Josh Hafner USA TODAY Published 4:33 p.m. UTC Aug 30, 2018 Heavy metal icon Metallica announced its own whiskey that the band claims is "shaped" by blasting its music directly into the distilled spirit. A former West Point chemistry professor collaborated with the band on the whiskey, called "Blackened," which rolls out to select states this fall. Blaring a playlist of Metallica tracks hand-picked by the band results in "low-hertz sound waves so intense that it actually enhances the molecular interaction" of the whiskey and alters its flavor, the band said in a statement. Much of a new whiskey's success comes down to the story behind it, and Metallica has a good one: Dave Pickerell, the distiller behind the whiskey, is a chemistry engineer who once taught at the military academy in West Point, New York. There, he recalled in a statement, low notes from a massive church organ would reverberate through the halls, the lowest of … [Read more...] about Metallica launches whiskey ‘shaped’ by sound waves from band’s music
Sound waves
CBS News Logo Real-life tractor beam levitates objects using sound waves
It may seem straight out of "Star Trek," but it's real: Scientists have created a sonic "tractor beam" that can pull, push and pirouette objects that levitate in thin air. The sonic tractor beam relies on a precisely timed sequence of sound waves that create a region of low pressure that traps tiny objects that can then be manipulated solely by sound waves, the scientists said in a new study. Though the new demonstration was just a proof of concept, the same technique could be adapted to remotely manipulate cells inside the human body or target the release of medicine locked in acoustically activated drug capsules, said study co-author Bruce Drinkwater, a mechanical engineer at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. [Watch the Tractor Beam Levitate Objects] Levitating objects In the past, scientists have used everything from laser beams to superconducting magnetic fields to levitate objects. And in 2014, researchers at the University of Dundee in Scotland showed that … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo Real-life tractor beam levitates objects using sound waves
Tell Me, Wave, Where Did You Come From? Who Made You?
Weekend Special Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email "I'm sitting next to a swimming pool and somebody dives in," says the great physicist Richard Feynman in a conversation recorded in 1983. Other people jump in as well. Joe Munroe/Landov Could a really clever person, Feynman asks, just by looking at the waves on the pool's surface, imagine those waves rippling backwards and "figure out who jumped in where and when?" In other words, can somebody read a wave's history? As Feynman ponders his own question, he falls into a wonderful, deeply felt meditation on waves (hang on, you can it at the bottom of this post), and I thought, wait! I know about people who could 'read' waves — who could wind them backwards. They lived in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on islands barely 3 or 4 feet above sea level, and performed miracles of navigation. Robert Krulwich/NPR I'm talking about Micronesian canoeists. They'd matter-of-factly jump into canoes and travel a hundred … [Read more...] about Tell Me, Wave, Where Did You Come From? Who Made You?
CBS News Logo Cuba health attacks: Here’s the sound U.S. diplomats heard — AP
WASHINGTON -- It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets. But not quite. A high-pitched whine, but from what? It seems to undulate, even writhe. Listen closely: Some hear multiple, distinct tones colliding in a nails-on-the-chalkboard effect. The Associated Press has obtained a recording of what some U.S. Embassy workers heard in Havana, part of the series of unnerving incidents later deemed to be deliberate attacks. The recording, released Thursday by the AP, is the first disseminated publicly of the many taken in Cuba of sounds that led investigators initially to suspect a sonic weapon. Listen to the sound in the video above The recordings from Havana have been sent for analysis to the U.S. Navy, which has advanced capabilities for analyzing acoustic signals, and to the intelligence services, the AP has learned. But the recordings have not significantly advanced U.S. knowledge about what is harming diplomats. Officials say the government still doesn't know what is responsible for … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo Cuba health attacks: Here’s the sound U.S. diplomats heard — AP
CBS News Logo This is what it sounds like when stars quake
When stars quake, it’s a fascinating affair. Their vibrations cause sound waves that travel to the core and back to the surface again. We can’t actually hear these sounds because of the vacuum of space, but we can see them — they cause changes in the star’s brightness, which allows astronomers to recreate the vibrations as audio signals. This audio study is called asteroseismology, and it reveals information about stars difficult to discover through other means. For instance, researchers have used asteroseismology to determine the age of red giant stars, and calculate core rotation. In a new study published this week in Nature Astronomy, researchers from the University of NSW in Australia determined the angle of rotation of 48 stars in the Milky Way galaxy using asteroseismology. This gave insight to the nebula that birthed the stars 8 billion years ago. “The results were unexpected. We found that the spins of most of the stars were aligned … [Read more...] about CBS News Logo This is what it sounds like when stars quake