NASA releases first sounds ever captured on Mars
On Friday, NASA's InSight Mars lander captured and transmitted historic audio from the red planet.
- The audio captured by the lander is of Martian winds blowing at an estimated 10 to 15 mph.
- It was taken by the InSight Mars lander, which is designed to help scientists learn more about the formation of rocky planets, and possibly discover liquid water on Mars.
- Microphones are essentially an "extra sense" that scientists can use during experiments on other planets.
We can assess the health of coral reefs by the sounds algae make
Tiny bubbles talk photosynthesis.
- During photosynthesis, algae produces a symphony of little "pings."
- The sounds are produced by oxygen bubbles breaking away from the plants.
- Monitoring reef health through its sound is a new avenue for acoustic ecology.
Musical training improves vision, researchers say
Over 67,000 trials by the Color Guard can't be wrong.
- Drummers and brass players have stronger visual timing sensitivity than flag spinners in the Color Guard.
- The three groups took part in over 67,000 temporal order judgment (TOJ) trials.
- The finding, while counterintuitive, fits into the complex nature of sensory perception.
An unexplained seismic event ‘rang’ across the Earth in November
It has experts baffled.
- On November 11, seismologists began puzzling over a weird low-frequency rumble that rang the entire planet.
- The wave coming from somewhere was weirdly simple and tied to no known events.
- More comprehensive study of an uncharted area of the ocean floor could provide an explanation of the mystery.
How Sound and Smell Cues Can Enhance Learning While You Sleep
Neuroscientists are now starting to put TMR to work.
My mother is one of five children, so she has plenty of stories about her and her siblings’ misadventures. One of my favourites revolves around my ‘weird’ Uncle Dorsey and his early scientific endeavours. When my mom was about eight years old, her older brother slipped a tape player under her bed every night to quietly play a reading of the poem ‘The Raven’ (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe. Night after night, he would play the tape, trying to test whether she would spontaneously recite the poem from all her exposure. The way she tells it, she woke up every time the recording started to play. Sure, she can still recite the first few lines, but only because she was awakened by the poem night after night.
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