Probably bad for your hearing too

For reference, the loudest sound ever on earth was 180dB https://wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa

703 points · 109 comments · view on lemmy.world

109 Comments

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 151 pts · 348d (21 replies)

For reference, the theoretical maximum of sound with air as medium is 196db.

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 51 pts · 348d (16 replies)

at what dB does the air ignite from the vibration of molecules

edit: okay so air does not ignite, but allows other things to ignite, but methane is one of those things in air so I reformulate the question as such:

what pressure of air is needed to produce sufficient heat to ignite any methane trapped within it, and what dB level is needed to form such compression even if for mere nanoseconds?

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 15 pts · 348d (12 replies)

Apparantly depends on the medium and the type of wave being measured in dB.

At that point it can’t be sound waves, but potentially shockwaves could start to heat the air up.

Eventually with high enough temperature you can get air to become plasma, any matter in the air might burn but the air itself will not.

-not a scientist

hddsx@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 348d (6 replies)

I mean sounds is just differently compressed medium, usually air. Why are shock waves not sound waves?

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 348d (2 replies)

Don't ask me, i am left with the exact same question myself. Which is why i felt the need to add the not a scientist disclaimer.

Though i did some research just now and its because the waves exhibit different very different properties

It might be a chicken and egg thing. Does it have different properties because it is fundamentally different, Or did we call it different because different properties emerged under different conditions (like having more energy)

hddsx@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Okay if you are talking about sound waves, they’re not really waves in the traditional sense. They are waves because it tracks the compactness/vibrations.

The reason why sound transfers faster in solids is because the atoms are more rigid due to, you know, being a solid.

If you pump enough energy into it, won’t you start doing funny things?

Ie: if you put enough energy into a rigid material there’s a point where it stops being able to take the force and breaks

I’m also not a scientist and also am the wrong type of engineer too so…

I’d imagine if you compact things faster than the energy can leave the immediate area, you’d run into funny phenomenons with the temperature/pressure/state of matter histogram.

Which brings me to my question of what is a shock wave if not a sound wave?

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 348d

Speaking from how i intuitively feel about the science..

It looks like waves can exists on a spectrum from low energy to high energy and the more energy you add the more there is potential for complex reactions, the more new properties emerge and thus the more potential damage there can be done to given matter.

dB can be seen as the measurement of vibration that is usually used for the range of waves we call sound waves but i see no reason why it cant work outside the scope.

So technically feel the waves are really the same, but then compare that to the electromagnetic spectrum and we label some ranges as colors.

If red is the color that makes us angry. And green makes us calm. Then the question we are asking is: What shade of green do we need to make us angry?

Because were getting hung up on the fact there both measurements of photonic light, so essentially the same?

Is that a fair comparison? Can someone get a real scientist in the room please?

JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 348d (2 replies)

So speed of sound is the speed of compression. When you get past the speed of sound (or the speed that the material propagates) it becomes more like solid I think.

  • my understanding from wikipedia
hddsx@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Isn’t that the temperature/pressure/state of matter histogram thing?

JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 347d

Yeah, it's called a phase change diagram

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 348d (4 replies)

Im just gonna throw a number out there and use the wisdom of crowds via up/downvotes to estimate its validity

350db

Klear@quokk.au · 6 pts · 348d

Three fiddy?

Grimy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 348d

2 upvotes vs 2 downvotes. This isn't working, I still don't know who is right.

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 348d

410db

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 348d

285db

javasux@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 348d (2 replies)
jballs@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 348d

Well damn, that was interesting.

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 347d

Wow. I did not know that Munch's The Scream painting coincided with the Krakatoa volcano explosion of 1883 which visibly messed up the sky for a decade

I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 348d

While sound can't travel through a vacuum, the vibrations of the sun create a "sound" energy equivalent of 290dB.

ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 347d
[ removed ]
mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 348d (1 reply)

What happens to pressure waves above that? The air liquifies or plasmafies?

RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com · 1 pts · 347d

Evil Tim is summoned.

rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works · 128 pts · 348d (17 replies)

The decibel scale is logarithmic, meaning that a 20,000 dB sound would carry an unimaginable amount of energy.

A hypothetical 20,000 dB sound would have an overpressure of approximately 5 x 10^499 atmospheres, enough energy to obliterate the Earth instantly.

kalistia@sh.itjust.works · 58 pts · 347d (4 replies)

And definitely scare off the tigers

rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works · 30 pts · 347d (2 replies)

Oh yeah, those tigers would not be hanging around

InFerNo@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 347d (1 reply)

But would they, technically speaking, be scared?

autriyo@feddit.org · 9 pts · 347d

Maybe? How fast does being scared process? Because if they die faster, then they won't be scared.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 347d

Tigers love pepper, they hate cinnamon.

bomberesque@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 348d (1 reply)

I just fucking KNEW that some nerd would turn up and explain that to me.

Ta.

OrteilGenou@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 347d

Nerds are cool and also literal antichrists. What an era!

applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 347d (1 reply)

Just to put this insane pressure scale into context, the core of a neutron star is estimated to have a pressure of 1.6 x 10^34 pascals.

Hoimo@ani.social · 6 pts · 347d

1 atmosphere is 100 kPa, so you'll have to take 5 zeroes off, but when the magnitudes aren't even in the same magnitude, it doesn't really matter.

OrteilGenou@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 347d (1 reply)

Oh yeah? Then why didn't it destroy Gotham City? Checkmate.

BodilessGaze@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 347d

Same reason Batman survives injuries that would be fatal to a normal person and why the thugs he beats up never die: the DC universe is just built different.

Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 347d (4 replies)

You won't hear it coming

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 347d (3 replies)

Amazingly, given the relatively slow speed of sound, you might actually see it coming. For a moment or two at least, before you're vaporized or whatever.

General_Effort@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d (2 replies)

Hmm. It wouldn't stay sound for long. The molecules would be banging together so hard that you'd get all sorts of interesting nuclear reactions. I'm not guessing how that turns out. But, for sure, you'd get a lot of EM radiation coming at you at the speed of light.

ETA: Come to think of it. You'd also get unknown gravitational phenomena, also travelling at the speed of light. Presumably. The data would be invaluable for unifying relativity and quantum physics. Definitely dead before you know, though.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 347d (1 reply)

Yeah, I was just thinking of like an extremely powerful soundwave, but I guess I just can't really imagine what a blast of that magnitude would look/behave like.

General_Effort@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d

No worries. No one can. Everything we can observe is perfectly explained either by relativity or quantum physics, but never both. They are incompatible theories, which are applied in different conditions. In such extreme conditions, both would apply. IE, we don't have a theory for it.

Since we cannot create anything remotely close to such conditions, like a black hole, we do not have the data to create such a theory. Just like AI, we are limited by our training data.

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 5 pts · 347d

Prove it.

lime@feddit.nu · 103 pts · 348d (22 replies)

20000 decibel, or 2 kilobel

yes, deci- is the si prefix for ^1^/10. the actual unit is the bel.

i am saddled with this cursed knowledge so now you must be too.

glimse@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 348d (11 replies)

Are you a fellow PAG/NAG calculator, too?

More cursed knowledge (for them, probably not you): it's logarithmic so every 3dB increase is double the energy!

toynbee@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 348d (5 replies)

When I was in my first year of college - 26 years ago - I asked a question about logarithms and was thoroughly, angrily (and, looking back on the event, probably justifiably) reamed out by another student about it.

I don't think I publicly spoke up for the rest of that class.

edit: Remove extra words.

glimse@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 348d (4 replies)

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it probably wasn't justified to respond to a math question like that lol

toynbee@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 348d (2 replies)

I think it was an overreaction in terms of its delivery, but I was homeschooled and started college early. I was the stereotypical socially inept homeschooler. The class was introduction to college algebra, which doesn't usually cover logarithms AFAIK; I brought them up unprompted during a quiet moment when the teacher was cleaning the whiteboard. I was curious about them because I had been reading my older brother's textbooks and found them interesting.

The other student's complaint about me was that I monopolized the teacher's attention by sitting front and center and raising my hand for every question. Additionally she felt that I was trying to show off. At that point I was also very visibly younger than everyone else, which did occasionally annoy people. (This became less of an issue when I hit puberty and started growing a beard.)

But I was oblivious to those kinds of things at the time and didn't realize I was having any kind of impact on anyone else in the class until the other student chastised me. Perhaps it was an overreaction, but the message was one I needed to hear, I think.

Also, to their credit, that student did apologize to me, more calmly expressing the nature of their grievances; I apologized in turn and said that I would try to be less disruptive.

glimse@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Fair enough. I had some pretty annoying kids in my classes but I never thought to rip them apart in front of everyone!

toynbee@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 348d

Your attitude is appreciated! That's the only time it ever happened to me, so either that lady was an outlier or I got better.

BetaBlake@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 348d

Funny thing about that, they weren't even in a math class, it was a gender studies class.

lime@feddit.nu · 2 pts · 348d

no i just like units. which is why i did know that as well.

alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 347d (2 replies)

People always tilt when I tell them that half an order of magnitude is 3.

glimse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d (1 reply)

It doesn't feel like it makes sense

alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 347d

3²=10 It's always more obvious without the log.

Neverclear@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 347d

double the power... recursed!!!

damnedfurry@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 347d (2 replies)

Which one is babybel?

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 7 pts · 347d

A Regional Bell Operating Company, roughly ^1^/7 of a Bell.

Rusty@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 347d

This one is used to measure the sound of cheesy music.

stinky@redlemmy.com · 7 pts · 348d

sea scallops have hundreds of eyes which disappear when cooked

CuriousRefugee@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Oh god how have I never realized this. You monster!

Also, it's crazy to me that we still use the normal metric prefixes for a logarithmic scale!

lime@feddit.nu · 4 pts · 348d

it's like with earthquakes, the number is for the amount of zeroes

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 348d

That may actually explain the "Bell" enemies in Vintage Story. Noisy assholes.

Akasazh@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 347d

That's how many tacobel?

stinky@redlemmy.com · -1 pts · 348d (1 reply)

11111111111111111111111111110101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010//////sadflkafsfafaAV10101010

lime@feddit.nu · 1 pts · 348d

agreed

AnIntenseMoist@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 348d (12 replies)

Wonder if they got hertz and decibels confused when they were writing that.

Beacon@fedia.io · 20 pts · 348d (6 replies)

So Batman was trying to annoy the tiger away? I think more likely the schlock tv 60s kids show writers just had no idea what they were talking about

Serinus@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 348d (4 replies)

Why wouldn't they have just googled it?

MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 348d

Batman wasn't a fan of their privacy practices, even in the 60s.

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 348d (2 replies)

Google didn't exist yet. They needed to Ask the real Jeeves.

aeronmelon@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Bruce Wayne had Ask Alfred.

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 348d

That's a much better joke. Well done. :)

Patches@ttrpg.network · 4 pts · 348d

Alternatively they knew exactly what they meant.

This was their version of 2 people typing to fight off a hacker. I would not be surprised to hear that Adam West created a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track an IP address.

RogueBanana@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 348d (3 replies)

Wouldn't that be a bit low? I haven't seen the show but I assume its something humans can't hear but tigers can. Although it is much more reasonable than the insane 20000 db they claim.

Beacon@fedia.io · 4 pts · 348d (2 replies)

Human hearing ranges from approximately 20 hz through 20,000 hz

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range

lemming@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 347d

Approximately. It differs a lot and the upper limit goes down with age. It also depends on loudness. I could hear up to around 16 kHz in my early twenties. I doubt many adults would hear 20 kHz, unless it was very, very loud.

RogueBanana@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 347d

Right but I heard children, especially at very young age can often hear upto 25k so batman is straight up terrorising children.

Microw@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 347d

Given that audio was going through changes from using physical denominators to using db as a standard, this might have confused them

Spoomis@toast.ooo · 26 pts · 347d

This means Adam West Batman is the most powerful.

Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 20 pts · 348d (1 reply)

That's a very..alternative usage of the word "realistically" 😄

myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 347d

More like "relativistically"

PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 347d (1 reply)

My back-of-the-envelope calculation says this would result in about 2·10^995^ Pa of sonic pressure. I could be way off, but yeah... the creation of a black hole seems likely.

Unbecredible@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 347d

Either you or the other guy is off by about 500 orders of magnitude.

stupidcasey@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 347d (4 replies)

Is a black whole capable of destroying the universe now?

Like I get that 20,000 dB is physically impossible but so is good tasting bubble gum and that wouldn't destroy the universe.

InnerScientist@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 347d (3 replies)

The energy release in one second of sound is many orders of magnitude more than the energy we believe exists inside the observable universe.
The resulting black hole would be bigger than the observable universe.
It may even be bigger than the whole universe, don't want to keep calculating though.

Agent641@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 347d (1 reply)

Do it

InnerScientist@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 347d

No u

stupidcasey@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 347d

A universe with an observable universe sized black whole is still a universe, one could even argue a bigger universe.

Techlos@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 347d

i mean, if batman only says decibels, we don't know the reference value; SPL was never specified.

argh_another_username@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 348d (6 replies)

Maybe they ment to say 20khz?

Imacat@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 348d (5 replies)

The writers for the show weren’t too concerned with scientific accuracy. It’s intentionally silly.

a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 347d (4 replies)

I can remember an episode where people get dehydrated into a powder - and later get rehydrated lol

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 347d (1 reply)

That was the movie.

a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 347d

ah, i was a kid at the time and have only a dim memory of a few scenes, maybe i should rewatch all of it

HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 347d (1 reply)

People dehydrating into a powder was also a part of a Start Trek: TOS episode. I don't think they came back though. Probably some red shirts.

vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 347d

They came back just in the Adam West Batman series, it was a rather strange version of quantum entanglement.

You know I am just shit posting but knowing both TOS and Adam West Batman I wouldn't be surprised if this is how they'd do a crossover.

voldage@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 347d

Good 'ol prep time

HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 347d

So about half of my upstairs neighbors teaching elephants to tap dance at 3AM.

Nougat@fedia.io · 4 pts · 348d

It's a logarithmic scale.

ComradePorkRoll@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 347d (7 replies)

Why would it create a black hole?

chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 17 pts · 347d

Matter energy equivalence, and the fact that decibels are a logarithmic scale. I found a reddit reply (I know, I know) that someone has done the math on, though I haven't checked if it's right. Anyway, it said:

20,000 decibels is 10^1997  watts, which is 10^1997  joules/second.

I think we can use P = p²/Z, where Z is 415 kg/m²s (impedance of air), to correlate our power P and the pressure p. So, p = sqrt(P/Z) which is still going to be on the order of 10^997  pascals.

The threshold we care about is 10^32  pascals, which is the pressure at which neutrons overcome their "degeneracy pressure", a pressure which prevents them from being too tightly packed. So, yes, that could collapse matter into black holes for sure for sure, since we're beating it by 965 orders of magnitude. Also, the pressure inside the sun is roughly 10^16  pascals.

InFerNo@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 347d

Because sound is waves. You can feel your chest pounding when you're standing next to a loud speaker during a live concert. Energy from a 20000dB "source" would create an unimaginable blast wave.

Eh_I@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 347d (4 replies)

What color is a hole?

HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 347d

Let me bend over and show you...

Doomsider@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d (2 replies)

Better yet, how many holes does a straw have in it?

Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 347d

The straw is just a handheld hole.

FuckFascism@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
[ removed ]
tio_bira@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 348d (5 replies)

This sounds like bullshit to me

gezginorman@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 348d (2 replies)

well I don't see any black h

jballs@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 348d (1 reply)

Glad you were able to hit Enter before being sucked in.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 347d

Candlejack is always considerate enough to

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d

Guano.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
[ removed ]
snailboy@leminal.space · 2 pts · 347d

Ngl, that’s a dope idea for a superweapon.