I’m about to reveal the extent of my ignorance of physics, but I want to know the answer to this question. I searched, but all i got was to watch the little IE globe going around and around.
I was taught that sound can’t travel in a vacuum, but in virtually all sci fi movies and tv programs you get plenty of sound effects. Is this because movies would be pretty boring without them? (They would) Or am I mistaken, sound can travel in a vacuum. If a hydrogen bomb went off 10ft away, would I hear it before I became part of it? On a smaller scale, if a car honked it’s horn 10ft. away would I hear it?
Please be gentle to these old, tired, drug addled synapses.
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Your first instinct was correct - they do it because it’s really boring to see a ship whiz past the stars with no sound. It helps us suspend disbelief to hear the sound of the ship going by.
However, there might actually be “sound” in space, because the vacuum is not absolute. There are all sorts of atoms floating around, mostly hydrogen. So it’s possible that a solid object moving through space could set up a wake, perhaps even a measurable one. And if that object is moving at relativistic speeds, it would probably set up one hell of a wake.
JoltSucker is right, the sound effect is there just for the, um, effect.
I suppose you could argue that the spaceship engines emit plenty of electromagnetic waves which your spacesuit radio or even a piece of metal (teeth fillings? ) picks up a a roar. I heard similar explanation is used for why people sometimes hear meteors as they fly; it can’t be ordinary sound waves because that would take minutes to reach the ground. Anybody know what the current theory is on that?
By the way, 2001: A Space Odyssey had spaceships gliding by in total silence, except for the tune of Strauss or Legati. Where appropriate, the had the internal noise of the spacesuit (mostly breathing). That’s as realistic as it gets.
I’d assume that when inside the ship, you could hear the vibration of its own engines.
Incidentally, there aren’t any shockwaves in space to buffet your spaceship when something blows up, either. If an H-bomb went off nearby, you’d be vaporized by the radiant heat or suffer a fatal dose of radiation, but the ship wouldn’t shake at all.
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WallyM7, don’t you think it’s possible to set up a wake from a massive object moving at high speed through the interstellar gasses? I agree, it would be too faint and too low frequency to hear it (presuming you tried to listen in with a microphone, since exposing your ear to space would be painfully fatal). But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a massive object in motion through space (say, the Earth in its orbit) created a wake.
Jolt: There would be a wake but it would not create sound as we know it. To get sound you have to have a back-and-forth motion of molecules. What you’d get would be more of like the sound of rain as dust particles bounced of one ship and hit your ship/suit/whatever. The difference between that and earthly sound is that the sound you’d hear would only depend on the speed of the passing ship. You wouldn’t hear it if it was sitting still even if the ship seemed very noisy to people inside of it.
Aha, shame on you for teaching sci-fi as always accurate. If the Enterprise was hit by a torpedo and that torpedo exploded, or however the torpedos work, the torpedo would act as a force on the ship making it accelerate and cause jostling.
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I always explained space sounds as tiny particle being flung out from whatever it was, and hitting the ship that the camera is supposed to be in.
It’s kind of a moot question in a lot of cases, since the people hearing the sound are the audience, which doesn’t really have a location in the story line. I mean, if you see a Zygort Death Cruiser from 300 meters away, and you hear its engines, is that unrealistic? Why, because you’re outside the spaceship? No, you’re in a movie theater. Your point of view is outside the Death Cruiser; why can’t your point of hearing be in its engine room? Have you ever seen a movie where there is a long shot, say 50 meters, of a the two people walking through the market place full of people? Who do you hear speaking? The extras in the foreground? No, you hear the unraised voices of the two main characters, because your point of view and your point of hearing aren’t at the same place. The director wants you to see the main characters in a large context (a bustling market) while still hearing them.
Sometimes your POV and POH are obviously together, on the bridge of the Federal Peace Cruiser with Joe and Bruce. When Joe and Bruce eliminate the Zygort vessel with their trusty American Standard Endoplasmic Diastolic Pulse weapons, they hear the enemy explode. Not very realistic, maybe, but then who’s to say American Standard Endoplasmic Diastolic Pulses don’t cause the matter in the target object to spray out in all directions at 0.9 c? Teensy bits of (solid? gaseous? plasma?) Zygort matter hit their ship, which is too manly and tough to do much other than send vibrations through the internal atmosphere to signal victory Joe and Bruce, who high-five and have a beer.
And furthermore (what Boris, your last post wasn’t long enough?!) how do you see the ship anyway? Isn’t it pretty dark in space? Might convenient of the Enterprise to have lights illuminating itself, but there’s no reason for that other than for the audience. I suppose the ship could be flying by a star or a flashlight somebody left on, but it isn’t always portrayed correctly, i.e. with half of the ship completely bathed in shadow…
So you mean that when the Enterprise-D was destroyed over Veridian III after saucer seperation, the exploding warp core and the resulting shockwave didn’t really knock the saucer into the atmosphere of the planet, as we saw?
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To understand why, you must first understand what sound is. Sound is just the air moving in waves, at differatn frequencies cauding our eardrum to move according to those pressure waves, and send those signals to the hammer, stirrup, etc… Anyways, without air, there is no sound.
Now, someone else said earlier that there is still some matter in space. THis is true, but however, not the right matter! The only way we recognize sound is because of the way we evolved. If the matter in space were to vibrate as much as it wants, we still wouldn’t here it, because we evolved to THIS air space. Oxygen, hydrogen, and what ever else. THat is why
There is no medium to transmit a shockwave, true. But the bomb parts (the casing, elecronics, most of the fissile material, the rocket which delivered it etc.) will be heated to plasma and ejected outwards at a hell of a speed. If you were close enough (a few hundred metres) the impact of a few grams of bomb debris at 10000 km/s might very well make your ship shake! Chances are you would also be fried by the heat and radiation, but if you have shields…
I believe the Enterprise D masses a few thousand tonnes, and a warp core failure is essentially a HUGE antimatter bomb. You might well get enough fast-moving debris to knock the saucer section out of orbit. Not that Star Trek scriptwriters care anyway!
“sir, our sensors indicate the object is made from justmadeitupium, which can only be penetrated by dontexistyons. However, if we modify the main deflector grid…”
The reason you hear spaceships zoom by in movies is that the microphone is mounted to its hull.
See the movie Moon Trap starring Walter Koenig of Star Trek fame. During battles on the Moon’s surface, no explosion sound effects were added. Realistic, but rather bland to watch.
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) picks up a a roar. I heard similar explanation is used for why people sometimes hear meteors as they fly; it can’t be ordinary sound waves because that would take minutes to reach the ground. Anybody know what the current theory is on that?