Scientists studying the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic have discovered that the polar wastes actually produce a unique ‘song’ which is inaudible to human ears without the use of technology.
“We discovered that the shelf nearly continuously sings at frequencies of five or more cycles per second, excited by local and regional winds blowing across its snow dune‐like topography,”the authors explain in a press release.
The recording below is sped up 1,200 times so we can get a rough idea of how this natural ‘ice song’ sounds:
The normal human hearing range is 20Hz to 20,000Hz (though this upper limit drops off as we age) and the ice shelf “continuously ‘sings’ at frequencies of five or more cycles per second (or >5Hz)."
For context, it can sometimes be necessary to dramatically speed up or slow down sounds in order for humans to perceive or bear them – like this slowed-down version of Justin Bieber.
The Colorado State University team buried 34 seismic detectors beneath the surface of the blanket of deep snow, known as the firn layer, which insulates the ice below.
They left the sensors there for three years, and then analyzed the slow seismic hum generated by winds lashing snow against the surface of the ice sheet. This allowed them to monitor the “near‐surface conditions” of the giant ice shelf, which is roughly the size of Texas (or Spain, for Europeans).
The lowest frequency a human can hear is only 20 Hz, and even then this is only possible in extreme anechoic chambers, but we can ‘feel’ sounds lower than that, for example during earthquakes.
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