Saturn Sounds Like a 50s Science Fiction Movie

Posted on November 5, 2007

Remember the creepy sound effects on some of those old science fiction films? Well, NASA just released a sound file that contains Saturn's actualy radio emissions and they sound just like the sound effects used in old science fiction films. Rupert Goodwins, blogging at ZDNet's Mixed Signals blog, says the signals sound like the sounds effects on BBC radio science fiction dramas from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The technology of the 50s, 60s and 70s was such that these sounds tended to be heavy on whooshy reverb and atonal squonking: these abstract efforts were content to evoke an emotional response that didn't go much beyond "oooh, that's weird". Of course, in short order that response mutated to "oooh, that's 'em silly buggers at the Radiophonic Workshop mucking around again" and whacked-out audio spaciness became as dated as anything printed in the Data 70 font.

Nobody told Saturn. Perhaps it was that the Saturnalians first contact with mankind was via a series of space probes launched in the 60s and 70s, which tended to come with a nice set of "Sounds of Earth" cover disks -- FREE with Voyagers 1 and 2! - that inevitably reflected the spirit of the times. Perhaps they just got addicted to BBC broadcasts of The Foundation Trilogy and Brian Aldiss short stories, but lost their wireless by the time Hitch-Hiker's Guide brought the genre slightly more up to date. Maybe it's just that Saturn, every inch the classic SF icon and by far the most typecast of the planets, feels it necessary to underline its brand in order to fend off more distant newcomers as they are revealed by Hubble and pals.

Whatever the reason, we now have the radio sounds that Saturn makes, relayed from the Cassini orbiter. And those sounds are identical in every way to the legally-mandated science fiction background sounds which the BBC saw fit to transmit in those bygone days.

I am at a loss to explain this. But it makes me very happy.

NASA tries to explain that these sounds have something to do with the auroras near the poles of the planet Saturn but we are pretty sure it is the Saturnalians waiting for us with their ray guns.

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