Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (not subject to copyright protection)
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This fascinating article by Kenneth Chang in the New York Times describes Martian winds rattling the solar panels on the recently landed InSight lander. The sounds weren’t picked up by a microphone, Chang writes, rather they were captured by seismometers, instruments “designed for measuring the shaking of marsquakes picked up vibrations in the air — sound waves, in other words.” Said Chang, “[t]he seismometers act as the cochlea, the parts of your ears that convert the vibrations into nerve signals.”
It’s not clear to me if a human could hear the wind on Mars–the atmosphere is very thin, and of course a human would have to be wearing some sort of space suit, unlike in the Star Wars movies or Star Trek television shows–but provides an interesting sidelight (or side sound?) to space exploration.
You can listen to the sound, but Chang suggests that you “hook up a subwoofer or put on a pair of bass-heavy headphones. Otherwise, you might not hear anything.” We advise that you skip the headphones and opt for NASA’s enhanced version:
