The Big Bang was noiseless. Everything in the universe expanded uniformly, so nothing came into contact with anything else. No contact, no sound waves.
Astronomer Fred Hoyle coined the term Big Bang in the ’50s, not because he thought it was noisy, but because he thought the theory was ridiculous.
Jets get a bad rap. According to psychoacoustician Hugo Fastl, people perceive airplane noise as if it were 10 dB greater than the equivalent noise made by a train.
Since the decibel scale is logarithmic, growing exponentially, that means a jet sounds twice as loud as a train when the noise levels of both vehicles are objectively the same.
The only difference is that people find plane noises more annoying. The effects are dubbed the “railway bonus” and “aircraft malus.”
The first known noise ordinance was passed by the Greek province of Sybaris in the sixth century B.C. Tinsmiths and roosters were required to live outside the town limits.
One of Barr’s solutions to the problem of “boilermaker’s ear” was to suggest that clergymen shave their beards so that workmen could lip-read their sermons.
No wonder unprotected boilermaking was a problem: The human ear can perceive sound waves that move the eardrum less than the width of an atom.
And people are only getting louder. According to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, the volume of an animated conversation between Americans increased by 10 dB during the ’90s.
Social and ambient noise causes hearing loss, often misdiagnosed as an effect of aging. Preventing it would require that cities become 10 dB quieter.
To carry the same amount of information in a noisier environment, the whale songs have become more repetitive. Noise can be the nemesis of any signal.
Their discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation won them the Nobel Prize because the remnant heat showed that the universe must have begun with a violent explosion. Sorry, Fred Hoyle. The Big Bang is proven.