I hadn't really thought about this before. I just supposed that there would have been an almighty BANG associated with the Big Bang. Of course that assumes that there was a "soup" structure to the universe before it settled and took on a structure that had vast areas of empty space. No sound travelling there. Apparently you can still hear the big bang. It begs the question though about when sound engery is produced ... I had thought that during an explosion all the by-products of the explosion in their various forms of energy were created at detonation. If the Big Bang was a similar event, then why would there have been sound engery produced at all? Sound because of the massive forces crashing into each other after the fact fair enough, but not sound because of the big bang itself ...

Anyway, here's the article: Big Bang sounded like a deep hum

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Sounds like the age old question, "If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one around, does it make a sound?" :huh:

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Josh, yeah, I read that too...

And Tinaa, you beat me to it!!!! *pout* LOL I guess you'd have to re-phrase it though... "If the universe explodes into being and there's no sentient life to hear it, does it make a sound?" LOL :blink:

The thing is though, how do they *know* without actually being there, what it would sound like?

And would we hear it anyway without any air for the soundwaves to move through??

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Hmmmm....seems to me that there would be no sound. First because the initial expansion from a point would BE the universe so nothing would be preceeding it. As the universe expanded the temperature was such that the energy that composes sound would be drowned by the overall energy expansion.

Interesting question. Sound is an expression for the existence of the sensor called the ear. It has relative merit to activities important to creatures that have audio sensors but that doesn't mean that sound is a meaningful component of other systems. The energy released for making sound is only a very small percentage of the total energy consumed in making it, I think. AND it requires other mediums for transferrence.

When I send code (CW) through the air or the vacuum of space it is just pulses of energy detectable by sensitive conversion processes that translate the electrical pulses to sound energy. So I suppose that you could assign any pulse of energy to a sound component by such conversion. But would it be useful information?

Does Audiophile make a speaker big enough for the big bang?

What about if our unvierse expanded from its proto-form into an already existing universe...wouldn't it have made a big mess???? :blink:

There might have been 'sound', if elementary particles can harbour 'sound'. When atoms vibrate they produce sound, but what do elementary particles do when they vibrate?

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At the time the universe exploded no one was here to 'hear' the sound. Now if the tree fell at the beginning of say, the Grand Canyon, the vibrations the fall caused could bounce off the canyon walls until it hit an eardrum down the way. Maybe the vibrations from the Big Bang has become just an echo. Earth is just way down the way.

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But on the other hand, sound travels much slower then light, or the effects of the big bang explosion. It is even slower then our solar system planets movements as they orbit the sun.

Could it be that the sounds have yet to arrive to us? Which assumes we are far away from the spot where the big bang actually occured. :huh:

Or what if we are in the exact center of the universe? Near where the big bang did occur billions of years ago?
How far from us could that sound have traveled by now?
It would stand to reason that if we are at or near the site of the event, that the sounds of the event has traveled far enough away from us by now to make it impossible to hear what happened hear long before any of us existed. :unsure:

If there was sound when the universe was still very dense, it shouldn't be much of a sound nowadays, as it's mostly "vacuum". But depends, I saw some article about soundwaves in some dust- and gasclouds out there.

Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, but in the first few days/years of the universe the particles would have been close enough to vibrate and hit other things. But there would have been so much energy there wouldn't have been any cohesive 'sound', everything would have been flying around evertwhere. But you can still 'hear' the big bang, its called background radiation and sounds alot like static.

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I was told a while ago that this background radiation made up part of the static hoohah that you get on a TV when either a channel isn't programmed in or the channel drops out. 2% of that mess is the echo of the big bang. So .. in my young state of awe at everything universal .. I sat there watching the static.

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LOL Josh... I'll remember that the next time the aerial cable drops out of the socket....

Following up on matthew's point, if sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, why is it that people from Vega could be listening in on the sounds of the 60's as we speak?

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Because they'd be listenting to radio waves not sound waves. Radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum and are actually wave like. while sound waves behave very differently. Sound waves are propagated by particles crashing into each other and therefore need a medium.

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But sound can be encoded into the electromagenetic spectrum, and then decoded back into sound. The same thing happens with TV, radio, ect.

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reminded me of a story Sound of a black hole

My favorite EM Spectrum site

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