sound in space

[Airbrush]

We begin with the assumption that a human could survive whatever hellish environment in which they are listening, such as on the surface of the sun or near a black hole, what would such a superhuman entity be able to hear?

[hoola]

ok then, suppose you drop a wireless microphone, properly set up, that orbits a merging black hole pair ......the diaphram would shake  moreso than the body of the mic, having a relatively much smaller mass, sound would be relayed to the safely positioned listener, the chirp would be recorded or heard in real time. Perhaps a strain guage would be better suited as to modulate the signal. As massless photons generate the signal in the massive ligo experiment, doesn't the difference between the masses of the apparatus vs. the photon beam actually allow the event to be discerned? If the gw signal cannot be detected by anything other than a massless active component, then I guess the idea of sound in space is impossible.

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Edited September 10, 2017 by hoola

[Strange]

7 hours ago, hoola said:

If the gw signal cannot be detected by anything other than a massless active component, then I guess the idea of sound in space is impossible.

If the gravitational wave were large enough, it could in principle be detected by a strain gauge (or, more likely, a pair of strain gauges).

But even if you could detect it with your ears or a microphone, it is not "sound" in the usual sense of the word. 

[hoola]

then what is this chirp I have been hearing about?

[Strange]

It is the gravitational waves converted to sound. (The key word there is "converted".)

Maybe you need to define what you mean by "sound". (If you mean any signal that can be made audible by suitable equipment, then that includes light, ocean currents, the motion of planets, ... )

[mistermack]

If sound is the transfer of energy physically from particle to particle, across a distance, then I suppose it can travel in space.

Sound in a solid is fairly simple, as the bonds between particles are fairly fixed. Sound in a gas would be more complicated, depending on the concentration of the gas. If you think of space as a gas, the concentration is so low, that the particles would not have a bond with the next particle, at the instant that the sound arrived. It's motion would be affected, and that could eventually affect another particle, so some sort of transfer of energy could occur as a wave, over a long period. But I doubt if you could call that sound. 

Maybe it would be wrong to call it sound, when the gas is so dispersed that each particle does not have at least one physical link to another, at all times.

All just my musing speculation, as usual.