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Updated:05/31/2022 01:36h
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since the rover Perseverancefrom NASAland on Marte For more than a year, its microphones have recorded hours and hours of audio: from the wind blowing over the surface of the Red planet to the noise generated by the human devices of the mission (including the first helicopter to fly on another world, the Ingenuity). But above all, silence. Because in our neighbor, which has a much finer atmosphere than ours, most of it cannot be heard at all.
This was discovered by an international group of researchers (including Spanish) who published a study in ‘Nature’ explaining that the speed of sound is slower on Mars than on Earth: while here it travels at about 343 meters per second, there the sounds low-frequency ones move at approximately 240 meters per second, while higher-frequency ones move somewhat faster, at 250 meters per second.
That is, higher frequencies travel faster than lower ones, but always at a slower speed than in our world.
Taking all these data into account, the team from the Los Álamos National Laboratory, led by researcher Baptiste Chide, has created a website where you can transform your voice and hear what it would sound like on Mars. “This is the only place in the solar system where that happens in the audible bandwidth due to the unique properties of the carbon dioxide molecules that make up its thin atmosphere,” Chide explained during his appearance at the 182nd meeting of the Acoustical Society. of America, where he presented the online tool, open to all and in which you can also listen to the ‘Martian translation’ of other sounds -from waves of the (terrestrial) sea to the song ‘Claro de luna’, by Claude Debussy-, plus real sounds recorded directly by Perseverance from the Red Planet.
But not always our neighbor is so silent: the seasons impact its soundscape. As carbon dioxide freezes in the polar ice caps during the winter, the density of the atmosphere changes and the ambient loudness varies by about 20%. That molecule also attenuates high-pitched sounds with distance: On Earth, sound can drop after about 65 meters; on Mars, it fails at only 8 meters, and the treble is completely lost at that distance.
your martian voice
But then how would you hear your voice on the Red Planet? The volume would be much lower to begin with, because the Martian atmosphere being 100 times less dense than Earth’s, it affects the way sound waves travel from source to detector, resulting in a louder signal. smooth. On Mars you would have to be much closer to the source of a sound to hear it at the same volume as you would on Earth. And knowing that treble sounds, such as whistles, bells or bird calls, are almost inaudible there. This effect, which causes certain frequencies to be weaker at close range and not as audible, is known as ‘attenuation’.
“Although, of course, if you were on Mars, you would have a space suit on,” they point out from NASA. And that would not only help with clear radio communication, but he would also be able to breathe!” Still, it’s an interesting experiment.
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