Science Diary: Volcano - Pele: The Pulse of the Planet daily radio program offers free legal online mp3 downloads, exploring the world of sound in nature, culture and science, with audio adventures, world music, extraordinary sound portraits, science diaries, and nature ring-tones; an amazing sonic experience.



Airdate: Jul 15, 2008
Scientist: Milton Garces, Ph.D.

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 EARTH SCIENCE ,Volcanoes ,Acoustics ,sound


Science Diary: Volcano - Pele

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Like a giant wind instrument, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is producing a continuous low-frequency melody.
Transcript:

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The lowest frequency sound that we humans can detect is about 20 cycles a second, and thats not nearly low enough to hear the deepest sounds produced by a volcano. Welcome to Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Milton Garces is director of the University of Hawaiis Infrasound Laboratory. He uses infrasonic microphone arrays, which are like a set of giant hearing aids, to enable us to eavesdrop on a volcanos ultra-low frequency sounds.

ambience: Peles chant

A March 2008 explosion exposed a new vent within Hawaiis Kilauea volcano. As gasses ascend from deep within Kilauea, this vent acts like a kind of wind instrument and produces a low-frequency resonance, which has been referred to as Peles Chant. We speed up the recordings of these low frequency sounds 100 times to place them within the range of human hearing.

We had a substantial explosion. We picked up this explosion really loud and clear. And that is producing a very unique, very loud infrasonic signal that were going to be studying in great detail over the next few months.

Certain animals, such as elephants, are thought to communicate with very low frequency calls. Infrasonic signals are also produced by meteor activity and nuclear weapons testing, but these are likely to be unpredictable and brief. Peles Chant, however, is unique in that its continuous, providing scientists the opportunity to better understand the capabilities and limitations of infrasonic monitoring.

You can check out Milton Garces blog, on pulseplanet.com.

Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. Im Jim Metzner.







 
Science Diary: Volcano - Pele