On May 26 Baptiste Chide and his colleagues shared new findings about sound on Mars in an issue of Nature magazine. Their research found that if someone in Mars is talking right next to you, they would emit the same sound as talking to someone on Earth 60 meters away from you.
About Mars
Mars is very difficult planet to judge because it is super cold and the planet’s thin atmosphere does not carry sound very well from carbon dioxide. “When a sound wave moves through air or a fluid, it adds energy to the molecules around it. Air will gradually move that energy around. This is called the relaxation effect.” On Mars, “the relaxation effect after a high-pitched sound happens faster than after a low-pitched sound. That’s because the atmosphere has low pressure and is mostly made of carbon dioxide.”
Andy Piacsek, a physicist at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg says, “this doesn’t happen on Earth because the pressure of our atmosphere is so much higher than on Mars, Plus, Earth’s atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Under those conditions, the relaxation effect is about the same for high and low pitches. So, on Earth, all sounds generally travel at about 343 meters per second (767 miles per hour).
Chide’s Investigations
Chide and his team is are some of the first people to make sound recordings on the red planet, otherwise known as Mars. The recordings made were by a microphone on NASA’s perseverance rover. The noises Perseverance recorded “weren’t the sounds of events on Mars. They were noises made when the rover fired a laser at small rocks nearby.” That noise created a sound wave — similar to thunder, but much smaller. Chide and his team members studied five hour’s worth of noises collected this way. They figured out the speed of sound in Mars. High pitched sounds travel at about 250 meters per second (559 miles per hour). Low-pitched sounds travel slower about 240 meters per second (537 miles per hour).
Fun Facts
“You don’t want to do it.” Better to use microphones and a headset – “says Chide. NASA’s perseverance rover has been exploring Mars since February 2021. The recording of Mars was over 160 Million kilometers from Earth.
About Mars
Mars is very difficult planet to judge because it is super cold and the planet’s thin atmosphere does not carry sound very well from carbon dioxide. “When a sound wave moves through air or a fluid, it adds energy to the molecules around it. Air will gradually move that energy around. This is called the relaxation effect.” On Mars, “the relaxation effect after a high-pitched sound happens faster than after a low-pitched sound. That’s because the atmosphere has low pressure and is mostly made of carbon dioxide.”
Andy Piacsek, a physicist at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg says, “this doesn’t happen on Earth because the pressure of our atmosphere is so much higher than on Mars, Plus, Earth’s atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Under those conditions, the relaxation effect is about the same for high and low pitches. So, on Earth, all sounds generally travel at about 343 meters per second (767 miles per hour).
Chide’s Investigations
Chide and his team is are some of the first people to make sound recordings on the red planet, otherwise known as Mars. The recordings made were by a microphone on NASA’s perseverance rover. The noises Perseverance recorded “weren’t the sounds of events on Mars. They were noises made when the rover fired a laser at small rocks nearby.” That noise created a sound wave — similar to thunder, but much smaller. Chide and his team members studied five hour’s worth of noises collected this way. They figured out the speed of sound in Mars. High pitched sounds travel at about 250 meters per second (559 miles per hour). Low-pitched sounds travel slower about 240 meters per second (537 miles per hour).
Fun Facts
“You don’t want to do it.” Better to use microphones and a headset – “says Chide. NASA’s perseverance rover has been exploring Mars since February 2021. The recording of Mars was over 160 Million kilometers from Earth.
