

What Is 10 Trillion Times More Powerful Than A Heartbeat? - 127001brewer
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/07/17/202939390/what-is-ten-trillion-times-more-powerful-than-a-heartbeat

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bitwize
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium
rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only
the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind
at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to
be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the
stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote
control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around
the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme
of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for
no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic
reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system
contravenes local strategic arms limitation treaties."

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blhack
>The Kiss concert in Ottawa was, says David, "17,000 times louder and ten
trillion times more powerful than a heartbeat."

Can anybody convert this to libraries of congress for me? Or perhaps elephants
standing on a postage stamp?

~~~
extempo
[http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/index.html](http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/index.html)

Try this.

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sz4kerto
"that's roughly the sound of the volcano that erupted in Karakatau, Indonesia
in 1883 and was heard 3,000 miles away. In these drag races, the sound is
trapped in the automobile."

Wrong. This all depends on how far are you standing from the sound source.
Probably the car audio is much less powerful than the volcano, only the mic is
closer.

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binarymax
Now I want to go and find one of these drag events, so I can experience it.
Further curious I was searching and found this chart...not sure of the
accuracy.
[http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt](http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt)

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
The world's 'Quietest Room' is omitted:

[http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/04/03/dail...](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/04/03/daily-
circuit-quiet-room)

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incision
I have an associate who's big into these competitions. I've never checked one
out, a mutual friend did though. He said it freaked him out, that the force of
sound was so powerful he felt like he couldn't breath.

~~~
nhebb
Yeah, breathing difficulty is listed as one of the effects of sonic weapons:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon)

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Everlag
I was at kiss within the last two weeks and you didn't hear the music, you
felt it as your hearing slowly failed. I forgot to bring earplugs, something I
would never recommend, and I could hear not a thing at the end of the concert.

Thinking of something so loud that it makes objects move.... nope.

~~~
freehunter
Well, it's not hard to make things move with sound. I'll bet there was a good
amount of wind being generated by the speakers at that concert, and indeed
every concert. My home stereo system can blow papers around if I set those
papers right in front of the subwoofer. The speakers in my car and blow papers
around if they're laying on the floor.

Speakers move air. That's what they do. Making objects move is a simple as
them being light enough to blow in the breeze or vibrations created.

~~~
pronoiac
There's a subjective jump between "this is loud" and "I can feel the music
rattle my chest."

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lifeformed
This seems... hazardous.

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malditogeek
Odd sport the "dB drag racing". Made me remember of this Gavras video
[http://vimeo.com/9357434](http://vimeo.com/9357434)

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JimmaDaRustla
First thought was: "10 trillion heartbeats?"

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peterkelly
My first thought when I saw that headline:

Prejudice

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rorrr2
Doesn't that permanently damage the hearing?

~~~
ihsw
It's permanently damaged in the sense that a bridge is permanently damaged by
people walking over it -- simply put, hearing sound erodes your ear drums
regardless of how minute it is. Now, whether listening to really loud things
_escalates_ the hearing loss is probably what you were asking.

If a million people were shuffling along a bridge and they all walked gently
then the bridge will be damaged minimally, but if a hundred trucks that weigh
several tons drive across the bridge then that damage would be quite severe. A
million people regularly shuffling every day would be quite damaging over a
long period of time, but the effect of a thousand large trucks is far more
damaging.

My point is, listening to really loud _low frequency_ sounds isn't as damaging
as listening to really loud _high frequency_ sounds.

Now, my comparison is really poor and heavy trucks cause far more damage than
people, but the comparison between 'low frequency' and 'high frequency' is apt
-- high damage to roads comes from high weight concentrated on a small point
of impact in the same way that high damage to hearing comes from high
frequency sound.

~~~
mikeweiss
I stopped reading at "Sound erodes your ear drums", you obviously wrote all
this but have no clue about how the ear actually works. Its not the ear drum
that gets damaged over time, its the hair cells inside the cochlea that
eventually die.

~~~
ihsw
Yeah I tried to keep domain-specific terminology to a minimum, most people
don't know their sense of hearing comes from sensitive hairs in their ears.
Good catch though, and sorry if it made you cringe.

