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The Sounds of the Universe

In space no-one can hear you scream... but it is still a noisy Universe. We are familiar with the many stunning images of space, but these are only part of the whole human experience. This lecture takes a new approach to appreciating the Universe, through the vehicle of sound. Once we understand how sound is propagated, we can look at the how and where it can exist in space. We examine how sound can be a diagnostic of cosmic phenomena (such as the song of the Sun and distant stars), the way it can carry energy across vast volumes of space (away from a black hole humming in B♭), how it can be a useful way to illustrate processes in astronomy (such as the rapid spin of pulsars, and other more local radio emissions) and how it is ultimately responsible for the growth of all structure we see today in the cosmos.

Carolin Susan Crawford is a British communicator of science, astrophysicist researcher, lecturer and academic based at the Institute of Astronomy and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. (from gresham.ac.uk)

The Sounds of the Universe


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