Wind Tunnels of Mars
The abstract for an old paper on Science Direct describes how wind tunnels can be used to study how rocks might weather on Mars.
In other words, these "wind tunnel studies" are a way of simulating weather on another planet.
Quite a long time ago here on BLDGBLOG we looked at the possibility that Antarctica's ventifacts – south polar rocks destroyed by glacial winds – are actually musical instruments in the making; and, a few months before that, we looked at the possibility that a gigantic, continent-spanning fossilized reef, stretching from Spain to Moscow, might actually one day produce music, as its valves and curved passages are uncovered by aeolian erosion.
What strange drones will then sound out across European landscapes a thousand years from now, as breezes pass over depopulated geologies and arch-ridden hills?
In any case, it'd be interesting to see if we could use finely calibrated supplies of sand, in different grain sizes, along with high-powered wind tunnels at university labs in Southern California to erode abstract musical instruments out of rocks – and then send those rocks to Mars, where they can musicalize the planet, playing long, Schoenbergian symphonies in the Red Planet's icy winds.
Depositing wind instruments on the surface of an alien planet.
In other words, these "wind tunnel studies" are a way of simulating weather on another planet.- The wind tunnel work consists of controlled experiments at terrestrial and Martian pressures in which known fluxes of sand are blown onto abradable targets of various geometric shapes. Mass loss and dimensional changes are measured and shape evolution observed as a function of total sand flux, wind speed, target shape, and target composition.
Quite a long time ago here on BLDGBLOG we looked at the possibility that Antarctica's ventifacts – south polar rocks destroyed by glacial winds – are actually musical instruments in the making; and, a few months before that, we looked at the possibility that a gigantic, continent-spanning fossilized reef, stretching from Spain to Moscow, might actually one day produce music, as its valves and curved passages are uncovered by aeolian erosion.
What strange drones will then sound out across European landscapes a thousand years from now, as breezes pass over depopulated geologies and arch-ridden hills?
In any case, it'd be interesting to see if we could use finely calibrated supplies of sand, in different grain sizes, along with high-powered wind tunnels at university labs in Southern California to erode abstract musical instruments out of rocks – and then send those rocks to Mars, where they can musicalize the planet, playing long, Schoenbergian symphonies in the Red Planet's icy winds.Depositing wind instruments on the surface of an alien planet.
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Please note the article is in the journal "Planetary and Space Science." ScienceDirect is merely an a shared portal for accessing these often restricted pay-only articles.
Reminds me of this contraption.
The Earth below, accompanied by the sky above. More about the sounds of the Aurora — i.e., "audible light" — at Cocktail Party Physics: I hear the cosmos singing:
Field instruments are finally sensitive enough to capture these weird sounds for empirical analysis, hampered a bit by the fact that the sounds only occur during the most intense geomagnetic activity. The Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) has an Auroral Acoustics program that statistically analyzes field recordings of auroral acoustics and compares them to a "control group" of recordings from nights when there was no geomagnetic activity. It's an ongoing project, but to date, findings support the anecdotal evidence: the sounds are real, they strongly correlate with particularly intense auroral displays, and they are produced locally, although scientists remain mystified by the exact mechanism doing the producing.
Music of the spheres, indeed.
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