Differences between Object and Phenomenon

No stretch at all.
Seems entirely reasonable to me.

Don't we listen to the sounds of Black Hole mergers and even the static in our radios is apparently the sound of of the Big Bang (background radiation) ?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

No we do none of those things, really. Though you could argue what "static" means in radio reception, I guess. But certainly neither black holes nor the big bang are detected through sound waves (=pressure waves in a compressible medium), but through electromagnetic waves. These are not sound by any stretch of the imagination. And the static hiss in a radio is the background of extraneous electric impulses in the circuit, converted to sound by the speakers. (Although I admit the use of the term "noise" in science, taken originally from sound, is potentially confusing as it now has nothing to do with actual sound, in most cases!)

On the old chestnut of the falling tree with nobody present, I would definitely contend that it makes a sound. The word "sound", surely, has equivalent status to the word "light", denoting a wave phenomenon of a particular type. Whether the wave is detected by a conscious observer or not, i.e. whether a sound is heard, or a light is seen, is another thing, I should have thought.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Perhaps I am at fault but I didn't even bother addressing the "sound" question specifically.

I was just answering the question as to whether an event that was not detected in any fashion could be said to have occurred.

Is that not the bones of the matter?

By the way,Janus I think it was said that the movement of galaxies could be construed as extremely long(compression) waves.

I can dig that up if you like.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

http://www.thescienceforum.com/astronomy-cosmology/47426-vacuums.html#post608951

There you are but I see you were part of that thread.

 

I'd be intrigued by that as I don't immediately see what is being compressed and hence where the restoring force causing re-expansion again would come from. I thought there was empty space in between.

Oh I see you've posted it. Yes indeed he is saying the interstellar medium can be treated as an ultra-low pressure gas of sorts, though the interval between molecular or atomic collisions is extremely long. I'd need to think about this a bit as pressure requires some rate of rebound of molecules off each other.

 

Let me know if you work it out or through.