Bats mimic buzzing hornets to scare predators away.
Science magazine reveals the first known case of a mammal mimicking insect noises, in a study that found greater mouse-eared bats imitate stinging insect buzzes […]
acoustics
There’s more than one speed of sound on Mars.
Science News describes one of the odd issues facing our robotic exploration of the Red Planet, because sound waves travel differently in the thin atmosphere […]
Male crickets use leaves to make themselves seem bigger… in THAT way, yes.
Science News brings attention to male shortcomings and the gender’s creativity in overcoming them with a story about crickets who use leaves as megaphones, amplifying […]
Science Art: H.G. Dorsey: Device for Graphically Reproducing Sound Waves, 1912
Click to embiggen slightly A device from the early 20th century to turn sound waves into drawings – creating some of the first waveform illustrations. […]
A certain frequency of sound can alter your brain. And maybe fight Alzheimer’s?
MIT News has the (low-pitched) buzz on how listening to 40 Hz sounds have cured mice of Alzheimer’s symptoms by changing their brainwaves: This noninvasive […]
Science Art: Sound Vibrations, 1892
Click to embiggen Seeing what we hear, in 1892. Did they have oscilloscopes in 1892? I don’t think they did. But they could visualize this. […]
Music from melting glaciers.
Earther has a nice look at a University of Virginia sound artist who’s turning shrinking glaciers into his musical instrument: “We’re trying to create art, […]
The sun has risen, the fish are singing….
Growing up interacting with fish called “grunts,” this doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s still kind of cool. New Scientist captures the chorus […]
Science Art: LEAF Sound Horn, by ESA – A. Le Floc’h
Click to embiggen This is a big horn for making big noise. It’s the way the European Space Agency tests how satellites stand up to […]
Old phones are listening.
Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on how old smart phones are being used to listen for disrupted sleep patterns, illegal loggers, gunshots, breeding […]
Sound levitation. No magnets. Sound.
The Telegraph marvels at physicists learning how to levitate and move solid objects using sound waves: They then levitate match heads, drops of water, screws […]
Perfect pitch isn’t.
Science Daily sticks it to the people with an innate ear for what’s a C and what isn’t. Apparently, “perfect pitch” can be fooled: Absolute […]
Lasers made of sound. Call them… phasers.
Wired reveals the weird ways nanotechnologists are making sound behave like light… this time, by creating a Star Trek weapon in the lab: Because laser […]
Why is dissonance noisy?
Nature explores the strange mathematics of yuck – the neurological reason why we find dissonant music hard to listen to: Consonant chords are, roughly speaking, […]
‘The Bloop’ identified.
I’m not sure when this happened, but NOAA thinks they’ve finally identified the mysterious underwater sound known as ‘The Bloop’: The broad spectrum sounds recorded […]