What Would You Hear If A Meteor Flew By?

If there’s a giant meteor headed straight for the earth, what should you do!?
Listen to it.
Hey there meteor maniacs, Jules here for DNews!
If you’ve ever watched a falling meteor, you might hear some weird sounds.
Sounds like hissing, crackling, and popping, which might seem obvious because, well, a
rock hurtling through the atmosphere is probably going to produce some noise.
But, that meteor is likely to be many miles away, and although sound travels pretty fast,
it is still much slower than the speed of light.
For example, when you see fireworks, there is usually a slight delay between seeing the
explosion, and hearing it, depending on how far away you are.
When you see the meteor, you shouldn’t be able to hear the sound for another few minutes.
But you do.
So, what’s going on?
Well, a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, set out to solve this conundrum,
which researchers believed had less to do with sound waves coming from the meteor, and
more to do with the light waves!
See, a meteor burning through the atmosphere becomes a very bright fireball and can even
reach temperatures similar to the sun.
It generates light in pulses, and this light shoots in all directions.
The researchers’ theory was that materials that absorb heat well, like leaves, fine hair,
and dark clothing, will be heated by this meteors’ light.
When those objects are heated, the air directly around them is also heated, generating pressure
waves, and these pressure waves create sound.
Materials that absorb heat and create acoustic waves are called photoacoustic transducers.
So… what you’re really hearing is the result of the light and heat, not the sounds
of the meteor falling.
The researchers tested their theory by shooting super-powerful light pulses, equivalent in
brightness to those produced by meteors, at various objects to see if a) this would produce
sounds, and b) if those sounds were consistent with the sounds heard during a meteor fireball.
It turns out that this theory, called the photoacoustic hypothesis, was supported by
these experiments.
Technically, this is not altogether dissimilar from the way lightning produces the sounds
of thunder.
When lightning strikes, it creates a huge change in pressure and temperature, which
expands the air around it.
This creates a shockwave similar to a sonic boom, which we hear as thunder.
In the case of lightning, this is the result of electricity changing the pressure.
But in the case of the meteor, it is the heat and light emanating from the fireball.
In fact, the paper states that fibrous materials, like frizzy hair, are great transducers, meaning
that they convert pressure into sound.
This is why people with frizzy hair reportedly hear more sounds during a meteor fall; not
only is the hair located near the ears where it is likely to be heard, it also has a large
surface-to-volume ratio which can maximize how much sound is created in the first place.
In a nutshell, the researchers concluded that an observant person in a quiet environment,
who is surrounded by good transducers like hair, leaves, black paint, or dark clothing
would be able to hear this photo-acoustic sound during a meteor fireball.
So the next time you see a meteor, listen closely, you might just hear its light.
So, what actually happens when that meteor strikes the Earth?
Find out in this video right here.
And have you ever heard the sound of a meteor in person?
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What Would You Hear If A Meteor Flew By?

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