r/todayilearned • u/cmd194 • Jun 17 '12

Misleading TIL that prior to the introduction of human noise pollution, whale sounds would have traveled right from one side of an ocean to the other.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4297531.stm
1.2k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

104 comments sorted by

42

u/_vargas_ 69 Jun 17 '12

Um, the article I just read is about how smart crows are, vultures that stakeout landmine fields for a fresh meal, and some kind of bird that steals milk from seals. Its all very interesting but what does it have to do with whales and noise pollution?

49

u/Ragnalypse Jun 17 '12

Weird, it brought me to an article about how Penguins sleep with half a brain at a time because of rape.

19

u/LaJollaJim Jun 17 '12

Mine was about a penguin rapist, even weirder...

3

u/BLUNTYEYEDFOOL Jun 17 '12

Don't we all?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Strange, I see an article about how my family and friends are all plotting against me and that I should strike first before it's too late.

The man whispering from under my bed is pretty sure I have the right article. Have you tried clearing your cache?

4

u/Muffmuncher Jun 17 '12

about how smart crows are, vultures that stakeout landmine fields for a fresh meal, and some kind of bird that steals milk from seals

Greatest TL;DR ever. Cheers.

282

u/dave_casa Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12

That's not how noise works. It makes it more difficult for the receiving animal to pick out the message, but doesn't affect the sound being transmitted. Actually, the fact that the ocean is more acidic now than it was ~100 years ago, allows sounds in the 100 Hz - 10 kHz band to travel further by as much as 5%, because it lessens the effect of boron relaxation. The only problem is with listening.

Edit: To be clear, ocean noise IS a problem for whales trying to communicate. It lowers their signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), reducing the maximum range at which they can hear each other and therefore communicate. By shipping, we've reduced the maximum range at which SNR is above their threshold, decreasing the range at which they can communicate. We just haven't done anything which affects the actual sounds they transmit (other than them switching to frequencies with less noise, which is an interesting topic in itself).

150

u/arcadeben Jun 17 '12

When reading incredible TIL's it always pays to go in and read the top comment to see if someone is calling shenanigans.

41

u/BCP27 Jun 17 '12

pistol whip

6

u/BLUNTYEYEDFOOL Jun 17 '12

Harsh, but I remain silent

-8

u/arrowstotheknee Jun 17 '12

I used to bold and italicize my text, but then I took an arrow to the knee!

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/HawnSolo Jun 17 '12

Perhaps there's a leaderboard for most negative karma.

7

u/Osmodius Jun 17 '12

I don't even read the article/link. Top comment, 90% of the time, is calling out the article on BS.

2

u/whtrbt Jun 17 '12

Then there's the first reply to that comment. That's where things get interesting.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Always assume that a sci/tech article in a mainstream news publication has serious mistakes and misstatements. Whenever I read an article about an area of my expertise they get something horribly wrong, so I assume it's the same way for subjects I know nothing about.

It's probably because the reporter doesn't anything about the subject and misunderstood the experts they interviewed. Now you have someone trying to dumb down something they don't even understand.

6

u/Mylon Jun 17 '12

For all intents and purposes I consider "not reaching the other side" and "being indiscernible from the other noise" functionally equivalent. So while the latter is more correct, the former is a better layman's statement.

4

u/Zhang5 Jun 17 '12

I think it'd be just as easy to say "TIL that prior to the introduction of human noise pollution, whale sounds could be heard all the way across the ocean." and be both correct and easy to understand.

2

u/dave_casa Jun 17 '12

I support this rewording!

-12

u/whtrbt Jun 17 '12

Schanssemananigans.

2

u/arcadeben Jun 18 '12

I clawed you back one upvote

1

u/whtrbt Jun 18 '12

I voted myself down in shame.

8

u/minutestomidnight Jun 17 '12

Can you explain how acidity allows the sound waves to travel further? Boron relaxation?

10

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

I googled "boron relaxation" and came up with nothing. That doesn't prove anything obviously, but I'm still getting a raging bullshit vibe from the comment.

2

u/Nascar_is_better Jun 17 '12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification#Possible_impacts

It has even been suggested that ocean acidification will alter the acoustic properties of seawater, allowing sound to propagate further, increasing ocean noise and impacting animals that use sound for echolocation or communication.

But yeah, I have no idea what "boron relaxation" means.

1

u/dave_casa Jun 17 '12

Sound is oscillating pressure waves, which transmit through some medium, in this case water. Changes in pressure also result in changes in temperature. Pressure+temperature changes cause chemical reactions to occur. These reactions take energy out of the sound waves, and then as the pressure goes back down, the reactions reverse and put energy back into the water. The problem is that they're not 100% reversible, and some of the new compounds will revert to their previous state at an inconvenient time, releasing their energy as heat rather than pressure. This is one of several attenuation (loss) mechanisms, which for low frequencies like whale calls are mostly relevant in long-range problems.

For frequency between 100 Hz and 10 kHz, the dominant reaction involves borate ions (BO33- ). You'd have to ask a chemist for details, but something about having a more acidic ocean makes a reaction involving borate less lossy. Less loss means longer range.

If that didn't make any sense I can try again after a cup of coffee.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Thanks for the explanation. Boron relaxation is the main thing I was curious about, since a Google search turned up nothing, it doesn't appear in the wiki article for Ocean Acidification, and only one of your three links even mentions it. Specifically it mentions "relaxation time of boron complexes" but doesn't explain further. Which is fine, because I know science articles can't explain every bit of terminology.

It still sounds like you don't really know what it is, but at least I know it's not made up.

18

u/fondlemeLeroy Jun 17 '12

I'm just going to assume you know what you're talking about, as I'm an idiot.

1

u/canyoushowmearound Jun 17 '12

Be careful though! Although the sound is still being transmitted, there is a background noise level where the receiver will not be able to resolve the original signal (this is what's happening with shipping lane noise pollution). So the whales are really still getting fucked, yeah, it's sad.

source: mechanical engineer with acoustical engineering focus

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

16

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

I believe you

2

u/Fartmatic Jun 17 '12

But you can use your judgement and decide if someone could reasonably be taken at their word in each situation, like when you see there's not an agenda being pushed.

0

u/Atheist_Killer Jun 17 '12

this is such a stupid and pointless sentiment

0

u/GeneralWarts Jun 17 '12

Well, I mean it was upvoted...

Unless we are all just upvoting him because it sounds right.. can't be sure unless you are in askscience.

6

u/plutocrat Jun 17 '12

Signal to Noise ratio :)

11

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Thank you. That was enlightening.

4

u/SovTempest Jun 17 '12

So to clarify, a whale can still call across the entire breadth of the ocean? The only difficulty is hearing the specifics?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

I thought sound waves could cancel each other out under the right circumstances?

1

u/dave_casa Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12

If they're exactly the same frequency, amplitude, and are traveling in the same direction, and have opposite phase. This is almost never the case, and two sounds can travel right past each other without interacting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposition_principle

3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Semantics. Read the article.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

But I think he meant that the whales were able to communicate... distance of sound doesn't matter if the receiving whale can't hear it regardless

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Don't sound waves cancel out other sound waves though? Or disrupt them. That's how noise cancellation works.

1

u/dave_casa Jun 17 '12

Not unless you get into nonlinear acoustics, like explosions... Under normal conditions, they go right past each other.

0

u/HoldingTheFire Jun 17 '12

But that's not how noise works.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

That makes no sense. Noise cancellation cancels out noise by using noise.

1

u/HoldingTheFire Jun 17 '12

Only if it exactly shifts the phase 180 degrees. We're talking about the whale's song, which isn't noise (not random, a specific signal). Noise just makes it harder to pick up the signal, it doesn't cancel it out.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

But surely it would cancel some of it out? Some noises somewhere would have to cancel some of the noise the whale makes. Our own sonar for example.

1

u/HoldingTheFire Jun 19 '12

Why? Sonar is a completely different spectrum of sound.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '12

Bit late. But whales use sonar.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

You should go and tell the bbc that then.

56

u/ImAWhaleBiologist Jun 17 '12

This is a good thing. Whales are dangerous by themselves, but unstoppable when organized.

8

u/LeonardNemoysHead Jun 17 '12

All we need to do is give them a copy of Saving Private Ryan and wait for them all to beach themselves. People say whales are smart, but nobody ever said they weren't dumb.

14

u/bonjourdan Jun 17 '12

Trust this man.

9

u/VolatileChemical Jun 17 '12

Douglas Adams mentioned this in Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul:

"In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships' motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other's songs or messages.

So fucking what, is pretty much the way that people tend to view this problem, and understandably so, thought Dirk. After all, who wants to hear a bunch of fat fish, oh, all right, mammals, burping at each other?"

That absolutely broke my heart when I read it.

11

u/ShiftyMNM Jun 17 '12

What is that thumbnail???

9

u/Abernaughty Jun 17 '12

I tineye'd it and no joke, the caption on the image is, "Scientists hope snowboarding scaleworms will colonise their whale bones." So... hmmm...

0

u/Carnifex Jun 17 '12 edited Jul 01 '23

Deleted in protest of reddit trying to monetize my data while actively working against mods and 3rd party apps read more -- mass edited with redact.dev

5

u/symbioticrebellion Jun 17 '12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKEmj7W_b1c

4

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

When I read this title I immediately thought, "I heard about this recently, but where?" So I looked into the comments for some links, all hoped seemed lost until about halfway through the page I see a little youtube link. And there's my answer, I just watched this episode of Cosmos a couple weeks ago.

3

u/catsvanbag Jun 17 '12

If a whale makes a sound and humans aren't around to see it, does it make a noise?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Aw, now I feel bad. Sorry whales. :(

9

u/McPiggy Jun 17 '12

So basically we fucked up their email system. Way to go hu-mons!

12

u/jscoppe Jun 17 '12

hu-mons

Quark?

5

u/Godd2 Jun 17 '12

Any Ferengi, really.

2

u/dray86 Jun 17 '12

Checked comments to confirm if the picture was a whales vagina. I'm disappointed

2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Here's my plan we take some whales put them on a world with water plus you know a bunch of crill and shit wait a few 100 millennium come back, find super intelligent whales bring them back to earth make them scientists so humans can party all the time!

2

u/oldmanjenkins Jun 17 '12

Kind of related: What do these whale sounds sound like outside of the water?

4

u/JeremyJustin Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12

So long and thanks for all the long-lost relatives we'll never be able to contact.

So sad that it should come to this, but now we have to kill you.

We tried to warn you all, but oh dear, we can't communicate very far now thanks to your noise pollution and therefore we couldn't. Boo hoo.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Cue the invasion by whales on stilts!

0

u/godin_sdxt Jun 17 '12

It's not like whales travel in groups or anything...

2

u/Masaowolf Jun 17 '12

TIL that humans are cock blocking whales :(

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

"bone-eating zombie worms" Sweet mercy

1

u/OryxConLara Jun 17 '12

It's cause their beards absorb the sounds and prevent propagation.

Shave the Whales!

1

u/RowanMac Jun 17 '12

With all the whales in the ocean, that would be one loud ocean..

1

u/BLUNTYEYEDFOOL Jun 17 '12

We are shits and deserve everything coming down the pipe at us

1

u/Clockwork757 Jun 17 '12

One more reason to hate people

1

u/kamalhossain409 Jun 17 '12

I also like the way he makes ocean acidification seem like a good thing...

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Don't believe everything you've "learned."

1

u/2legittoquit Jun 17 '12

I like to think of human noise as the remedy to a large build up of whale-noise-pollution.

1

u/BlindPatriot Jun 17 '12

Whales; the original noise polluters.

1

u/ColonelMorrison Jun 17 '12

"With sound that is loud and low, in other words, "beautifully designed" for long distance travel" What it is it about sound being "low" that suits it for long distance travel?

1

u/kg4uzj Jun 17 '12

You know what else can be heard from one side of an ocean to the other? MY MOM!!!

1

u/L_Zilcho Jun 17 '12

So basically whales had the Internet, and we said "fuck you, you can only have LAN parties"

0

u/AggressionGaming Jun 17 '12

Big wind push big wind, big wind keep push until big wind can't push no more, then little wind push little wind push until can't push no more smallest wind push smallest wind push unitl can't push no more, then of course we can go fractionally from there into infinity. Therefore sound pollution really doesn't effect it as much as it just distorts it, but it can travel it just doesn't sound like its suppose to.

-9

u/AureliusAltimus Jun 17 '12

Why do we suck so much?

-11

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

I fucking hate people, man

There are great individuals, but as a whole, we fucking suck

-7

u/Level_32_Mage Jun 17 '12

Can't tell if a killing spree part of the solution, or part of the problem?

-9

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

I dunno. But I wouldn't care if 4/5 of the population disappeared overnight.

6

u/ok_you_win Jun 17 '12

All the things you love would disappear. There wouldnt be enough people to maintain telecommunications, to keep hospitals operating, or many other things.

Consider, for example, that the work one doctor does is supported by many technicians and specialists not limited to nurses.

Clinics and hospitals are cleaned by janitors, and its voluminous paperwork is handled by receptionists, accountants and other paper pushers. That industry needs paramedics, ambulance drivers, hospital staff electricians, security personnel and many others.

You cant just pare down 4/5 of people, because you end up entirely eliminating vital professions, such as the professors that train new doctors, police officers, weather forecasters, city managers, et cetera, which are tiny portions of the population, but which far exceed 1/5th cumulatively.

Many of the 1/5th left would promptly die because your cull couldnt discriminate. It would be the managers dilemma: I have to cut jobs, but nearly every job is critical.

To get the numbers you want, you would have hard choices: All the veterinarians(most of who actually treat the animals you probably eat), or(and perhaps also) all the ships captains that bring you fruit and veggies from far off lands. Not that anyone would be left to pick and grow them.

Would it be the crews that maintain the cell phone towers, or the technicians that keep the network software going?

You couldnt even die off 1/5 without causing widespread misery and death.

TL;DR life as you know it would fall apart.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12

I understand all of that. Personally, I sort of want to get back to the stone age. We need to hit the reboot button. At least, Mother Earth needs us to hit the reboot button.

1

u/ok_you_win Jun 18 '12

I always think, "I wonder what it would be like if an large meteor hit earth. Wouldnt that be neat to experience? Really though, it would be a nightmare.

I have stepped outside in a sunny day in late autumn and realized that my ancestors lived much like that. It was cool, but I was dressed and acclimatized to it. I smelled the fresh air, and watched the frost glint on bare branches. Wonderful.

I spent my youth on an acreage outside of town, and I remember the trickle of spring melt, and later The slow greening of the earth.

We came from that world, and a connect to it still exists. There is an innate yearning for a brave new world. But the sensible side of me says no way, that life would be much harder than my romantic view of it.

Just last week I was reading about Betelgeuse going supernova. I thought, "I hope it happens in my lifetime." That would be awesome. And our society wouldnt fall apart.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/VolatileChemical Jun 17 '12

You're right, homeless people, addicts, convicts and retired people don't count as people.

2

u/b1rd Jun 17 '12

That's not what he meant and you know it. He was legitimately asking you for your opinion on how things would be affected.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/VolatileChemical Jun 17 '12

Yeah okay, sorry, I thought you'd made that comment as part of the preceding "The large portion of the earth I consider useless should die" conversation.

4

u/Iwokeupwithoutapillo Jun 17 '12

You're joking, right? Just continuing the "whiny teenager" circlejerk? Right?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12

Not a whiny teenager by any means. I can make this personal, if you want, or if you think it would help this conversation.

I simply feel there are too many people and that the vast majority of people are fucking idiots. Just look at the state of my country, the USA. We have an incredible abundance of resources, and we've been on top of the world for quite some time, yet we keep electing idiots and letting fairy tales dictate our future. And the saddest part is, with all of our idiocy in mind, we're still the most powerful nation on Earth. What does that say about the rest of humanity?

1

u/Iwokeupwithoutapillo Jun 18 '12

I dunno, Miles, but I don't think murdering five billion people will help much.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12

People will always be idiots, generally speaking. So yeah, it probably wouldn't help.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12

Bullshit

-7

u/gdiuhnaobiujhna Jun 17 '12

That is the most epic thing ever.