A recent visit to my favorite forest preserve
(McKee Marsh in Warrenville, IL, site of the Great Lakes region’s oldest woolly mammoth find) had me listening to a cacaphony of birdsong, bullfrogs, ducks (no echoes) and jet airplane noise.
This set me to thinking; who, at any given time, is making more noise - Man or Mother Nature? That is, who has the greatest volume if air molecules in motion? (not counting, of course, the sound of moving air molecules as wind).
On this hand we have automobile traffic, the aformentioned airplane noise, old hippies blasting Surrealistic Pillow and thousands of Chinese jumping off chairs and screaming at the tops of their lungs.
Momma N. has ceaseless thunderstorms, rustling foliage, dull roars of mosquitos and other insect buddies and waves crashing on beaches going for her.
I realize this will generate some wild-assed guesses, but is anyone into chaos theory or are any computer models applicable to this question?
I think this makes the old question about a tree falling in the forest relevant. There’s probably a lot of noise on Jupiter. But no one can hear it. So does it count?
If it does, mankind loses hands down. It’s a big universe out there. But if it doesn’t count, you have to think why not? If “sounds” on Jupiter don’t count, do sounds on Antarctica, in the Earth’s core, or in a deserted house count?
So I think a more valid way to phrase the question would be:
“Of all sounds being heard by all human ears at any given moment in time, what percent are sounds made by people?”
In that case, I think mankind wins. We hear our own breathing all the time. And when we talk, move around, etc., we make noise. Go through a normal day and note how often we hear non-manmade sounds. Not a majority by a long shot. Even if I spent all day hiking in the woods, I’d hear my own breathing, walking, and whistling almost as much as or more than the nature around me.
[q]This set me to thinking; who, at any given time, is making more noise - Man or Mother Nature? That is, who has the greatest volume if air molecules in motion? (not counting, of course, the sound of moving air molecules as wind).[/q]
-Nickrz
Not counting the sound of what moving air?
I believe you should include the sound of moving air at 100 mph or more.
Gee, Nickrz, how about narrowing the question down to something can be answered. Take the question at face value, quadell did answer it:
"I think this makes the old question about a tree falling in the forest relevant. There’s probably a lot of noise on Jupiter. But no one can hear it. So does it count?
“If it does, mankind loses hands down. It’s a big universe out there. But if it doesn’t count, you have to think why not? If “sounds” on Jupiter don’t count, do sounds on Antarctica, in the Earth’s core, or in a deserted house count?”
I agree with him on this. It’s a big universe, and there are plenty of sounds out there. Our measley whimper doesn’t come anywhere close.
Sorry, Nick, I’ll go with Quadell’s answer. Put another way, the noise in available locations (middle of the Pacific, Antarctica, etc…) have little if any man-made sound, but lotsa Mother Nature’s rumblings. So do elk in the woods, etc…etc… That would figure in your basic [?] partial diff. equation.
Now figure that most man-made sounds in the city, say at 42nd & Lexington, are brief, while the sound of the wind, rain, etc… is pretty constant.
Then again, if rain falls on a car roof, is that man-made or natural ?
Appreciate your search for a more mathematical answer, so we’ll just wait for {Dr. Fidelius ?] - but I don’t see it other than Mom N. by a length.
“Proverbs for Paranoids, 1: You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.”
Volcanos and earthquakes aside, I place my money on man being the greatest contributer of noise polution. The reason you can hear the leaves rustling and frogs croaking down by the stream is beacause it IS so quiet. One can hear a non echoing duck quack from across a large lake, I doubt saidsame quack could be heard 100 yds away in crosstown traffic.
Oh lordy. I purposely said “air molecules in motion” to avoid the old tree-inna-forest routine. I was more interested in what man does not hear than what he does.
I’ll just go with my gut and imagine man’s noise is but a drop in the bucket.
IMHO: Even where there is the droning noise of humanity there still exists within and beside it the continuing sound of “nature”.
There are so many minute sounds in nature that we aren’t conscious of…the corn growing, say, that while we may drown them out with our sometimes tedious, always constant fussing - in the big picture we are just a fraction of the overall buzz.
The more you know, the less you understand - Tao Te Ching
EvilGhandi, there is a difference between sound in general and “noise pollution”.
Is there? Electric guitar vs. electric guitar at 6am? Or does all human sound qualify as noise pollution? Any Bee Gees tune seems to qualify. What about those screaming white Austrailian birds? Cockatoos I believe? Those things are a nightmare.
Anyway my answer was a short version, I felt it was obvious who the greater noise makers were. Interpreting Nickrz question to be the environment, (the surface of the earth) not the entire universe. Populated areas are by far louder than unpopulated ones and like it or not, populated areas are outnumbering the untamed wilds. Remote areas like Antartica and the mid-Atlantic I factored out as neither man nor beast was making any noise and Nickrz eliminated wind. So we are left with the land masses. Using a “looks like it to me” method of estimating the number of gas powered machines in the world, factoring in all the Chinese jumping off their chairs and my sisters screaming brats. I then compared it to the roar of the untold gadzzillion buzzing flies and stomping ants. My never humble opinion was “No contest, Humans one, Nature zippo” That leaves us those damn screaming white birds, and I will stack my sisters kids against those anyday.