Timeline for What would sounds on Mars be like?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
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| Oct 8, 2019 at 22:40 | comment | added | Chris B. Behrens | Coming to all of this a year later...bottom line - we expect the volume to be greatly attenuated, and the frequency to be shifted downward by about 20%? Basso profundo whispers? | |
| Dec 19, 2018 at 1:00 | comment | added | uhoh | @EverydayAstronaut you are right and I was wrong. Thanks to TomSpilker for pointing it out and reminding me that while a change of density of a fixed composition doesn't matter much, a change in density due to a change in composition (N2/O2 → CO2) does make a significant difference. | |
| Dec 19, 2018 at 0:58 | comment | added | uhoh | @TomSpilker yes you are right and I was wrong. Speed of sound reflects average thermal velocity, so yes the speed of sound scales as $\frac{1}{\sqrt{m_{mol}}}$. CO2 is not nitrogen. 40 vs 28 so it's a 20% difference. Thank you for pointing that out! | |
| Dec 18, 2018 at 21:53 | comment | added | Tom Spilker | I think you guys are mixing two different measures of "density": number density, the number of molecules per unit volume; and mass density, the mass per unit volume. Sound speed does not depend greatly on number density, but indeed does depend on mass density (and thus on the average molecular mass). It also depends on the gas's specific heat ratio, which is different for molecules of different numbers of atoms. The wikipedia article on the speed of sound covers this in detail. | |
| Aug 1, 2018 at 9:02 | comment | added | uhoh | @derwodamaso post an answer, show your source. You'll find my statements are accurate once you research it though. | |
| Aug 1, 2018 at 8:23 | comment | added | Everyday Astronaut |
the speed of sound in a gas changes very little with density afaik, it does well depend on density, and additionally on temperature and pressure. Since all of them are lower on Mars, speed of sound is definitely lower too.
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| Aug 1, 2018 at 1:21 | comment | added | uhoh | @Fred the speed of sound in a gas changes very little with density. It's primarily a function of the average speed of molecules, and therefore scales with the square root of temperature. It will be about 4% slower in the triatomic gas CO2 than a diatomic gas like nitrogen. So the speed of sound will be slower on Mars than Earth but that won't change the recorded qualities of sound other than a slightly longer delay (subtle effects if multi-path?). I don't see how the Doppler effect applies at all. Feel free to add a new answer! | |
| Jul 31, 2018 at 15:27 | history | edited | uhoh | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 18 characters in body
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| Jul 31, 2018 at 15:09 | history | answered | uhoh | CC BY-SA 4.0 |