj.com/articles/arch-rivals-quarrel-over-quirky...

jmiskovic 5y ago

Is there a name for shifting the recorded phenomena into the part of spectrum where humans can directly sense it? Or for converting signals into different medium, so that we can hear or see signals that we couldn't sense otherwise? I'd like to know the name so that I can hunt for more examples and applications. A good example is Dwingeloo radio telescope where they convert pulsar signals into audio in realtime so that you can listen to it using headphones. Another example is playing a sound every time your runtime preforms garbage collection, to gain first-hand intuition for internal operation (like you can pick up any abnormalities in the car engine sound).

npteljes 5y ago
In case of images, hyperspectral imaging[0] maybe. NASA, when publishing the Sinister Sounds of the Solar System, called the technique Sonification[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification
frumiousirc 5y ago
I think this is simply using one rate for sampling and another for playback. Another comment suggests seismic samples like these are taken at 200 Hz. That is comfortably above the rock vibration frequencies of a few Hz. If one simply plays back these samples 100x faster the result would appear as 20 kHz sampling and the signal power that was originally around a few Hz would be heard at a few 100 Hz. The audio sounds a bit higher in frequency so perhaps these numbers are not precisely what were actually used but they give the idea. That's just the shifting. Accelerometers are used for the original sampling so there must also be some sort of pre-processing in the original sampling domain (the example 200 Hz time base) to convert acceleration information into displacement. This is a 3D displacement so then some other transform must be applied to represent the 3D vibrations with a 1D model.