Saturday, December 03, 2005

Sing on ice




An iceberg can cause a lot of trouble (remember the Titanic?) but did you know it could also sing. Researchers in the Antarctic found that an iceberg emits sound waves that are too low to be heard by the human ear but when the sounds are recorded and played back at higher speeds it sounds like .a swarm of bees or an orchestra warming up. The study, by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, will be published in Science. The study dates back to 2002 when scientists were recording seismic signals and tectonic movements on an ice shelf in Antarctic. Tracking acoustic signals of immense clarity they found that there had been a collision between an iceberg and an underwater peninsula. The sounds were the result of water pushing its way through the crevices and tunnels in the iceberg. .The tune even goes up and down, just like a real song.

3 comments:

Arvind said...

Interesting Blog!

6 - F A C E said...

interesting info.....

Blenster said...

Vibration frequencies (such as sound) are extremely prevalent in nature. I feel that we, as a species, have been kind of slow to quantitatively explore this aspect of nature and our universe. Hopefully by 2050 we'll have a better handle on this.