Can you hear an explosion in space

Can humans hear in space? How Voyager 1 recorded noises when there's no sound in interstellar space via NBC News "Beyond the border of interstellar space, the distant Voyager 1 spacecraft called back to Earth earlier this year with noises from its new environment. Can you hear sound in space? In empty space, there is no air, and what we call 'sound' is actually vibrations in the air.

Chris Hadfield shares the everyday sounds of space on SoundCloud via Wired. New videos twice daily. Asked 3 years, 6 months ago. Active 3 years, 6 months ago. Viewed times.

Improve this question. Sydney Sleeper Sydney Sleeper 1 1 bronze badge. You could probably hear the sound wave, generated by the collision of your body with the debris. In this case the medium would be your own body. It is the same effect as when you hear your joints cracking as if it is in your head.

But it would not be the sound coming from the explosion. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Great point PaulD. For example, on page [Vader's] interceptor streaked toward the gun bubble, aimed directly at it. And it covers the guns, too, if they work on magnetohydrodynamic principles. And the big explosions, the ones that tear spacestaions or planets apart, would generate a lot of electromagnetic noise, so you might be able to justify it that way. Also bothersome to me are the 2D ring shockwaves.

I think its somewhat in imitation of the shocks we see in pictures of explosions from the Vietnam war. But that is the effect of an interaction of a shockwave and the surface mach stem , and would not hapen in space. But, Omega, they look so cool! I'm with Omega Centauri. Yeah they do look cool.. In space they just make no sense at all. JustJeff: You might want to turn on your sarcasm detector.

But you can't watch that kind of show without turning your suspension of disbelief up to eleven anyway. In fact, I can't watch the alleged prequels at all.

Meesa think chuckems all and try again! KeithS KeithS I read a book about George Lucas years ago, sadly, so I don't remember exactly what book it was that said Lucas considered to be the greatest "space movie" ever, and that he consciously decided that an action movie like Star Wars should let viewers hear sounds in space, despite the science. Like if it helps you sleep at night and whatnot. Valorum Valorum k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. A downvote? Why hast thou forsaken me?

The tweet no longer exists. Without context I can only guess, but this sounds somewhat non-canon to me. Like he's saying "you can think this to yourself if it makes you feel better"; but not that it's an actual canon explanation.

JMac - There are other mentions of 'ether' in other Star Wars fiction. This was, however, the most clear and unambiguous reference. David David 3 3 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. And you're vapourised in the firey wave of death I think that JMS also said that one could consider the sounds as being from the point of view of the people on the ships that were exploding, or the ships firing weapons. He also said that viewers were free to consider these sounds as part of the score.

I think this was from usenet, quoted on the Lurker's Guide site somewhere? In so far as what people think of when they think "sound", JMS is wrong. An explosion might propagate gas so it collides with another ship, "sound" would be so attenuated as to not be audible to humans. A distant nuclear explosion might "ring" or "bang" a ship but that's the concussion of vaporized materials from the ship you are on. I imagine it would feel like a submarine's close call with a depth charge. There's not a very big difference in distance between total destruction and getting your "bell rung".

I was under the impression that, on some scenes, it was done properly. Stephen Eilert Stephen Eilert 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. The shockwaves don't reach the ship though, otherwise it would have blown up. The shock wave would propagate through air, not in a vacuum in a vacuum, if you get hit, it's not by a shock wave sound , it's by shrapnel. That was the whole point of the question. This is the right answer.

The effect is exaggerated, of course, just as the effects of firearms and explosives are exaggerated in atmosphere in every movie I have ever seen. Explosions are caused by part of a solid or other materials being turned into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas. There might also be a second effect, without intervening atmosphere, other than the minimal gases from the explosions, the radiant energy of lasers or exceptionally bright explosions like nuclear might create sound within ships by causing their hulls to expand rapidly, even if only to minimal extent.

She explained that when you hear a sound, somewhere around you an object was moving, or vibrating. The molecules that make up water or air sort of bump into each other as they vibrate. They pass on their motion to neighboring molecules. For example, some scientists have used different machines to pick up sound waves from gas clouds beyond our atmosphere.

Sound that travels through air moves about 1, feet in a second. Underwater, sound moves about four times faster. The sounds travel a lot farther and reach their destination faster than high frequency sounds.