What Does a Star Sound Like?

By Sally Younger Posted 10.01.2009 at 9:24 am 5 Comments

The Big Bang A supernova like this would sound like 10 octillion two-megaton nuclear bombs exploding. Nasa/CXC/M. Weiss

Observing a star up close (putting aside for a moment how you’d get there or withstand its heat) is probably like sitting beside an enormous silent fire. Sounds—which are simply pressure variations in a medium such as air or water—can’t propagate in the vacuum of space, so the roiling surface of a star would make an impression on the eyes, but not the ears.

A supernova, however, just might be the most brutal concert in the universe. When a star explodes, the massive detonation expels stellar material far into space, and that matter could theoretically provide a medium through which sound vibrations might travel. Assuming you survived the blast—the initial shock wave would travel up to 20,000 miles per second and carry 1044 joules of energy—it would sound like “10 octillion two-megaton thermonuclear devices detonated simultaneously,” says Charles Liu, an astrophysicist at the City University of New York College of Staten Island. “When those guts hit your eardrums, you’ll hear it. That is, as long as your eardrums stay attached.”

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5 Comments

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bdhoro87

from coral gables, fl

09/19/09 at 11:05 am

So you're saying that if actual pieces of the supernova explosion made it to your ear you would hear it? If you're going to explain what a star might sound like, why don't you just imagine for a minute that there was a star within an air-filled atmosphere and what that would sound like? I'd rather not hear a star at the expense of having bits of supernova explosion penetrating my ears.

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Solace

from Ojai, California

10/01/09 at 9:45 am

An exploding star sounds like... an explosion. So deep.

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blaxpear

10/01/09 at 11:25 am

I believe the title should have been "What does a Supernova sound like?".

A star (fuelled by nuclear fusion) would simply sound like trillions of Hydrogen Bombs continuously being detonated. Imagine a football stadium filled to maximum occupancy, and every person represents an H-Bomb going off several times a second maybe??? I would be beyond any listening threshhold. No sound waves, just shockwaves. Violent ones. And that's assuming you won't be vaporized, you probably would be shattered by the sound/shockwaves themselves.

Either way, this exercise is kind of pointless and leads to no new knowledge or enlightenment.

Wanna hear a star? Simply point your telescope at the sun and convert the light variations from the surfave into audible signals.

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