Astronomical Nift Here at Home

I ran across an article full of niftiness today while surfing at work. You know, instead of working...

From Live Science and Space.com, apparently not only are people emitting waves of noise out into deep space that might some day attract the attention of some far-flung alien being, but the Earth itself is blasting out radio waves approximately 10,000 times greater than anything we measly inhabitants can manage. The radio waves are created by "charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field." The sounds are not audible to Earthlings, even dogs, because they are blocked by Earth's ionosphere (the last layer of atmosphere around our planet).

Even more nift lies in the fact that any planet which produces an aurora also produces these sounds, so scientists can also add this to the arsenal of planet hunting techniques. Locally, it seems Jupiter and Saturn also produce these radio waves.

The Space.com link above has an audio clip of the sounds. Oddly, the link to listen says "Buy Now," but when you click the link it just plays, and no fee is required. The sound is eerie, but pretty cool.

Comments

[Zoe]

Hey there, so, this is kind of strange but I just stumbled upon your blog while doing a google search for UCF and astronomy. I felt the need to comment because your situation sounds so much like mine! I, too, was an English - Tech Writing major at UCF with a secret interest in science and astronomy. I ended up taking AST2002 as an elective and by the time that semester was over I realized that I had to switch my major to phyics (they have an astronomy "track" within the physics major). Like your profile said, I, too, had to do massive catching up with the math classes and all that. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi to a fellow UCF student who is going through the same weird "I'm a language person but I love science -- what?" issues!

[dalai_lala]

How cool! My husband would love it if I would switch to a science major, but for now I'm sticking with the astro minor. Who knows, if I enjoy the minor well enough I might be persuaded to continue... maybe... :)

 

 

[Zoe]

So you have an astronomy minor, or is it a physics minor? Either way, I hope you are able to be persuaded to the dark side, er, I mean, the science major side! It seems like we took physics I during the same semester -- who was your professor, if you don't mind me asking? I had Khondaker and he was good, although allowing us a formula sheet would have been nice.

[dalai_lala]

Mine's an astronomy minor. I actually took Physics I at Valencia because my husband is there, working on his AS, and we wanted to take Physics together, mainly because I knew I'd be depending on him as a study partner. My teacher there was Dr. Coyne, who is a strange hippie fella, but very funny and smart.

He allowed us a 3x5 index card for every test and then any size paper we wanted for the final. I should scan in my sheet. It's a bloody work of art!

[Zoe]

It's cool that you can study with your husband! Do you plan on using the astronomy minor in conjunction with the tech writing major -- like writing about science/astronomy?

Sorry to be here clogging up your comments, by the way. I'm just fascinated to meet someone else who is interested in studying astronomy (at UCF no less!) but comes from a "verbal skills" background.

[dalai_lala]

Oh, absolutely, me too! The math and science majors always find it strange to have a linguist in their midst...

I would love to write about science - I'm particularly interested in extrasolar planets and getting children interested in "space stuff". The more I get into tech writing, though, the more I realize that most science writers are actually journalists, rather than tech writers. So, I'll do my best and see where I end up. Right now I write user manuals and test guides for web applications. But I do really enjoy that, so even if astronomy remains a hobby, I could stand writing about computers for a long time to come.