Wednesday, May 05, 2021
Interesting experiment, unsatisfying description
Via Gizmodo:
The Parker Solar Probe, Collinson realized, had actually travelled through Venus’s atmosphere, providing the first direct measurement of the Venusian atmosphere in nearly 30 years. Parker had detected natural low-frequency radio emissions, which are associated with planetary ionospheres—an atmospheric region packed with plasma, or charged gases. By measuring the frequency of this emission, we can directly calculate the density of the ionosphere around Parker, finding it to be far less dense than previous missions have encountered,” wrote the scientists in their paper. “This supports the theory that the ionosphere of Venus varies substantially over the 11 year solar cycle.”Makes sense, and doesn't even need to be called a theory. We know that Earth's ionosphere varies with the sun's activity, so we expect that the same happens even more on Venus, which is closer to the sun. "Low-frequency emissions" is vague. Without an audio recording it's hard to tell what this means. I suspect it means the hisses and scratches of an active ionosphere, familiar to SWLs and hams. Hisses and scratches may be LF as seen in a long-term spectrum analysis, but they're mainly transients, so mainly HF as heard by the ears. LF without any other description implies a low hum or gradual seismic wave, not a discharge or transient. Big Science always describes things in a timeless way, by spectra or by statistics. Humans don't sense the world in a timeless way, and useful thinking always requires a time axis. Later: this NASA video includes audio. The sound is warbly, not hissy. It's described as a "data sonification", which is completely meaningless without more specs. Is it similar to a plain AM receiver, or is it a way of representing something or other with sound?
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 8:21 AM
