http://scienceline.org The Shortest Distance Between You and Science Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 en ©The Sound of Science: Scienceline.org info@scienceline.org (The Sound of Science: Scienceline.org) info@scienceline.org Science 1440 Science With a Twist: SHERP students cover the weird, weighty and wondrous in Scienceline. Science With a Twist: contributing editors to Scienceline.org cover the weird, weighty and wondrous world of science. The Sound of Science: Scienceline.org The Sound of Science: Scienceline.org info@scienceline.org No no http://scienceline.org/_s/wp-content/themes/scienceline/_img/sound-144.gif http://scienceline.org 144 144 http://scienceline.org/2008/05/12/ask-locke-whale/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/12/ask-locke-whale/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:12 +0000 Susannah F. Locke http://scienceline.org/2008/05/12/ask-locke-whale/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/12/ask-locke-whale/feed/ 00:01:01 ** Editor's Note: The staff of Scienceline is taking a short break to work on future stories. In the meantime, we will repost some of ... ** Editor's Note: The staff of Scienceline is taking a short break to work on future stories. In the meantime, we will repost some of the site's most popular articles from the last six months. We will return to publishing new content on May 19. This article originally appeared Jan. 7. The giant squid is real, but stories of sperm whales wielding blasts of sound to impair them may be nothing more than a fairy tale. Scientists have long known that giant squid are a major source of food for the even larger sperm whales, which have been found beached with sucker-mark battle scars across their skin and monster-like tentacles in their stomachs. Regardless, how these giant whales snag their various forms of nimble prey has puzzled biologists for decades. Sperm whales have the worldrsquo;s largest biological sound machine housed within their 10-ton heads. The idea of the ldquo;acoustic prey debilitation hypothesisrdquo; (also more charmingly called the "Big Bang Theory") was first mentioned in a science magazine in 1963 and was the subject of a key review article by Kenneth S. Norris and Bertel Mohl in 1983. The word ldquo;debilitationrdquo; is appropriately vague. The sheer power of a sound wave can cause physical damage, like hemorrhaging. Or a sound could possibly confuse or disorient prey instead. Whales, dolphins, bats and several other animals navigate via a process called echolocation, which is similar to submarines using sonar. Animals produce loud noises that bounce off nearby objects, giving an acoustic picture of their surroundings. Itrsquo;s these types of powerful sounds that scientists thought might be tweaked into a deadly weapon. Some marine mammals make ultrasonic noises which are too high in frequency to be heard by people. These sounds were a good candidate for prey debilitation because theyrsquo;re more likely to produce shock waves, which can cause bodily injury. In a perfect world, wersquo;d just slap some cameras and lighting onto sperm whales, watch them dive deep beneath the surface and then see the battles unfold. Although these attempts are ongoing, a lot of what we know comes from experiments. Recently, two independent groups recorded whales with underwater microphones and then played these ultrasonic sounds at the appropriate volume for a pool of prey. It seems that the sperm whale ldquo;Big Bangrdquo; hypothesis was alive and kicking until these studies, which found no evidence of any such thing. ldquo;This was a lovely idea killed by data,rdquo; said Peter Tyack, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, by e-mail. He co-wrote one of the two recent papers showing that these ultrasonic noises didnrsquo;t affect squid or fish. ldquo;The prey continue[d] unaffected in any way as far as we can tell,rdquo; said Peter Madsen, an authority on whale acoustics and professor of zoophysiology at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, who collaborated on Tyackrsquo;s study. So ultrasound as a weapon is out. But there is a loophole. Sperm whales make some other powerful sounds that werenrsquo;t tested. These other noises are within the range of human hearing and much lower in frequency than the ones used in the two studies. However, researchers disagree on whether itrsquo;s still worth testing the hypothesis that sperm whales are sonically armed and dangerous. ldquo;I donrsquo;t think we should pitch out [the] theory just yet,rdquo; said Ted Cranford, a sperm whale anatomist and professor of biology at San Diego State University. ldquo;It might be pretty easy for the sperm whale to overload the sensory system of some critter.rdquo; He believes that sperm whalesrsquo; low clicking sounds could be capable of disorienting prey by overloading their senses, rather than through physical harm. Although only one-thousandth to one-hundredth of a second long, this split-second blast could freak out a fish long enough for it to forget to dart away. Whales' low... ask,scienceline,,__FEATURED__,,biology,,physics The Sound of Science: Scienceline.org no No http://scienceline.org/2008/05/09/env-olson-pinebeetle/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/09/env-olson-pinebeetle/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 04:27:49 +0000 Eric R. Olson http://scienceline.org/2008/03/28/env-olson-pinebeetle/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/09/env-olson-pinebeetle/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/07/health-hamalainen-smoking/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/07/health-hamalainen-smoking/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 04:00:38 +0000 Karina Hamalainen http://scienceline.org/2008/03/05/health-hamalainen-smoking/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/07/health-hamalainen-smoking/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/05/ask-intagliata-plastic/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/05/ask-intagliata-plastic/#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 04:00:18 +0000 Christopher Intagliata http://scienceline.org/2008/05/05/ask-intagliata-plastic/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/05/ask-intagliata-plastic/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/02/video-grant-cosmicrays/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/02/video-grant-cosmicrays/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 05:00:24 +0000 Andrew Grant http://scienceline.org/2008/05/02/video-grant-cosmicrays/ http://scienceline.org/2008/05/02/video-grant-cosmicrays/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/30/health-hadhazy-yogurt/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/30/health-hadhazy-yogurt/#comments Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:43:04 +0000 Adam T. Hadhazy http://scienceline.org/2008/04/30/health-hadhazy-yogurt/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/30/health-hadhazy-yogurt/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/29/peta-goes-carnivore/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/29/peta-goes-carnivore/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:07:24 +0000 Katherine Tweed http://scienceline.org/2008/04/29/peta-goes-carnivore/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/29/peta-goes-carnivore/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/28/ask-heger-concussion/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/28/ask-heger-concussion/#comments Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:00:28 +0000 Monica Heger http://scienceline.org/2008/04/28/ask-heger-concussion/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/28/ask-heger-concussion/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/blog-locke-malaria/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/blog-locke-malaria/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:42:05 +0000 Susannah F. Locke http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/blog-locke-malaria/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/blog-locke-malaria/feed/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/video-locke-flowers/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/video-locke-flowers/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:00:49 +0000 Susannah F. Locke http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/video-locke-flowers/ http://scienceline.org/2008/04/25/video-locke-flowers/feed/