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Recreating the Sounds of Mars and Venus
Should we ever succeed in sending astronauts to Mars or Venus, it’s likely they would need to stay on the planets for several months, at least — or possibly set up permanent shop there. But how would they fill their leisure hours? Perhaps they could start a band! But the very different atmospheres of Mars and Venus would make their voices and instruments sound very different than they would on Earth.
Until now, we could only speculate about what those sounds might be. Only a couple of the probes we have sent into to space to explore our solar system have been equipped with microphones, and while sonification of the solar corona and the rings of Saturn offer haunting glimpses of the sounds of space, we have lacked any sense of sounds likely to be heard on the surfaces of other planets.
Enter Tim Leighton, an acoustician at the University of Southampton in England, who has ingeniously employed the physics and mathematical tools of his trade to create the natural sounds one would be likely to hear on the surface of Mars or Venus — things like lightning, or whirlwinds, or even ice volcanoes found on Saturn’s moon, Titan.
