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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bybeeplet ( 735701 ) writes:
People have also turned gravitational wave simulations into sound files. Gravitational radiation can be a hard concept to explain to people, but make it into a sound file and it helps people (non-physicists) grasp the idea. Here's a page with a set of audio files for inspiral into Kerr Black holes [caltech.edu].
A few years ago I made an audio file out of the gravitational wave background in our galaxy (from white-dwarf binary stars). It sounded rather like listening to the ocean... I wish I had kept a copy.
byI'm a racist. ( 631537 ) writes:
I have some experience in astronomy. I understand gravity and the cosmic microwave background and have gone through the calculations for a handful of Big Bang parameterizations.
That being said, I don't understand the purpose of this. Doing the acoustic analysis is fine and informative. Making an audible sound out of it is nonsense. It's almost entirely arbitrary, as the sound is not audible. It's the acoustic equivalent of a false color image. It really tells you nothing you didn't already know, it's jus
bybeeplet ( 735701 ) writes:
It's the acoustic equivalent of a false color image.
Yes, exactly. And false-color images are used in astronomy all the time for a very good reason: they take information measured in wavelengths beyond the visual range and present it in a way that can be quickly understood by a human. It's not just about making pretty pictures (although I would say that's a bonus in some cases) - it's about presenting information in a human-understandable form. Of course you could process your IR or X-Ray astronomy picture
byI'm a racist. ( 631537 ) writes:
False color is good for looking at geometric data. If you want to know where objects lie in an image, you can overlay and false color some intensity maps at a few different wavelengths. That is very useful. A lot of the time, it's done just to impress the peasants, of course.
With this data, the temporality of it renders it pretty much worthless to the human ear. Anything you can detect by ear will very easily be seen in a simple Fourier transform or similar technique. A Fourier transform and a plot against logarithmic time is probably the best (most efficient and informative) way to visualize it.
Image processing is still not very good at identifying features, unless those features are very well stereotyped. This happens to be a part of my current work, albeit with time-series acquired microscopic images (EM, laser scanning, etc). The human eye/brain will pick up on visual cues that the best algorithms will miss. The algorithms themselves are generally designed/trained based on analysis conducted by eye.
Picking out 2/3D phenomena is where false color images can be useful. Simple grayscale intensity images are often just as good or better (I worked for a professor that insisted on keeping color channels separate during viewing). Listening to 1D data, you won't learn anything new that the computer couldn't have told you.
I know this was done just for the sake of doing something neat. And, I don't fault it for that. What does bother me, however, is that now you'll have some NYT-reading, liberal artsy, pseudo-intellectual douchebags running around thinking that the Universe plays an audible tone. In the end, they only get half the facts down and make up the rest, then go on to propogate that misinformation.
I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand. Is it worth it to only give them half the facts? Don't forget, it's legislators who only understand half the facts that cause most of the problems that /.ers complain about.
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bybeeplet ( 735701 ) writes:
I'm not going to get into a debate about the acceptable uses of various ways of representing data (which I think is more subjective than you make it out to be), but I want to respond to your last paragraph:
I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand.
Have you ever considered that few people would want to listen to someone who starts out with that attitude about them?
I work with a project that places cosmic ray detectors in schools. The goals are both scientific and educational. I have had school security people drop by after their shift to talk and learn more about what we're doing. This - making science accessible and interesting to people - is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. You might be surprised how much "the average joe" can grasp, given the opportunity and the right resources.
Is it worth it to only give them half the facts?
No one is dishing out half-truths. All the relevant information is there. In the original article it clearly states:
The cosmic sound waves stretched 20,000 light-years, moved at half the speed of light, and were about 50 octaves below what people can hear. Dr. Whittle shifted the sounds to the human audible range...
I have never seen a similar presentation that didn't include some explanation of how it was done and what the relationship to the original data is.
It seems to me like you are asking, "Is it worth trying to disseminate interesting science even though it might be only partially understood?" To that my answer is that getting some of the information across is enough to make science outreach a worthwhile excercise.
I think it is more important to find creative and interesting ways of engaging people in science than making sure they've got all the facts straight right away. After all, if they you can get someone's interest, they will be motivated to learn more, and then any original misconceptions can be disspelled. If you start out expecting people to learn science by picking up the nearest Astrophysical Journal, it just won't happen.
Don't forget, it's legislators who only understand half the facts that cause most of the problems that /.ers complain about.
Again - more information, not less, is the answer. There's nothing wrong with presenting data any way you feel like it, as long as you explain what you did. If more scientists were working to publicize their research like this guy is, maybe everyone, politicians included, would realize that science is not something which is the exclusive domain of the specialists in ivory towers. When science is accessible, I think people are more likely to feel that it is of true value, and hence more willing to fund it with their tax dollars.
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bymabinogi ( 74033 ) writes:
> I'm always torn about trying to explain science to the masses, since they're clearly too dumb/uninterested to ever truly understand.
The only way to guarantee that this is true, is to never try to explain it.
Also, never, ever confuse ignorance with stupidity.
Someone can have no knowledge, or interest in something without being stupid, and assuming their lack of interest is due to stupidity only makes you look bad.
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