Possible to "listen" to history?

[Spyguy149]

I was thinking today about sound and how it is a form of energy. Since the law of conservation of energy

States that energy is neither created nor destroyed sound waves should always exist right? Just in different forms or lower frequencies.

So in theory isn't it possible that every sound ever made is still bouncing around our atmosphere?

And could we potentially "reconstruct" these waves to their original functions?

Essentially listening to pre-digital history?

[G.H]

sound waves are not energy themselves but they carry energy from one point to another.when someone speaks,his vocal cords start vibrating.This causes the air particles near it to vibrate.Air particles keep hitting each other and moving back and forth.The continuous motion of those air particles is what we call "sound wave".moving air particles have kinetic energy in them or you can say sound waves have kinetic energy in them.sound waves lose this kinetic energy in the form of heat as the air particles collide and gradually all the energy is dissipated there is no sound wave left.

[md65536]

And could we potentially "reconstruct" these waves to their original functions?

I think another way to say what G.H said is that essentially those sound waves would quickly be lost in the relatively overwhelming "noise" of particle movement.

 

Another idea is if the sound waves are encoded into something more permanent. For example, there is the idea that sound waves might be "recorded" into clay... If you drag a brush over wet clay, the brush may vibrate from sound and act like a needle does when recording a vinyl record. A few years ago someone tried to extract sound out of the brush strokes on old clay pots, hoping that they'd be able to hear the potters chatting. What a mind-blowing possibility! Unfortunately they didn't get any signal. (I assume even if it could work, the brush itself would be noisy enough to drown out any additional vibrations it picks up.)

 

There might be some other way in which sound waves were naturally recorded?

Edited June 11, 2012 by md65536