Science Memes

10842 readers

2289 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1382

Jackhammer (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

110 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (3 children)

You wouldn't, of course. Hearing, the way we hear, in such an environment would be useless. We wouldn't have evolved that. This is like saying "ultraviolet radiation from the sun would be everywhere, all the time, can you imagine?" It is everywhere all the time, but as such it isn't a useful sense to possess, so we don't.

This also makes some very weird assumptions about what the sound would be like. If space were a medium sound could travel through then it would--like all mediums capable of carrying a sound wave--alter the wave in many ways. Intensity, frequency, etc. But since we don't know what kind of medium that would be, and since the comment doesn't posit any particular medium, we don't know what the sound would sound like or even how loud it would be.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

If the sound is more of a loud hiss, you might find that echolocation can work very well. Much like our eyes collect available light bouncing off surfaces, similar techniques can be used with sound.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

By your logic, light isn't a useful sense to possess since it's everywhere all the time thanks to sunlight and moonlight, is that correct?

Actually, since ultraviolet radiation and light are both electromagnetic waves, they should be treated the same, shouldn't they? It's as if there could be a different reason why we can detect one but not the other.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, and some animals (mostly birds iirc) do see UV. Boring brown/black birds aren't so boring in UV. I don't know the evolutionary pressure necessary for UV, but it could have developed. Red, for instance, is believed to have been useful for us to pick out berries. Wolves, being carnivorous, wouldn't necessarily need it, so see in yellow blue... or so I read as a theory a while ago.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Bees see UV too, it supposedly helps them navigating around flowers.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

I assume that this thought experiment posits a space filled with the same average density of particles found at ground level on Earth. Obviously such a thing is nonsensical, but it serves to illuminate one aspect of the raw power of the Sun that we ignore, because we're insulated from it by 93 million miles of vacuum.