The Weirdest Sounds in the Universe
  • 4 years ago
The Popular Science "Noise" issue features hundreds of sounds. What follows are some of the weirdest facts from the magazine, plus the croaks, beeps, echoes, and vibrations a printed page couldn't bring to your ears. This is best experienced on headphones. Set your volume to about half way and adjust accordingly. We’re about to test the limits of what you can hear.

Noises : a hearing test (20 Hz to 20,000 Hz—the range of human hearing); decibels of a quiet room, a watch ticking, the International Space Station, a conversation, a hairdryer, loud music in earbuds, fireworks, and breathtaking infrasound; the first recording of a human voice; Martian wind and a Marsquake; ASMR from Gibi ASMR (tapping and scratching!) and Tingting ASMR (whispering and briushing!); the loneliest whale (52 Hz); the quietest place on Earth (inside the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories); the Shepard scale will make you move (and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight); onomatopoeias and ideophones; the trident bat and the highest frequency pure tone ever documented in nature; the coquí's call; the language of The Sims; singing sand dunes; a monkey asking to marry you; why do we mishear song lyrics? (explained); velociraptors and mating tortoises; Voyager 1 and the sounds of interstellar space.