Radar
September 22nd, 2007, 03:18 PM
I thought this was quite interesting. I've never heard of this phenomenon before.
Sept. 19, 2007 — The age-old mystery of why the dunes of 30 or so sand fields worldwide make eerie booming and singing sounds may be solved.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have recorded the audio signatures of booming dunes, dissected the dunes with ground-penetrating radar and studied the mechanics of sand avalanches. What they discovered is that the deep tones made by the 30 or so singing dunes worldwide aren't very different from those made by a stringed instrument.
"I compare the tone of a dune to the tone of a cello," said Caltech's Melany Hunt, who has been studying the problem for several years with help from graduate and undergraduate engineering students. Among the students' tasks is to line up along the ridges of a dune near Death Valley in California and slide down on their bottoms to trigger a sand avalanche and the dune song.
Click here for more info - (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/19/dunesong_pla.html?category=earth&guid=20070919101530&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000)
listen and watch here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw2V0CHgQV8
Thanks for looking
Ray
Sept. 19, 2007 — The age-old mystery of why the dunes of 30 or so sand fields worldwide make eerie booming and singing sounds may be solved.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have recorded the audio signatures of booming dunes, dissected the dunes with ground-penetrating radar and studied the mechanics of sand avalanches. What they discovered is that the deep tones made by the 30 or so singing dunes worldwide aren't very different from those made by a stringed instrument.
"I compare the tone of a dune to the tone of a cello," said Caltech's Melany Hunt, who has been studying the problem for several years with help from graduate and undergraduate engineering students. Among the students' tasks is to line up along the ridges of a dune near Death Valley in California and slide down on their bottoms to trigger a sand avalanche and the dune song.
Click here for more info - (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/19/dunesong_pla.html?category=earth&guid=20070919101530&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000)
listen and watch here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw2V0CHgQV8
Thanks for looking
Ray