

Ask HN: Is there microscope equivalent for sounds? - tarikozket

For instance, are we able to hear DNA&#x27;s sound yet? Is it possible?
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tokenadult
The previously posted comment that includes the statement, "But, I think at
small scales sound is closer to buffeting (like how water is the consistency
of gelatin for microscopic organisms, waves can't propagate)" at least gets to
the idea of fundamental physical constraints. Brownian motion[1] shows that
movement of molecules (which is what sound is) happens through mechanisms that
don't scale down as well as propagation of light. You can magnify light down
to images of much smaller objects than you can listen to sounds from small
objects because small objects don't make specific sounds, but rather are
buffeted around themselves by essentially random motion of the fluids that
surround them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion)

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a235
Sound can be recovered partially from visual observations of any vibrations
(to some degree, this is your how CD works). So technically, you can 'listen'
to bacteria with a compound phase contrast microscopes, which are used to
observe living organisms.

With DNA its trickier. First of all, it's too small to be seen using compound
(optic) microscopes. While an electron microscope scans a specimen, so either
you have to do its with a frequency way higher than any vibrations, or 'focus'
on a single place to 'listen' to it (pico stethoscope). There are few further
complications, such as you may burn a hole though the specimen, not forgetting
that it also requires special treatment to be observed in an electron
microscope.

~~~
jaydub
This was interesting story from 2014
[http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-
fro...](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from-
vibrations-0804)

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jplur
At a party I met an artist at residence at MIT who claimed to have a Eukaryote
sized hook stepping force up to a man sized fly fishing rod.

But, I think at small scales sound is closer to buffeting (like how water is
the consistency of gelatin for microscopic organisms, waves can't propagate)

~~~
joshu
Joe Davis.
[http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_...](http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w03/davis_j_webarchive/davis_profile_sciam/jd.htm)

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sigmar
We can amplify very quiet sounds. But I'm not sure why you want to "hear DNA's
sound" and considering that biological processes occurring at the organ level
will be much louder, it would be difficult.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
DNA's resonant frequency is in the gigahertz range, so you won't be able to
hear it anyway.

Sound is a _bulk_ movement in some medium. So there isn't a useful concept of
sound when you're dealing with atomic or molecular phenomena.

If individual atoms move at all they do it at very high frequencies. So
there's no bulk audible movement to amplify.

The equivalent of increasing visible angular resolution would be increasing
the sample rate and slowing the replay rate. You can do this easily for audio
sample rates, and with a lot of extra equipment and a bit of hand waving you
can convert optical or RF sampling to audio. But it still doesn't quite map to
hearing in the way that microscopy maps to sight.

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JTxt
Any changing value that is not a perfect progression can be converted into
sound.

If you can measure it and it's changing rates, you can transform it into the
human audible range.

Edit: It would likely be more interesting to listen to the DNA sequence
itself. That is possible, though so far I'm just seeing an interpretation of
the dna letters into musical notes:
[http://www.tokenrock.com/dna_music/dna_into_music.php](http://www.tokenrock.com/dna_music/dna_into_music.php)
instead of something like raw data to pcm... Not a clean transformation.

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atallcostsky
Related to this topic, there are some ways of visualizing sound. Some options
are:

* Spectrograms: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram)

* Vectorscopes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope)

Digital audio workstations [DAWs] (used often by producers of electronic
music) have lots of tools for visualizing audio in this way.

Here's an example of how some of the above work in FL Studio, a popular DAW:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnWlLS6Bqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnWlLS6Bqg)

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vt240
Something like a highly focused, microwave frequency carrier, laser doppler
vibrometer? ;-)

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nullterminated
You can listen to collisions at the LHC!

[http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sounds_higgs/Higgs.html](http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sounds_higgs/Higgs.html)

Of course these collisions don't actually make _sound_ , these are
"sonifications" of data recorded by the ATLAS detector, for some interesting
events.

[http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sonification/Sonification...](http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sonification/Sonification.html)

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unfunco
There was a great talk on Ted by Michael Rubinstein, with cameras they are
able to extract audio from objects (visually) and they are able to detect the
tiniest motions on magnify them, definitely worth watching:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_rubinstein_see_invisible_m...](https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_rubinstein_see_invisible_motion_hear_silent_sounds_cool_creepy_we_can_t_decide?language=en#t-588554)

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markbnj
It's a bit like asking whether there is a microscope for color. Color is how
we perceive certain wavelengths of light. Sound is how we perceive certain
frequencies of waves propagating through air. There are ways to look closely
at light, and ways to closely observe vibrations in a medium, but color and
sound are in our minds.

~~~
deckar01
Light and sound are physical phenomena that can be measured, reproduced, and
ultimately amplified. The microscope is an example of very direct
amplification, which has no parallel for amplifying microscopic sounds that I
am aware of.

~~~
markbnj
Well if the microscope is an amplifier of light then of course the amplitude
of sound can also be increased, and sounds that were too faint to be audible
may become audible. There's your parallel. I can't say whether the analogy is
actually well-founded, because I don't know whether it makes sense to speak of
magnification as amplification. It strikes me as off, though. A large mirror
can amplify light by collecting more of it, without magnifying the resulting
image, can't it?

~~~
deckar01
I think one of the issues with the microscope analogy is that microscopes
provide their own light source and the object obstructs the light to produce a
signal. The objects themselves don't emit light, where as the DNA is assumed
to already be emitting sound (vibration) that needs to be amplified.

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deckar01
A microscope reflects light off an object to measure its optical properties,
and bends the light with a lens to magnify its size.

The audio equivalent would be more of a sonogram than the amplifier I think
you are looking for.

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anant90
While off the topic, I always thought a stethoscope was like a crude
microscope for sound :)

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jjjjjjjjjjj
a laser interferometer can be used as a "sound microscope" by projecting the
fringes and converting them to sound with a photodiode.

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db48x
Yes, it's called a stethoscope.

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krisweston
oh my mistake it has been done
[http://viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_cult...](http://viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w03/davis_audio_scope.htm)

