Interesting article

[Sasha_G]

About how sub 20 Hz bass can instill "religious feelings"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3087674.stm

[Lwang]

Then we must all feel like we should be going to heaven with this bass that has been bombarding us since kingdom come

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030909/sc_nm/space_bass_dc

[Sasha_G]

Yeah, that space bass is pretty deep, especially amazing considering there isn't any air in space!

Each wavelenth is 30,000 lightyears long.

According to my amatuer calculations:

Frequency (Hz) = speed of sound (ft/sec) / wavelenth (ft)

X Hz = 1130 ft/sec / 931154370570866040000 ft

the black hole bass is :

0.000000000000000000121 Hz

Deep.

[Lwang]

According to the article, it is 57 octaves below the middle-C (~256hz), which would be:

256 / (2^57) = 1.78e-15 or roughly
0.00000000000000178 hz

Maybe the pulsation is eminated through some ultra high temperature/dense matter, allowing the speed of sound to be much much faster than it is in air. It would be on the order of 1.65Mfps or 1.13 million MPH.

Sound travels through steel at roughly 11,000 MPH.

[Sasha_G]

Lwang,

I have no doubt that the article's numbers have some merit--maybe they were done by a physicist. Although it may not be sound as we know it. The article quotes: "To scientists... pressure ripples equate to sound waves."

Either way, does this mean that the lower frequency space bass evokes more religious/emotional feelings than the church's infrasonic bass, which doesn't go as low? ;) Just kidding.

The first article summarizes: "...in a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, UK scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will.

These included an extreme sense of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine."

The air shaking all around really effects the audience--its unlike the normal day to day sounds.

Its interesting, I've heard church Organists tend to play more infrasound notes than are actually written into the music to drive home these sensations.

[BradJudy]

Originally posted by Sasha_G
Yeah, that space bass is pretty deep, especially amazing considering there isn't any air in space!


If you read that article (and others on the phenomenon) you'll see that they are periodic compression waves in a gas - the definition of sound waves. No weird science going on there.