The Sound Aquatic

to do. Right. We think about the ocean, the vastness of it, just being this quiescent ocean of nothingness. Right. Yeah, I'm sure they're waves and storms and crashing, but when you put your head underwater, suddenly all or most of these surface sounds just disappear, right, Right, it's really nice and quiet. And I was thinking about that quote from the love song of j Alfred Proof franc Case. He said,

some of you may have heard it before. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. There's that silent part. Yeah, I gotta call you out. It turns out that there's kind of a disco going on underneath the water there. I don't think proof Rock is gonna take this well because he's kind of a he's kind of a gloomy dude. He's kind of feeling down here. He's gonna take rough huge in those silent seas. Yeah, and you just took

that away from him. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah, Well let's talk about these seas and what happens when we eaves drop on the ocean. Yeah, this episode is going to be all about sounds underwater, sounds under the sea, sounds in your swimming pool, but not in your bathtub, but not in your well, it could be in your bathtub, I guess all. The bathtub is kind of a small environment for Yeah, I was making a part joke. I

apologize about that. Okay, Well, you know we don't throw them in there often, No, we don't, you sparingly alright, alright, let's get back to the whole eaves dropping on the sea thing. Yes, so sound underwater, Yes, it does exist. If anyone out there was not sure on this sound does travel through water. In fact, it's travels four times as fast. Where we get this weird idea of that of course is that as humans, we have evolved, for the most part to live on the surface. We have

evolved to hear on the surface. So when we put our head underwater and water fills our earn, it cuts down on our ability to hear and the way that the vibrations are actually picked up by our inner ear. We end up having to hear for the most part with bone connectivity hearing, it means we're actually hearing with the bones in our skull rather than with the inner ear itself. So it's a muffled sound to us, right,

it's not really representative of what's going on. Yeah, because even bone connectivity hearing is less effective than air conductivity hearing for humans. So yeah, we're often going to hear something kind of muddy, where they're going to be ranges that we're not going to even be able to pick up on at all, or we're not going to hear them as clearly as we would hear them on the surface. Though if we were a dolphin or a whale, we would have echolocation on our side and we'd be able

to hear much differently. In fact, sonar and radar systems are based on this idea of echolocation. And we'll talk about this a little bit later, but certainly during the Cold War, this idea of echo location and sonar was employed, and the U. S. Navy set up a series of massive arrays of hydrophones planted on the ocean floor to detect submarine sounds. Now that data was transmitted to store stations where the sounds were analyzed to direct a ship

or an aircraft to the site. And it was a way to listen in on Soviet submarines, right, because in sound travels really far underwater, So submarines, even when they're trying to run silent, there's a lot of machinery in there. There's a lot of noise to be made. Yeah, you could pick up on that. With some microphones, we could

consuvably know what the enemy is doing. Yeah, And apparently there is a phenomenon known as the deep sound channel, and that's an ocean layer where low frequency sound waves that enter the channel can become trapped and bounced around in this layer for thousands of miles. So this allowed the Navy to detect even relatively weak sounds from hundreds of miles away. But then they began to pick up

on things that work really not submarines. It seemed organic, but based on the sounds they were picking up, they seemed enormous, like something larger than any known sea creature. Yeah, if we should note that. Um, you know, after Cold War ended that they were like, okay, what are we gonna do with all these hydrophones? And they began to just sort of listen to everything they turn in an

open mic night. They're like, alright, alright, ocean, what have you got If you're squid with some sort of slam style poetry stuff, we'll hear it. Got some stand up comedy. Whale shark, bring it whar Yeah, born to run? Here you go watch the monitor sing it. But no, I mean it was sort of like open Mi night. I like that analogy. They were gathering data on earthquakes, tremor ships, whales, and unidentified sounds. And this is where it gets really interesting.

The grandaddy of all these, of course, is the bloop sound. And we have an article on this on how stuff works. If you'll go to the House Stuff Work webpage and you type in bloop into the search bar, you will find this article and they'll be and in the discussion. But there's nothing like hearing it. So I suppose we should we should actually play the blue. Well, I think we should save the blue. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why I'm not trying to, you know, withhold the Blue.

We're gonna hold the blue for you because I want to tell everybody that just a little bit about ocean sounds and how researchers identify them. I mean, for the most part, it's really not very hard to identify them because you have whales that have very low frequency and you can record those and they have sort of a

sound print. Same thing if you've heard sounds of whale songs and nothing else sounds quite like it, right, I mean, that's actually kind of the New Age call anyway, Right, I mean, I'm sure if someone has heard the whale call in a song before, right, it's something that again, Okay, you got your tool reference and so other markers sound prints are volcanic activity, iceberg movement. But there are these sounds that defy explanation, and they remain a mystery as

to whether they are man made or from some mysterious creature. Okay, so we talked about the blue, we will talk about the boop. There's something called the up sweep. And this is a sound that is seated somewhere deep in the South Pacific near Antarctica. It's one of the few mystery sounds that repeats itself in the spring in the fall.

And it's thought that it's due to an unusual acoustic phenomenon linked to volcanic activity in this region, perhaps the result of seawater and volcanic gas interacting and creating a resonance pattern. Okay, So there's this idea that there's an

underlying cost for that. So let's listen to that actually for a second, which is this is the up sweet Okay, that's serious, right right now, There's something called the train and again there's a theory behind this that says moving fluids generate vibrations in the ocean, right, just like blowing air through a clarinet. That's why we get this train sound. So if you have moving ocean water in the right conditions coming around a seamount or some other thing, that

could generate sound. Okay, So going to do some thinking. Clarinet, train okay, Okay, And here's the third one. It's whistle for obvious reasons, and it was picked up by a single hydrophone located about miles west of Costa Rica. And again no explanation here, and the full clip is something like a minute long. But here's a nice little sample for you. All right, Well that one was pretty mysterious

as well. Okay, so let's talk about this bloop. The bloop is the best one of all because it's not playing around trying to sound like a train or whistle or clarinet or anything of that sort. It's just a deep, resonating tone here that makes you think of dark and secret things beneath the sea. I like that, and people do think of dark and secret things. And I mean bluop itself, I mean just the referring to it as

the blue. It sounds like something that would emanate from some vast amorphous horror at the bottom of the sea. Some people like to throws name around. Okay, well that's because talk about for a second. Okay, Well, Cultul lose one of the gods from HP Lovecraft's mythos. All these various deities such as as is off and are left the tap, both of which in my opinion, are much better because I think Cotulo is a little played out in the public spectrum. He's kind of the Tesla of

the love Crafty and Gods. But giant sea creature, slight creature with wings. I mean he's awesome, don't get me wrong. Prominently featured in the short story to call Qulu. There's a cult that's really concerned with the fact that at the beep, the bottom of the sea, you have this elder creature, this vast power that's slumbering and will one day wake and bring all this terror and horror to

the world. Interestingly enough, if you're a fan of the Georgia R. Martin books or TV show Game of Thrones, the Vikings in that, but the Viking light characters, the Great Joys, their sickle is the crack, and there's a lot of love Craft I and cthulhu s aspects of their story. Okay, so now you know this is the Smithis Ofthulu. If you want more, Jonathan Strickland wrote a really cool article about it, and you can go to house Stuff Works type Cathulu into the bar, or just

type Lovecraft into the search bar and you'll find that article. Yeah, it really is a great article. So this bluep sound it was recorded in originated from a point about fift miles west of the southern Chilean coast, and it was powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up to three thousand miles away, making it one of the

most powerful noises ever to be recorded underwater. And the sound lasted for just over a minute, has never repeated itself, and n O a A has checked with the Navy and other groups to rule up human made sounds or sources, I should say, and this and the rest of the other cases to you that we talked about. So what does this blue sound. Let's take a quick listen and then we'll talk about what it could be or could

not be. Okay, so ice calving has been thrown around as a possible explanation because it isn't a southerly location, and then do just kind of make it decently possible. But the profile of the sound is much closer to that of an animal. And so that's what gets people's minds really going. Because it was made by an animal, that it must be larger than any other known organism

in the sea. Right, even the blue whale, whose record length is about hundred and ten feet, would not be nearly big enough to account for that sound that was made by the bloop. But there's no evidence to support the existence of what we call a super giant whale, right, because if it were a whale, we'd have to come to the surface eventually it would be spotted, right. It would have to be something that resided underwater for long periods of time. The other possibility is a massive squid. Again,

here comes this Cthulhu idea. But squids don't have the organs necessary to create loud noises like whales do. That kind of kicks that idea out of there. But ultimately we just don't know what CAUSI sounds. But that's less that it's like some sort of mysteriously creature which could be, and more that we don't quite have the data right. I Mean, the Pacific Ocean is vast, So what I'm getting is that less likely that it's Cathulu or a crack and more likely that it's got Zilla because remember

gott Zilla emerged from the deep. Yes, that was exactly what I'm saying. You were picking up when I'm putting down. Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, we're going to talk about an underwater performance artists that makes Lady Gaga like milk toast. All right, we're back. I recently was assigned an article for how

stuff Work dot com titled how Underwater Sound Systems. We write a lot of articles here at how Stuff Works, and you go into it knowing that not every article is going to be your favorite, and sometimes you have to find what's fascinating about a topic and bring it out. Sometimes you have to sort of create something fascinating about a topic and use that as the jam to go with the medicine. You know, what you're saying is that

you use some magic here. No, no, no, Actually this was a topic where I was expecting to have to use some magic, but instead the more I looked into it,

the more fascinating the science was. Because I really had to look at how to sound travel through the water versus traveling through the air, how do we perceive sound on the surface versus underwater, and getting into issues of bone connectivity hearing, and then also got into the not only the technology of it, the technology of creating a speaker that works underwater, in a speaker system that works underwater, but also the sort of subculture of listening to music underwater,

which I have not tried it myself yet, but I'm convinced from what I've seen that listening to music underwater, especially music that has been created for submarine listening purposes, is kind of addictive. It's kind of like, once you've used a really awesome pair of headphones, you can't go back to the cheap ones. I think to some people listening while completely submerged in a swimming pool, like that is their killer headphone. That is the preferred method, the

ultimate method of listening to music. I can understand that, right, because that would be a mind blowing way for your brain to perceive something that it already delights in. Okay, so before we start talking about underwater performance artists, let's talk about underwater acoustic systems. Yes, there are a number of things to take into account when you're talking about an underwater sound system. I mean, the big one is

gonna be priced. You're gonna pay more sound system generally for a typical system that you can actually go out and buy and and have within the week. You're spending between three and two thousand dollars on it. And this is something you're gonna put in your pool, right, Yeah, Well, they're they're basically two uses for an underwater sound system. One is I want music in my pool, and you're

probably we're thinking, well, that's great. I guess music in my pool would be great maybe if I'm swimming a lot of laps or something, or I just have money to burn. But actually one of the areas you see this used a lot synchronize swimming. Because synchronize swimmers. It sounds obvious now that we bring it out in the open. They have to hear the music that they are performing too, and so they need to be able to hear it underwater as well as above the water, so they need

speakers that operate underwater. Also, sometimes with diving, you will see this on the bottom of dive boats will have a speaker system. If you need an alarm to sound so everyone knows they need to get back to the surface, you would have an acoustic system set up to send out that signal. They're also cases where you'll have music pipe down into underwater environments for people that are diving.

When it comes to designing such a speaker, on one hand, you need a speaker that can actually go into the water without dissolving. It doesn't have any cardboard parts, and it's not going to short out speaker wires aren't raw and naked in the water that kind of thing. But then also they have to take into account the way that sound actually moves around down there. One of the things that was really fascinating this when you have a speaker in a swimming pool, for instance, I mean, the

sound waves are bouncing off of everything. They're bouncing off the surface of the water, they're bouncing off the bottom of the pool, they're bouncing off the walls, and sound is traveling so fast that you can't really tell like where it's coming from. It ends up coming at you from all directions, which is especially interesting when you consider that stereophonic hearing stereo sound is not possible for humans underwater, because not only is the sound traveling so fast, but

we're hearing with our skull bones. We're using that bone connectivity hearing rather than our actual acoustic hearing. So we're not getting like this year and this year, we're getting full skull sound, which is an entirely different sensation and way to perceive it. Right. Yes, in fact, I've heard it described as omniphonic sound as opposed to stereophonic or monophonic sound. So I don't think that's a technical terminology, but that actually comes from Stanford University music researcher John

are the fourth. All Right, so let's say that you are that person who has had the experience of listening to music underwater, and you are for ever changed by this experience. What do we expect here, Well, this is the area that I found perhaps the most amazing for starters. If you go down to Florida's Low Key Reef every year they have something called the Underwater Music Festival, in which they have boat mounted speakers systems cranking tunes for

hundreds of divers and snorkelers. They actually dubbed at an underwater concert. I say, it's like an underwater rave kind of except they're playing a lot of like Yellow Submarine and get the impression that it's a lot of like old classics rob So that's one level. But where it really starts getting fascinating, that a probably too much research

on this dude. There's a French composer by the name of Michael Ridolphi, and this guy is amazing his music, not even looking at the underwater aspects of it, I guess you would say he tends to focus on sort of a new age ambient electronics sound, which in another stuff I'm totally into that. But from early on, like back beginning of his album Sonic Waters, he really got into the use of not only recorded soundscorded with hydrophen phones.

So these are sounds in the ocean. Are we're in a swing pool or yeah, He's he's interested in just the sound of sort of the bubbly sound of an underwater environment. He's interested in the sound of sea life, the sound of an ocean environment, and so he's using those in his music. But then he's also crafting music that he intends for an audience to hear while their head is submerged in water. He keeps coming back to this. It wasn't like a one off thing where he's like, oh, yeah,

I did that Sonic Underwater album. No, it's like his career has I mean, he's on some other stuff as well, but but his career has been defined by his interest in underwater sound. Not only these recordings that use a mix of electronic and ocean noises, but he's also explored the area of underwater opera. One production involved in casing that the piece of soprano singer inside this giant plastic

bubble and having them float around in this pool. So my question is, if you are a concert goer, are you submerged in the water and listening underwater or are you listening to the water that submerged and then pipe out both? Really? I mean, because some of these recordings that he's done, ideally you were underwater listening to a piece of music that he is composed using recordings of underwater sound for an underwater listener. Okay, let's let's take

a listen here. Okay, So that was gait of Mystery from the micro Rodolphie album Underwater Music, and you can find that on Amazon, by the way, and download the entire thing in case you're interested to hear more. His stuff ranges from tracks like that, which I actually really dig that has a nice electronic ambient kind of sound to it, and then some of his other stuff is a little more operatic, and you'll find some of those tracks on that album as well. My Heart's Sea Dwelling too.

That's a sample that you sent me and I really enjoyed that. But I really want to talk about a performance sources named Julianna Snapper because the clip that you sent me on YouTube, I was visually absolutely blown away. I have to say, because that this is the artist who makes Lady Gaga look like she's just phoning it in. How would you even describe the dress that she wore to submerge herself in the pool. Kind Of like a

sea cloud, I guess, Okay, a netted sea cloud. Like okay, if you were a Queen of the Mermaids and you were about to be betrothed to Poseidon, perhaps I mean, it's just a giant pieces of material floating out and I'm not doing it justice. So you guys should definitely look this up. Well. I will definitely include a clip of this on the blog posted accompanying to this podcast. Yeah, she uses a mouth to water technique when she sings

in the water. She spent a lot of hours submerged in her bathtub and friends tubs and stuff and and and also apparently did a lot of research into acoustics of underwater sound. But yeah, I mean, this is again, it's something that is we're discussing it. It sounds kind of crazy, it sounds avant garde, and and it is and it is. But I also have a feeling that is really tied to this idea. And once you start

experiencing underwater sound and exploring it, you're hooked. And then you start doing these things that and engaging in these artistic endeavors that to an outsider might seem a little nutty. Yeah, but you've got to stick your head underwater. But it's beautiful.

This is the thing, like you know, when you you see we're talking about this in art right, Like how something strikes you or takes your breath away, it's usually because somehow you have taken these themes of life, love, all these things that we experience, and you've made them new again. You've recast it into some other language that is recognizable but not quite recognizable. And that's really exciting.

And I think that's what's going on here. Some people would describe it as sticking an opera in a swimming pool, but I like your description better. Let's hear a quick clip from this. This clip is from the two thousand and nine opera You Who Will Emerge from the Flood. The voice that you're hearing in this is actually the underwater her mouth to water singing that we were discussing earlier. Okay, So imagine her and her her giant about to be

betrothed to Poseidon dress, making these crazy bumblebee noises underwater. Yah, while other people were getting about floating about it's really a crazy scene. I mean it's it's great. I mean that art should stir you and and get some sort of a visual reaction out of you. And I'll tell you what I got hooked phone. And that's the other

performance artists that you sent me, Claudia Hair. Oh yes, this is the German production from just this last year two eleven, I believe, yeah, and I believe the underwater opera is called aqua Ada. Alright, So anyway, swater that she is a German swimmer turned opera singer, which is that's perfectly yeah, there you go, using all of her skills, and it is a combination of opera, underwater musical performance

in synchronized swimming. What I love about this is that it's it's much more simplistic in terms of this sort of eye candy that's present. Yes, it's very German. The pictures of it I've seen. Yeah, I mean she's in a wet suit and she's singing outside of the pool and below in the pool is someone who is playing what looks to be like metal garbage can tops, some sort of percussive interestments, so you can hear those instruments being played underwater, and then she's just a beautiful meso

soprano voice. And then she's walking and submerging herself and going underwater and still singing, and so all of a sudden you can hear the quality of that beautiful voice still coming through, but in this very eerie, muffled way. That's what got me to be like, you know what, I'm totally in on this underground underwater music scene, and he's underwater percussion going on the whole time. Yeah. I should also point out that are a friend Michael Rodolphie

then and early. Over the years, he's invented and co created various instruments designed for underwater use, generally percussion instruments, things that look kind of like xylophones that you play underwater. And he's also engaged in the design of underwater electronic equipment because if you're doing an underwater performance, that brings a lot of design problems with it that you wouldn't

encounter on the surface. Well, I think it also shows the level of obsession here too, right, that you're creating new instruments. It's not just something that you're exploring one weekend, Like I wonder what happened if I stuck an opera in a pool, or or what happens if I'm not really happy with this track? What have I played underwater? No, it's not an offhand thing. They're really passionate about it, and there's spending a lot of time with it. It's

very cool stuff, so they have it. This podcast, we hope, was kind of an introduction and an exploration of not only the natural sounds and the way it sounds naturally travel underwater, both what we know about it in some of the mysteries, but also how we have exploited the way that sounds alvels underwater and at least we've begun to appreciate it in a new and an artistic way. Yeah.

And I can't help but seeing the sort of technology being used at like high end resorts one day, Well, you do encounter underwater speaker systems that a lot of really posh spa and swimming pool environments. Yeah, I'm just imagining, like, Okay, here you are in the Caribbean coast. And you know, I'm thinking neck Or Island from our friend Branson. Right, maybe he's got the system. You take a little swim out there and you have you know whatever sort of

ambient music playing for your pleasure. Well, I couldn't help but think of our friend Lily the Dolphin. Yeah, because he was really into well taking a lot of and then getting in his isolation booth, which sometimes, or my mistaken on that often includes water. I'm probably thinking of altered states, but that was I think there was water in that one. Yeah, they can to involve water. So I'm gonna say I don't know on that one. Okay, I'm pretty sure that you can get an isolation chamber.

It contains water, and so all the better to have it wired for sound. Right, it's some the author has one, let us know. Yeah, absolutely well, And I have to say too, that's probably going to enhance his experience, or would have it enhanced his experience. But but I like the mention of Branson because I can easily imagine him sliding naked into his his music tube like Luke Skywalker in the Batha tank. Okay, so are you imagining some sort of underwater tube that connects to his home that

he can just slide into out into the ocean. Well that's good too. I was thinking like a like a acrylic through it. He could swim with the sharks right past them because he's got this vast network of tubes, acrylic tubes, maybe like a big hamster ball full of water. He's wearing a snorkel mask, nothing else, listening to music because he rolls around totally. I totally see the totally cembm. Like, you know what, I'm so stressed about not getting into

this asteroid mining thing. I'm going to go take a swim out in my tube ocean. All right, Well, let's look at some quick listener mail. What do you say, Arnie Ring the mail please. This is from a listener by name of Patrick Patrick Ridson and says, I recently heard your podcast on Google Goggles and found your commentary on featuristic contact lens is a little well too negative.

For instance, you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, that should these contact micro computers indeed come to exist, we will as a society become officially dumber. The point at first seems valid, for if we had a computer with us. We would not need to remember anything birthdays, important dates for history classes, or even what the exact name of that flesh itting bacteria currently consuming your arm is. And this would seemingly be a problem. However, in my humble opinion,

remembering these things as somewhat arbitrary. What does it matter if you can't remember how to spell a particular word. If you can correctly correlate the word you're thinking of to the idea it represents, then you should be okay. I feel that if these micro computers do one day come to fruition, that it will free the human mind from the clasps of memorization and promote a far more important cranial attribute, critical thinking, something that is seriously lacking

in much of the population, including college graduates. And with that, I step off my stump. I love your show. It keeps my brain from oozing out my ears while pulling weeds. Oka's entreating. He raises the interesting point there. I mean, perhaps by bringing us from the need to memorize all these facts like there anniversary or our loved ones names or faces, it don't come to that, you know, to

really critically. And I'm having some fun there, but but but no, I think he has a valid point, the counterpoint to some of the ideas that we were presenting. Or does it just leave more room for useless facts like you know, things that I know about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt that I don't even know how I know, but I know them. Yeah, right, in some sort of passive way, that information has flowed through and remains in

the nets of my memory, whereas important things don't so much. Yeah, you know, and that's what we're kind of afraid of. But yeah, but who knows. And the idea is to what extent we can actually manage it as we're bombarded with this technology. So we'll see. Let me see if I have another bit of listener mail here in the bundle. Here's one from Donnie and Arizona. Donnie Ritson and says, Hey, guys, just finished listening your Lucid Dreams episode and wanted to

add to it. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for years now and have on numerous occasions lucid dream to myself. You mentioned briefly various medicines that could affect dreams, but failed to touch on one in particular. Kalia zach taquici. Pardon is spelling is incorrect on that, and likewise, pardon if my pronunciation is is a herbal cupplement used by shaman's to introduce lucid and or prophetic dreams, commonly intended to help find answers that may be plaguing in the

individual or their tribe. He's often smoked in a cigarette with equal parts kalia and tobacco. In fact, lucy dreaming in general seems to be very common in shamanistic ritual practices around the world. Love the show Thanks Dying. Actually, that's reminded me of a book called Rational Mysticism. It's centered around trying to dwell deeper into the mind, and the writer actually takes aya kusa. I know I have to slaughtered that, but that's the same thing. It's it's

is that it search with a Yeah. I may have heard it in mispronounced as well, but well, yeah, I'll go with your because I always noticed it's kind of like hiawappa Native American from the Children's story anyway. Alright, so yes, anyway, it aids in the humanistic rituals. That is very interesting. It's a good point that you make about Lucid dreaming. The dream world is always played an

important role in her formation of spiritual ideas well. Hey, if you have anything you would like to add, be it about Lucy dreaming, the future of technology, or especially about underwater sounds. What do you think the blue pits? Let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Also, underwater music. We highlighted a few possibilities there for listening underwater,

but I'm sure we missed something. So if you have heard some music, or your familiar with some music that either incorporates underwater sounds or is intended to be listened to underwater, let us know about it. We'd love to hear about it. We'd love to share it with the rest of the listeners. And if you have solved the riddle of the blue send us an email about it and you can do so at blew the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousand of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com. M