The Universe: Mysterious Alien Sounds Located (S7, E2) | Full Episode | History

in the beginning there was darkness and then  bang giving birth to an endless expanding   existence of time space and matter every day  new discoveries are unlocking the mysterious   the mind-blowing the deadly secrets  of a place we call the universe in the deep nothingness of space  the cosmic silence is broken   space is actually kind of a noisy place galaxies stars planets and moons  sing out with strange and alien music   they sound a little bit like an alien fax  now the cosmic playlist in a top 10 countdown   the greatest hits of the universe  in a symphony of alien sounds in space no one can hear you scream as the promo line for ridley  scott's science fiction film   alien it was designed to  send chills down your spine it's based on the unsettling idea that  space is a vacuum and sounds whether screams   shouts or songs can't travel in  a vacuum but is that really true well it's kind of narrow to think that in space  you can't hear anyone scream because in fact here   on earth there are lots of sounds we can't hear  they're either too high a pitch or too low a pitch   moreover space isn't completely empty and then  finally you know what's the definition of space   if i'm an astronaut on the surface  of mars and i have a space suit on   am i in space or am i not well i would  think i am okay let's try right over here back on earth bruce betts of the  planetary society in pasadena california   has given a lot of thought to  mars and the subject of sound he's programmed his computer with what he calls  the marzinator to demonstrate what his voice   would sound like in the cold carbon dioxide  atmosphere of mars without those space suits the atmosphere of mars would actually  change your voice so it sounded   deeper so let's go ahead and simulate that using  the marsinator and i will record my voice and then   we will shift it to what it would sound like  on mars this is what i'd sound like on mars   although i'd be wishing i had some oxygen  to breathe then i go ahead and process it   put it through the marzinator and then we  play it back and see what it sounds like   this is how i would sound by mars although i'd  be wishing i had some oxygen breathe of course   if humans ever do make it to mars we will  not hear their voices through the atmosphere   instead we'll get them via radio waves the way  many of our most important sounds already reach us   yes we're familiar with thinking of sound as  something that comes through the air to us   just like we hear each other when we're talking  but in fact a lot of the sounds that we hear are   transmitted through electromagnetic signals for  example uh your television actually transmits a   television signal into sound that you can hear  who's our first contestant tonight sound in the   cosmos will never reach us directly across empty  space so radio light or other electromagnetic   waves are the inevitable carriers bringing  us a universe we can hear in all its variety space is actually kind of a noisy  place it has many many sources of   noise that we are able to detect with  special radio telescopes for example these alien sounds make up an incredible  collection the ultimate playlist we've   polled our expert panel of scientists  astronomers and physicists to rank the top ten the greatest sounds from the expanse of space   ending with the number one  that will surprise us all   and now the countdown starts coming in at number  10 ringing out from a distance of 13 billion   light years the birth cry of the universe in a  hit called the audio afterglow of the big bang it's remarkable that the young universe  actually made a sound and the reason we   know that is that we can actually witness the  glowing gases that were present at that time the glow from these gases is known as  the cosmic microwave background radiation   or cmbr it is a faint trace of microwaves  that stretches across every point in the sky discovered by scientists in the mid-1960s the  radiation is the afterglow of the big bang   the famous blotchy satellite map of the cmbr   represents the cosmos in its infancy  when it was only 380 000 years old when we look at the cmbr map we're essentially  looking at a voice print of the early universe   because those tiny variations in color  correspond to variations in temperature   and those correspond to variations in density and  pressure well pressure waves are just sound waves   so we're seeing little variations in pressure  little sound waves in the early universe to understand the audio afterglow of the big bang  we need to know how the early universe varied   its pressures to generate sound waves to find  out astronomer mark whittle and organ builder   manuel rosales visit the magnificent pipe organ  at clermont united church of christ in california in a way the four thousand pipes in this organ  are comparable to the voice of the early universe manuel the amazing thing about the early universe  is that all its pipes were sounding together   and it'd be lovely if we could just try  that with this organ so do you think we   could do that now play all the notes at once  yes uh let's pull out all the stops and try it   ah that's where that phrase  comes from okay let's go very powerful but but really hissy  white noise kind of sound but an   even more remarkable thing about the primordial   sound is that in fact a few particular tones  were present and were stronger at any given time this is the opening note of hit number  10 the audio afterglow of the big bang   a computer sound analyzer reveals its strong  tones as distinct columns on a color-coded graph   as hissy as the early cosmic sound  is it differs from pure white   noise which has no organized  features at all on the analyzer the sound of the audio afterglow on the other  hand comes through with a vaguely musical quality   the pipes of this or any organ are made of wood  and metal but the pipes of the early universe   were pits of dark matter the mysterious substance  whose existence is known only from its gravity what drives the sound waves is is gravity so  for example if there's a region of slightly   higher density of dark matter there's a  gravitational force pulling in gas that's   surrounding this region feels that pull and it  falls in but it's gas so it also as it falls in   it compresses that compression acts like a spring  and so it pushes the gas back out but then it   overshoots until it falls back in again and  this is how the motion of the gas falls in   bounces out falls in bounces out so we have  an oscillating pressure wave a sound wave   the cosmic background radiation as important  as it is is just a still picture its imprint   of sound has the effect of no more  than one noisy barely musical note   and even hearing that is a struggle  the pipe organ helps show us why the sounds of the universe are way too low  for us to hear in fact what's the lowest note   that this this organ plays it is a pipe 32 feet  long and it can only be played with one's foot that's pretty deep the 32 feet were were nothing  compared to the cosmic organ pipes they were   between 20 000 and 400 000 light years across  sorry we don't have any pipes quite that long   the deep sound of the early universe is so low  we can hear it only after a massive shift upward the background radiation of  the universe dates from 380   000 years after its creation  but what happened before that   is it possible to uncover the whole song of the  universe from the very instant of the big bang the cosmos is filled with a symphony of alien  sounds and we're counting down the top 10 of the   universe's greatest hits number 10 on the playlist  sings out with the earliest tones of the universe   from the audio afterglow of the big bang but our download of the universe's birth  song has some problems with the cosmic   organ playing all its pipes at once what reaches  our ears sounds like only one complex noisy note it's only one note because it comes from the  pressure waves we read from the map of the   cosmic background radiation which is just a still  picture of the sound in the early universe taken   380 000 years after its birth how then do we run  the clock backwards and hear the rest of the song   modern cosmology is sufficiently  advanced that it's possible to   create a computer replication a  simulation of the young universe   it's possible to recreate within a computer what's  going on and how the sound developed right from   the very very beginning through those first four  hundred thousand years they are the same kind of   super computer simulations that have given us  pictures showing how the early universe evolved the dark matter pipes of the early universe  acted like those in the church organ   as bigger pipes were played  deeper notes were sounded   as the universe expanded there was more space  and more time more space meant bigger pipes   so the notes in the song got lower  and lower as the song played out put it all together and the first 400 000  years of the universe can be condensed   down to just 10 seconds a haunting primal scream the gas that's falling in and out of these dark  matter regions is ultimately going to become   the first stars the first galaxies and  ultimately it'll be corralled into the   thousands of galaxies that we see around us today so while it's been uh amusing really and playful  to reproduce these sounds for us to listen to   in the big picture they play an enormously  important role in crafting the structure of   the universe that's going to unfold in the  universe that we find ourselves in today from the big band sound of  the big bang our countdown   takes a step down in size to the modest 15  million light year span of a galaxy cluster   coming in at number nine on our list of the  universe's top 10 hits is the deep tone of perseus this is low sound to the extreme  emanating from the perseus cluster   a grouping of roughly a thousand galaxies  250 million light years from earth   the central galaxy in this cluster of galaxies  has a huge supermassive black hole at its center   the cluster's central galaxy is called perseus a  and its super black hole gives it what's called   an active galactic nucleus which shoots out  energy in the form of gigantic jets tearing   into the surrounding space for reasons which we  don't fully understand it seems to be coming out   the energy is being produced episodically about  every 10 million years or so those energy pulses   are actually waves of pressure and that's  exactly what sound waves are pressure waves the wave as demonstrated by sports fans has an  up and down motion that's very familiar to us   but these uc berkeley students will  switch gears and show us how a sound wave   is different okay everyone lose the pom-poms   since sound waves are pressure waves we're gonna  build a pressure wave out of all these students   okay everybody let's line up you go over here  and then shoulder to shoulder just like this   stretch out over there a little bit no gaps you're  gonna be students colliding with each other like   molecules colliding in a sound wave that's looking  a lot better do you feel like a bunch of molecules   okay okay this is looking good we have a bass drum  at each end of the line you'll see why in a minute   we'll get things going with this drummer over here  he's going to hit the drum and watch what happens in this case the pressure is a good healthy shove  and it moves from student to student all the way   down the line at the end the last student applies  his pressure to the second drum by banging on it the second drum is like our eardrum when  pressure from a sound wave in the air hits   our eardrums we hear the sound this is  just how sound travels through the air   except instead of having students shoving  each other there are air molecules shoving   each other a sound needs a medium to travel  through it can't travel through a vacuum so in   fact to get from point a to point b you need air  molecules hitting each other that's how it works so how do those pressure waves from  number nine's deep tones of perseus   travel through what's essentially  the vacuum of intergalactic space astrophysicist richard pogee  of ohio state university   gives us a sense of the emptiness in deep  space at his school's football stadium   while it's true the sound waves can't travel  through the vacuum of space space is not a   complete vacuum i'm here in ohio stadium home  of the buckeyes it's very empty today i'm the   only one here and can think of a better place  to illustrate the vacuum space the empty stadium   can be a stand-in for the vacuum of space if we  compare it with what it looks like on game day with more than a hundred and  two 000 people in its seats   ohio stadium would be like the atmosphere  on earth jam-packed with air molecules so how much do we have to clear out this stadium  to equal the vacuum space believe it or not you   have to clear out everybody including me and then  even i'm too much no more than a single cell from   pogey's body could remain in ohio stadium  to come close to the vacuum of deep space with what seems like almost nothing in the  expanse between galaxies of the perseus cluster   the existence of sound waves  seems all the more incredible   how do you propagate a sound wave through  empty space when it's mostly empty let's use   the example of me running down the field i have  to run a long ways before i encounter somebody   but i still encounter somebody and i can pass  energy along to them the same is true of atoms   in interstellar space it has to travel a long  ways maybe 300 light years before it encounters   another particle but when it encounters it  it passes the energy and the wave moves along the colliding particles in the perseus cluster  also emit faint x-rays whose traces imaged by   the chandra space telescope tell us the  waves are there but these waves are huge   and the notes they produce are lower than  anything any human has ever experienced the pitch is about 57 octaves below our  hearing below the middle of a piano range and   that actually qualifies this for the guinness  book of records as the deepest pitch known to   man the extreme deep note emanating from  perseus is so far below our hearing range   that it can only be approximated it's been said  the galaxy cluster is playing an awesomely low   b-flat and scientists calculate it'll be playing  constantly for two and a half billion years number nine's deep tone of perseus drones on   as the countdown advances a secret number  one waits at the end of the line but first a strange high-pitched squeal hints  at what comes in at number eight   sounds from space and their link  to signals from extraterrestrials starting with the big bang we've been tracking  the top 10 of the universe's greatest hits   the best of the alien sounds from space jumping to number eight on the countdown we find  a sudden wide variety of different sounds clicks   wines and screeches all coming from strange stars  singing out from everywhere we look in the galaxy   they're cosmic squeals with a rhythm  section in the beat of the pulsars every pulsar has a different sound but they are  all related because they are repeating blips   beating out regular rhythms the different sounds  come from beats sounding out at different speeds the first pulsars to be detected emitted radio  waves so regular that astronomers first thought   they were signals from aliens but the  truth about them was quickly discovered   a pulsar is a rapidly rotating  neutron star that's a very dense   star and it's got two beams of  radiation coming out the poles   as those beams rotate and intersect our  line of sight we see a series of pulses we can think of pulsars being associated with  sound because they were first discovered with   radio telescopes there was a series of  beeps that radio telescopes detected for a slowly rotating pulsar you might have   a series of beats like a  metronome beep beep beep beep or you might hear a beep beep beep beep beep now for a rapidly rotating pulsar the  beeps blur together so you get like that and for a very rapidly rotating  pulsar it's just a continuous   sound that registers like a note in your ears pulsars form from the collapse of very  massive stars after they explode as supernovas but how long does it actually take for a massive  star to collapse that's what sherman d of tampa   florida wanted to ask the universe when he texted  his question to us sherman the visible effects of   a supernova can last for months or years or even  centuries if you're looking at the supernova   remnant the expanding gases but although it may  seem incredible the collapse of the core of a   massive star can take just a second or two and  that's what initiates the supernova explosion our own sun isn't massive enough to  go supernova but it is a giant ball of   hydrogen 330 000 times more massive than  the earth and burning by nuclear fusion   so our home star can hardly keep  quiet as our next hit proves   this hot combo chimes in at number 7 on the  countdown here it is the song of the sun the sun makes sounds but they're  not really sunny sounds they're   not happy sounds they're kind of  low ominous roars that gurgle along the sun makes sounds because there are a bunch  of gases going up and down through a process   called convection so they're sending pressure  waves through the ball of gas that is the sun   and it kind of rings like a bell unlike a bell  the sun rings with 10 million different tones   at once we detect them from the tiny bulges  from the pressure waves on the sun's surface solar satellites measure the height of  the bulges with exquisite accuracy apart   from sound they also produce science so using  these sounds from the sun that we can observe   we can actually tell very detailed things about  the interior structure of our star for example   one of the amazing things that we can tell is when  there's a sunspot group on the other side of the   star even before it comes around the limb and  we're able to see it with our optical telescopes the sun may be the biggest source for sound in  the solar system but next in line is jupiter   so coming in at number six in the top ten is a  medley of strange electronic jazz from jupiter jazz from jupiter comes to us courtesy  of the two legendary voyager spacecraft   now on their epic journey to the edge of the solar  system the two voyager spacecraft are headed for   interstellar space they're in the very outer  edges of the bubble the sun creates around itself   today voyager 1 is 118 times as far from the  sun as the earth is almost four times as far   from the sun as neptune is project scientist  ed stone has been heading the voyager mission   since its two spacecraft made their grand  tour of the outer planets beginning in 1979. on their approach to jupiter the first thing each  one encountered was the giant planet's bow shock   producing a wind-like sound  from the electronic data there's a wind blowing outward from the sun at  about a million miles per hour it is supersonic   as that wind approaches contact with  a magnetic field around say jupiter   it has to go it has to go subsonic there  is a sonic shock which forms in front   of the magnetic field of jupiter that's called  the bow shock it's very much like a sonic shock   in front of a supersonic aircraft more intriguing  than the bow shock is the jovian chorus sounding   something like the chorus of birds chirping  at dawn both it and the bow shock come from   radio waves generated by fast-moving charged  particles within the bubble of jupiter's magnetic field now the scramble toward the mysterious  number one in the top ten swings to the moons   of jupiter and the rings of saturn where the  noises from electric loops glowing gases and   streams of wind vie for distinction as  the spookiest sounds in the solar system the top 10 countdown in the alien sounds of  the universe has reached jupiter sending out   its own brand of space music but the next  hit is no solo jupiter has a backup group   they're the jovian moons circling the  giant planet and now they have their   own album it places at number five in the top  ten and the tune is called moons over jupiter the lead singer is the moon ganymede recorded  by the galileo spacecraft arriving at jupiter in   late 1995 the sounds that galileo set back from  jupiter's moon ganymede by the way the largest   moon in the solar system are very intriguing  they sound a little bit like an alien facts   in fact when i played that sound clip in  my office yesterday people came around   the corners to see what was going on if  i was receiving some alien transmission as with voyager galileo's sounds  came from ionized gas or plasma atoms in a plasma are split apart into  negative electrons in positive atomic nuclei   in other words charged particles two slender antennas on the spacecraft's plasma  wave instrument picked up the radio waves that   the charged particles produced as they were set  in motion by a magnetic field these sounds that   we hear from ganymede are the evidence that  ganymede actually has a magnetic field and   you cannot find that information without using  the plasma wave instrument as we did on galileo a very sudden burst of alien sound  came from another of jupiter's moons   it happened when galileo  flew over iowa's north pole my favorite moon in the solar system is  jupiter's moon io it looks a lot like a   pizza this is the most volcanically active moon  in the entire solar system 10 or 100 times more   volcanically active than the earth it literally  spews tons of material into space every second   sulfur and oxygen atoms these get  ionized in jupiter's magnetic field   and actually connect back to jupiter to  the north and south poles making a donut   the donut is called the io flux tube and the  charged particles carry a monster electric current   between jupiter and its volcanic moon as galileo  flew through it the sound ended as abruptly as it started with jupiter and its moons finishing their acts   our countdown swings to saturn smaller than  jupiter but right up there in the top ten   the ringed planet comes in at number four on the  list listen up for the surreal sounds of saturn they come to us from the cassini  spacecraft which has been delivering   mind-blowing pictures and data since  its arrival at the ringed planet in 2004 as on voyager and galileo cassini's plasma wave  instrument is our proxy for human ears in space the eerie and bizarre sounds  we hear from cassini's   radio and plasma wave instrument  make me think of halloween they're due to the aurora on saturn  very similar to earth's aurora your ears could never pick up these  frequencies but we moved them into a range   and when we do we were surprised to see  how eerie and scary they actually were the surreal sounds of saturn isn't the  ringed planet's only song on the countdown turn it over and we find number three  on the playlist saturn's flip side scientists call this hit a crossover  this crossover has nothing to do with   mixing musical styles but describes radio waves  from saturn's northern and southern hemispheres   as they actually crisscross in  frequency over a period of time we saw something really strange in our radio data  and our plasma wave data a couple of crossing   frequencies that apparently suggested that the  northern and southern hemispheres were rotating   at different rates that's very unfamiliar to us on  a solid earth where the earth rotates at one rate   it actually turns out we don't think saturn's  rotating at different rates we think that high   altitude zonal winds are tricking us and  making us think that there's different   rotation in the northern and southern  hemisphere that's probably not the case similar waves following the lines of saturn's  magnetic field revealed a surprise about the   ringed planet one of the most bizarre things  that cassini found was apparently the saturn   day was about six minutes longer than it was back  in the days of voyager mere decades earlier the   determination of the length of saturn's  day is actually not possible by watching   the clouds rotate around the planet we have to  use these radio emissions the sounds of space   to see what the deep interior is doing  and that's where we found this mystery it's virtually impossible to slow down a  planet the size of saturn that much in such   a short time so scientists now realize the radio  emissions probably don't give an accurate picture   and by sophisticated mapping of saturn's  winds they now have a better take on   saturn's day which happens to be 10  hours 34 minutes and 13 seconds long now we're closing in on the surface  of titan saturn's biggest moon   as it swings into the alien sounds countdown  hit number two rings out as totally titan and   it opens with an otherworldly hiss from an actual  microphone on the huygens lander separated from   cassini and parachuting through titan's methane  atmosphere nearly a billion miles away from earth   if you're parachuting you're going to hear that's  exactly what we hear in these huygens sounds the sound was transmitted as the lander  headed toward titan's surface in 2005.   the acoustic sensor on huygens was essentially  a microphone but it only sampled every couple   seconds it would take a little sound tiny  tiny sound bite and then nothing and then a   tiny tiny sound bite it wasn't planned to turn  that into sounds that the public could hear but unlike the other sounds from saturn  these were not converted from radio waves   they began as true sound waves in titan's  methane atmosphere and the planetary society   stepped in to convert the staccato sampling of the  microphone into something audible to human ears   in the end what you hear is mostly wind  noise as the parachutes descending through   the atmosphere and then things get much  much quieter on the surface it goes from to suddenly being but what's really profound is we're hearing sounds  taken by an actual acoustic sensor from a billion   miles away first time we've ever heard sounds  from another planet or moon around another planet but the rushing wind wasn't the only sound coming  from huygens as data streamed in from the lander   on the way to titan's surface white-knuckled  engineers in mission control held their breath   hoping the intrepid spacecraft would make  its landings safely the final chapter in   the story is told in an incredible music video  guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat we've been counting down the top  10 alien sounds of the universe   and we've almost reached number one  but first we're shifting into high gear as number two runs with an astronomical riff  from the huygens space probe visiting saturn's   largest moon titan it's the only alien  sound that comes with its own music video look and listen cut two on  number two it's totally titan here we have what's called the bells and whistles  movie from cassini-huygens and it's showing the   descent and it's a great example of using sound  to convey all sorts of different kinds of data   just as a geiger counter announces radioactivity  using audible clicks the instruments on the   huygens lander were given their own sounds  to register the measurements they were taking those chimes you hear each one of those  means that an instrument was taking a   picture or some other kind of data different  instruments or a different chime we also   are hearing kind of a hum in the background it's  the signal strength to the cassini spacecraft   we've got a ticking that occurs  that has to do with the spinning   and rotation of the spacecraft every  time it rotates once they have the tick though it's just an assembly  of pure scientific information   the video seems to preserve what must have  been those last moments of high tension when   the scientists in mission control wondered will  the tiny spacecraft land safely or will it crash so here we go and almost  down and then we're landed mission accomplished with  sound a billion miles away totally titan has been a thrill  at number two on the countdown   but now we spin the platter  on the mysterious number one a song that comes from a place totally unlike  anything else in the universe we've ever   encountered while some remind us of the  strange signals from jupiter and saturn   there are also sounds in this song  that are completely different from   anything we've measured or detected  anywhere else in the cosmos because number one on the countdown  has sounds alien to the entire universe   except with a place where they originate  number one in the universe's greatest hits   resounds with echoes of a  singular place the echoes of earth here on earth we're used to thinking of the alien  sounds as being everything that comes from beyond   our planet and that might be examples of plasma  waves and pressure moving through astrophysical   media or objects but really if you think about  observing our earth from afar the aliens are us   and our sounds are unique because they come from  living organisms whether it be human language or bird songs an alien probe exploring earth space  would certainly pick up the jupiter or   saturn-like sounds of charged particles  propelled by earth's magnetic field but our planet unlike the others also emits radio  waves broadcast into the cosmos by human beings good evening this is professor reginald a pheasant  speaking to you from brad rock massachusetts   in 1906 at brant rock massachusetts reginald  fessenden made the first radio broadcast of speech   and music fessenden was the inventor of am radio  transmitting his first signals on christmas eve it was picked up by sailors hundreds of miles  out at sea and has been traveling through space   ever since ever since the beginning of radio  we've really been broadcasting out into space   and we've been sending out these signals in the  hopes that somebody will intercept them of course   space is a very large place and therefore it's  hard to know who would have gotten them and when   but there they are on their  way out to who knows where hello from the children of planet earth earthly sounds are also traveling  through space not by radio   but aboard the two voyager space probes  on a slow but steady course to the stars one of the examples of how important  sound is to us here on earth   is that when we launched voyager we actually  included a golden record of sounds from our earth   and this was to represent not only human sound  but also sounds of the many creatures that live   here on earth with us so it's really a  sound fingerprint of life on our planet   as we take our own place among the top 10 hits  in our playlist we realize they only scratch   the surface of the cosmic voices calling out in  the void from creation to the present day space   has produced a broad catalog of sounds  to accompany its brilliant sights   as strange as these many sounds seem we've  learned that they carry important messages   helping to solve mysteries of nature and  our ultimate understanding of the universe you

Channel: HISTORY

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Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the universe, history the universe, the universe show, the universe full episodes, the universe clips, full episodes, the universe season 7 episode 2, the universe s7 e2, the universe s07 e02, the universe 7X2, watch the universe, Watch the universe full episodes, Season 7, history channel full episodes, universe, the universe season 7, Episode 2, Mysterious Alien Sounds, Sounds Located, solar system, galaxy

Id: W-kbxPoDUgc

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020