2mo ago

Where does the music go?

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148 comments

I'm not a scientist by a long shot, but my understanding is that sound if indeed a wave, carried by a medium (air, water, etc). Upon hitting your eardrum, this wave is converted by your eardrum and your auditory nerve into signals your brain decodes. The remainder of the wave continues though, until it runs out of medium, hits an obstacle (basically another medium) or dissipates. Again, just my layman's understanding!
- Don’t forget the inverse square law. Even without a change in medium or any obstacles, the strength of the signal decrease over distance until it is undetectable.
  This is also why there are no extraterrestrial civilizations hearing any radio broadcasts from Earth. Our transmitters are so weak that any signals we send out fade into the CMB before they get any real distance.
  
  So Lrrr and Ndnd warching Single Female Lawyer 1000 years in the future is a lie?
  
  They would not have been able to watch it from an original OTA broadcast, no.
  
  Unless they have an extensive network of wormhole repeateds
  
  They've probably just got a spy satellite around earth that transmits back. Or maybe an extremely directional antenna / receiver dish would work, since they're focused on Earth specifically.
  
  You area conflating auditory waves with radio waves.
  These are very much not the same thing. Sound waves require a medium while radio waves do not.
  Radio waves travel vast distances through space while sound doesn't travel at all.
  
  Space is a medium, as exemplified by the fact that light curves around massive objects, because the space is curved.
  
  Space isn't a medium because mediums have privileged frames of reference.
  You're talking about spacetime which is a field, not a medium.
  
  So you’re saying that light can travel through not-space?
  
  Light is also not "stuff" - it's electromagnetic radiation. It's by the unprivileged intertial frame of reference that we define the speed of light. Light's speed is the speed at which it travels unimpeded through the spacetime "field". Additionally light does not accelerate or change speed in any way while traveling in that frame.
  Unless you're asking if light travels through things that are not the field known as the spacetime continuum in which case yes: light travels (and changes speed) through all sorts of materials. Like glass.
  
  Don't materials also need to exist in space?
  
  If they didn't fade with distance,
  So for now we are still quiet in the dark forest.
  
  If we had FTL I'd be a radio archaeologist, flying out to various distances to attempt to capture lost episodes of old TV shows like Doctor Who
- A little bit reflexts off your eardrumm too!
- False, it gets stuck in my head, to be played over and over until the next song gets stuck in my head.

148 comments