Showing posts with label Singing Comet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Singing Comet. Show all posts
Friday, November 14, 2014
Mysterious Radio Signals Coming from Rosetta Comet | VIDEO
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a tape of mysterious radio signals coming from the “Rosetta comet” . . ..
The ESA has dubbed 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as the “singing comet.” The Agency's blog quotes Karl-Heinz, from Rosetta Plasma Consortium, as saying, “This is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening.”
The explanation they are currently giving has to do with geophysics of the object. The blog says the discovery “has taken the RPC scientists somewhat by surprise. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased by a factor of about 10,000.”
It continues, “The music was heard clearly by the magnetometer experiment (RPC-Mag) for the first time in August, when Rosetta drew to within 100 km of 67P/C-G. The scientists think it must be produced in some way by the activity of the comet, as it releases neutral particles into space where they become electrically charged due to a process called ionization. . . .
