But regarding energy forms that are converted in audible sounds, I prefer not to refer to those things as “sounds” simply because it can cause some to misinterpret what that means and think that indeed there are audible sounds to be heard in many circumstances where there really are not. If you change some varying electromagnetic field into an auditory sound, you certainly hear something, but what you are hearing is just a representation of the original, but of course not the original itself. So in that instance — say the “sound” of some electromagnetic field in space — the original thing is certainly not a sound in normal terms.

However, by any reasonable definition there are sounds — that would be audible to human ears if the other environmental circumstances allowed — in and on other planets, stars and their atmospheres, and even dense gas clouds in space.

By the way, many years ago I had a 33 rpm record of the “music” of Earth’s geomagnetic field. Someone had taken seismograph or some other instrument’s data and converted it into audible sounds, and indeed it did almost have a weird musical ring to it!

Larry S.

Actually, there are many “sounds” in space, if by “sound” you mean acoustic energy (which is what causes the sensation of sound in the ear). Unlike light and other forms of electromagnetic energy, sound cannot travel through empty space. However, there are many examples of acoustic energy in gas clouds out in space. Most of what I have heard about is lower in frequency, but no doubt higher pitched waves are common. By the way, there are acoustic waves in the atmospheres of stars like the Sun, and the study of such acoustic waves helps us probe the interior of the Sun much like earthquake waves help seismologists study the interior of the Earth. (Of couse, we cannot actually hear these waves, but we can see their results in various features on the Sun.)

LS