Where does the sound go to when you’re in a spaceship in space?
The sound hits the hull, and then has nowhere to go, does it get converted into another type of energy?
Where does the sound go to when you’re in a spaceship in space?
The sound hits the hull, and then has nowhere to go, does it get converted into another type of energy?
Yes, sound is the collective motion of particles in the form of a compression wave. As these waves propagate through a material and scatter off boundaries and inhomogeneities in general, they become less ordered and eventually indistinguishable from random atomic motion (i.e. thermal energy). However, in addition to this, sound waves can radiate away when in atmosphere. In the case of spacecraft, they can only dissipate into thermal energy and can therefore persist much longer. This is actually a problem engineers have to deal with, as unwanted vibrations can cause issues. There’s research looking into addressing this by using materials specifically designed to be highly absorbent to sound waves at particular frequencies (i.e. the collective motion of atoms at particular frequencies rapidly decays into random thermal motion).
Ok, that makes sense. I expected it to be kinetic into thermal.
But then in a place like the ISS with all the people all the time, does it mean extra heat inside? What would happen if you played loud music? I mean vacuum does not the heat away from you quickly, and there’s nothing to take the kinetic energy. After years of people talking and beeps beeping, where did it go?
Thank you!
I don’t have a great answer for you why, but heat must be radiated away from space ships faster than you might think. They have heaters on them to keep them warm. Think Apollo 13 when they turn off all their power, and it gets cold.
The ISS is traveling through a decent amount of atmosphere still, hence they need to boost their orbit occasionally. That atmosphere is probably plenty to dissipate WAY more heat than sound creates.
That doesn’t explain deep space ships… But they do clearly radiate heat, if not slowly. But probably faster than what little heat sound creates. (Also think of the cooling phase that James Webb space telescope went through)
I’ve played a few games set in space and some of them have, in their quest to explain differences between the fiction and reality, a “simulated sound” system so you can still hear in space; would something like that actually be possible in real life? 🤔