Science Memes

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Jackhammer (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] xantoxis 30 points 2 months ago (3 children)

You wouldn't, of course. Hearing, the way we hear, in such an environment would be useless. We wouldn't have evolved that. This is like saying "ultraviolet radiation from the sun would be everywhere, all the time, can you imagine?" It is everywhere all the time, but as such it isn't a useful sense to possess, so we don't.

This also makes some very weird assumptions about what the sound would be like. If space were a medium sound could travel through then it would--like all mediums capable of carrying a sound wave--alter the wave in many ways. Intensity, frequency, etc. But since we don't know what kind of medium that would be, and since the comment doesn't posit any particular medium, we don't know what the sound would sound like or even how loud it would be.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I assume that this thought experiment posits a space filled with the same average density of particles found at ground level on Earth. Obviously such a thing is nonsensical, but it serves to illuminate one aspect of the raw power of the Sun that we ignore, because we're insulated from it by 93 million miles of vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

By your logic, light isn't a useful sense to possess since it's everywhere all the time thanks to sunlight and moonlight, is that correct?

Actually, since ultraviolet radiation and light are both electromagnetic waves, they should be treated the same, shouldn't they? It's as if there could be a different reason why we can detect one but not the other.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and some animals (mostly birds iirc) do see UV. Boring brown/black birds aren't so boring in UV. I don't know the evolutionary pressure necessary for UV, but it could have developed. Red, for instance, is believed to have been useful for us to pick out berries. Wolves, being carnivorous, wouldn't necessarily need it, so see in yellow blue... or so I read as a theory a while ago.

[–] daddy32 6 points 2 months ago

Bees see UV too, it supposedly helps them navigating around flowers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

If the sound is more of a loud hiss, you might find that echolocation can work very well. Much like our eyes collect available light bouncing off surfaces, similar techniques can be used with sound.