4 ms·

New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix

22 points by signa11 4y ago

nigerian1981 4y ago
It sounds like hundreds of tortured souls being dragged underneath a lake of fire
- balentio 4y ago
  lol. How do you really feel about it?
- ffhhj 4y ago
  That's what Disney depicted in The Black Hole movie from 1979.
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    And then there's 1997's "Event Horizon" starring Laurence Fishburne which featured similar imagery.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
Nextgrid 4y ago
Direct URL: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-bla...
po 4y ago
It really bothers me that NASA releases these along with text that implies that there is a "popular misconception that there is no sound in space" when that is in fact true. They are mapping visual data about gas density to audio tones and pretending that is what you would hear if your ear was situated there. It's not even the correct mapping (radial and not radiating pressure waves) for what a layperson would call "sound". It's just a very fancy music box... which is very nice but we don't claim that a music box is somehow listening to the sound of steel atoms. I've seen this all over twitter and, while it's very popular and very pretty, I think the description of it does the public a disservice bordering on the propagation of pseudoscience. This article at least correctly calls it a "sonification" which is a nice corollary to "visualization" and does describe what is actually going on.
- xupybd 4y ago
  I'm all for this sort of marketing. NASA needs popularity because it drives funding. Most people don't understand sound like you do, so they wouldn't understand the truth anyway. It's not that most people are too dumb or uneducated, it's that they don't really care to know. However those same people get a sense of connection to space exploration by hearing something like this. If that connection comes from a slightly misleading over simplification but drives NASA funding then I'm all for it. My wife used to work in communications within a university. I got to witness how that worked. She would interview academics about their research. She and most of the population don't have enough background to understand the research so they would have to come up with some kind of approximation to write about. I'm sure to the researchers it was absurd and misleading but it gave the lay person a window into what was going on. I suspect that is how the text on that article came to be. I think it was written by someone who's job is to simplify things, things they might not understand themself.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    You're all for lying to people to get their attention? This is a bad and self-defeating strategy because you will lose legitimacy.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      Is it really a lie? It's an approximation to something real happening. You might as well call the JWST pics of jupiter a lie because humans blatantly can't see it with their own eyes.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        I don't mind a false color image and they're clearly labeled as such, but the sonification description was flat out wrong and it's not the first time. At best the PR people really don't understand what they're looking at, but the people doing the spectral analysis do, and they oughta know better.
anigbrowl 4y ago
I'm really irritated about this. I was looking forward to a longitudinal observation of a gas cloud and some clever math to extract sonic information from it's vibrations. Instead it's just an FFT of an image. What upsets me is that they're bullshitting the public for clicks, and then they wonder why it's hard to get funding for science. Stop bullshitting people. It degrades science.
omnicognate 4y ago
Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data, and its real artistic possibilities, vs the dishonest and arbitrary way it gets used to generate publicity. [1] https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk
_pferreir_ 4y ago
My impression is that this is a completely arbitrary signal run through a filter which shifts it to the lower end of the audible spectrum. You might as well take 20ms of the Macarena and slow them down 100x, to the same effect. Pure meaningless clickbait. I agree with others saying that NASA shouldn't be doing this.
ghostDancer 4y ago
And now I'm thinking of the myths about playing Heavy Metal vinyls and tapes backwards.
Kalanos 4y ago
A picture of seagull droppings makes noise if you make it make noise

22 points by signa11 4y ago

nigerian1981 4y ago

It sounds like hundreds of tortured souls being dragged underneath a lake of fire

balentio 4y ago
lol. How do you really feel about it?
ffhhj 4y ago
That's what Disney depicted in The Black Hole movie from 1979.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  And then there's 1997's "Event Horizon" starring Laurence Fishburne which featured similar imagery.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

Nextgrid 4y ago

Direct URL: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-bla...

po 4y ago

It really bothers me that NASA releases these along with text that implies that there is a "popular misconception that there is no sound in space" when that is in fact true. They are mapping visual data about gas density to audio tones and pretending that is what you would hear if your ear was situated there. It's not even the correct mapping (radial and not radiating pressure waves) for what a layperson would call "sound". It's just a very fancy music box... which is very nice but we don't claim that a music box is somehow listening to the sound of steel atoms. I've seen this all over twitter and, while it's very popular and very pretty, I think the description of it does the public a disservice bordering on the propagation of pseudoscience. This article at least correctly calls it a "sonification" which is a nice corollary to "visualization" and does describe what is actually going on.

xupybd 4y ago
I'm all for this sort of marketing. NASA needs popularity because it drives funding. Most people don't understand sound like you do, so they wouldn't understand the truth anyway. It's not that most people are too dumb or uneducated, it's that they don't really care to know. However those same people get a sense of connection to space exploration by hearing something like this. If that connection comes from a slightly misleading over simplification but drives NASA funding then I'm all for it. My wife used to work in communications within a university. I got to witness how that worked. She would interview academics about their research. She and most of the population don't have enough background to understand the research so they would have to come up with some kind of approximation to write about. I'm sure to the researchers it was absurd and misleading but it gave the lay person a window into what was going on. I suspect that is how the text on that article came to be. I think it was written by someone who's job is to simplify things, things they might not understand themself.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  You're all for lying to people to get their attention? This is a bad and self-defeating strategy because you will lose legitimacy.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    Is it really a lie? It's an approximation to something real happening. You might as well call the JWST pics of jupiter a lie because humans blatantly can't see it with their own eyes.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      I don't mind a false color image and they're clearly labeled as such, but the sonification description was flat out wrong and it's not the first time. At best the PR people really don't understand what they're looking at, but the people doing the spectral analysis do, and they oughta know better.

anigbrowl 4y ago

I'm really irritated about this. I was looking forward to a longitudinal observation of a gas cloud and some clever math to extract sonic information from it's vibrations. Instead it's just an FFT of an image. What upsets me is that they're bullshitting the public for clicks, and then they wonder why it's hard to get funding for science. Stop bullshitting people. It degrades science.

omnicognate 4y ago

Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data, and its real artistic possibilities, vs the dishonest and arbitrary way it gets used to generate publicity. [1] https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk https://youtu.be/Ocq3NeudsVk

_pferreir_ 4y ago

My impression is that this is a completely arbitrary signal run through a filter which shifts it to the lower end of the audible spectrum. You might as well take 20ms of the Macarena and slow them down 100x, to the same effect. Pure meaningless clickbait. I agree with others saying that NASA shouldn't be doing this.

ghostDancer 4y ago

And now I'm thinking of the myths about playing Heavy Metal vinyls and tapes backwards.

Kalanos 4y ago

A picture of seagull droppings makes noise if you make it make noise