soundian

Originally posted by Black Sun

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 Big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B-flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers said Tuesday.

THE INTENSITY of the sound is comparable to human speech, said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below the middle C at the middle of a standard piano keyboard.

This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.

The sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies 250 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers), the distance light travels in a year.

Fabian and his colleagues used NASAs orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory to investigate X-rays coming from the clusters heart. Researchers presumed that a supermassive black hole, with perhaps 2.5 billion times the mass of our sun, lay there, and the activity around the center bolstered this assumption.

Black holes are powerful matter-sucking drains in space, and astronomers believe most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, may contain black holes at their centers. Black holes have not been directly observed, because their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.

So researchers have concentrated on what happens around the edges of black holes, just before the matter is pulled in. When scientists trained the Chandra observatory on the center of Perseus last year, they saw concentric ripples in the cosmic gas that fills the space between the galaxies in the cluster.

Were dealing with enormous scales here, Fabian said in a telephone interview. The size of these ripples is 30,000 light-years.

Fabian said the ripples were caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure of the jumble of galaxies packed together in the cluster. As the black hole pulls material in, he said, it also creates jets of material shooting out above and below it, and it is these powerful jets that create the pressure that creates the sound waves.

Top scientists, he said, pressure ripples equate to sound waves. By calculating how far apart the ripples were, and how fast sound might travel there, the team of researchers determined the musical note of the sound.

Fabian said the notion of singing black holes might well be extrapolated to other galaxies, but not necessarily to the Milky Way.

Chandra has looked at X-ray emissions from the Milky Ways center, and astronomers believe there is a black hole there, but because it is a young, rambunctious galaxy with lots of activity at its heart, this may interfere with any note our black hole might sing, Fabian said.

(reuters)

What a lot of complete tripe! How can something that's set up for detecting X-rays ever detect something with the frequency of a mildly agitated slug.

I take it this is an attempt to advertise your 'new band'.

Please don't.

If you say 'EE or P&J is' you imply one or the other is good, not both.

If you say 'EE or P&J are good' you imply one or the other or both are good.

Strictly grammatically incorrect (the second one), but the different meaning, and continued long term usage, make it a valuable contribution to clarity.

It is also perfectly correct to say 'EE or P+J are...'.

'at all times there has been a tendency to use the plural with two or more singular objects when their mutual exclusion is not emphasised' (OED)

Originally posted by Mouse

any idea what keyboard/synths Geddy Lee used?

Look on the album sleeves, they normally list them there. Back in the old days he had a mini-moog, Taurus pedals and an Oberheim polyphonic I think.

Originally posted by spellchecker

See signature.

What a cop out, if you were a proper spellchecker you would have pointed out that you were technically correct. That means we've got you twice now.

Originally posted by Frostilicus

One thing though - the most off putting thing about learning to play guitar can be playing a shit instrument... too high action ,the frets buzz, cut your fingers etc etc

Best thing is to spend as much as you can afford on a decent name guitar...

Playing something with a dodgy action actually helped me, my finger strength was so much better than most people. Have I not shown you the difference in my finger spans (that bit's for Frostilicus)?

Learning on something a bit shit means that you can judge more readily if it's for you.When you decide it's time to invest money, something good is so much easier to play.

Ha. Stones, glass houses anyone.

Originally posted by lime

it is,,,

i ordered new pots and switch selector, gonna re-wire the whole thing with new parts and see what happens, otherwise itll be new pickups, i havean open coil and a closed coil, squire tele, which one dya reckon is the offender?

How did you come to that conclusion.

And surely if you change pickups, the squealing will stop if it's ONE microphonic pickup. I'm not ruling out both, or there being more than one problem.

Originally posted by Dresden Style

....you might be glad to know it only comes out for bigger venues now, when i can use two amps without causing oral offence

if we play Drummonds again ill be asking you (nicely) for two direct XLR outs from my cute wee stereo Line 6 amp (much more pub gig friendly....and set up to sound like 2 AC30s at full blast ....but quieter if you ken what i mean).......ive heard a lot of people say these amps are shit but it does the trick for me like and sounds better-er than the AC30 on our last rekording sessionette.......nu teknologie see......it also does fender-ish sounds too which im starting to like and me fookin neighbours defo like it better

I'm always up for trying new stuff if I think the person asking me to try has a good reason. We will investigate.

Originally posted by Mouse

Should I actually get one for fun

I mean I could even learn keyboard/synth parts for Rush & Dream Theater

I used to play the synth part in The Trees on my bass, back in the old days. Nice round valve tone on the bass, get off with it. Blag central but it did work.

Yup, sounds like bad wiring. That's certainly the first avenue to explore. Cheapest to fix and the likeliest. Bad earths are a very common problem.You seem to be earthing it when you touch the metal plate, which is probably in electrical contact with your volume and tone pots. Does it do the same when you touch the stings as well?

I agree that an AC30 sounds better cranked up, but why not get a power brake (or similar) which goes in-line between the amp output and the speaker. Same valve, slightly over-driven sound but at a volume where it doesn't bleed over all the other mics.

Especially since the vocals are so quiet.

*chortles back*

Originally posted by Chris

I had an Argos acoustic once and it was horrible, really bloody awful. But is probably alright for learning on I suppose.

As I said, maybe I was just lucky.

It was so much better than I expected. Worth the money for the one I got.

Originally posted by Dresden Style

dont listen to em Adam

get your Marshall fixed and save a load of cash for other stuff is my advice like .... just tell em its low on power and they should know how to fix it

especially if you like the sound of the Marshall

if it what you used on your sharks ep thingy, then its a good bass sound, and a good bass sound is rare

our bass player uses an old marshall superbass head he got for 150 quid....and its the best thing hes ever used. He abuses it with effects pedals and it goes everywhere we go and usually played at full blast....its 15 years old at least and shows no signs of falling apart

Can I just pick out the words 'head' not 'combo' and ' 15 years old'. This is a really heavy case, can I rest it somewhere.

Originally posted by Dresden Style

We do indeed use said bad boy Casio VL - Tone

its got a tiny jack output so you dont need to mic it up thank buggery

sounds like ....well I think you know already Mr Christie....cheesy europop presets

battery powered - and perfect for Lesters little hands

And you can work out how much Del is in debt with his new credit card, what a keyboard!

(It would only sound 'charecteristic' with Simpson's piezo, mug him for it, it's the missing link in the Shocks sound)

What about making ice cream from snowmen, so much more cost effective.

Originally posted by The Ghost Of Fudge

i always said you should be a bouncer

He's got the hair for it!

Originally posted by SHAWN THE OX

Buy a Peavey or a Laney

Don't buy combos though, Peavey combos are evil and shouldn't be allowed out in public without an armed guard. The only Laneys I've heard sucked ass too.

Originally posted by Frosty Jack

You have a guitar that dispenses little sweets??? How cool is that!

Or am I getting confused again?

*paradiddles*

Erm, in a word, yes.

Althouh you may have given me an idea, throw the sweets at the people snoring during his set so they too can suffer with the rest of us.

I think I've seen Real shocks talking about this bad boy. If they don't have one, they should.

Just imagine sticking your piezo on it's state of the art speaker Ian. That would be a totally original, uncopiable sound.

Not that anyone would want to copy it.

The piezo is half the charm, leave it in, leave it in.

Obviously I'm joking.

I was thinking it could be French. Sounds about right for French. Anyone got a French dictionary.

Originally posted by spellchecker

It may annoy some people, but really, it's humour. A dark, subtle, unintelligible kind of humour, but that is the point nonetheless. You wouldn't be my number one fan otherwise.

You must know me, or you wouldn't even try. I have my suspicions!

Originally posted by spellchecker

1. embouchure

I even do Italian.

I find that hard to believe, Italian verbs end in -are (the most common) -ire or -ere, very few do not end in those three.

You do have words like tradurre etc. but most are hangovers from old latin (all highly irregular and a bitch to learn cos there's about 76 different conjugations) and there's not a lot.

My girlfriend's Italian by the way, I will enquire.

I've just realised, we're both wrong. An H can't be before an A or U. It's only function in Italian is to make a C or G hard before an I or E (except in the written language where it's used to differentiate between words like 'ho' 'I have' and 'o' 'or')

Stick that in your spellchecking pipe!

i actually got one from Argos for my girlfriend for exactly the same reason (she never did stick at it though).

I think it was only 75 (or maybe I spent 10 more for the built in pickup, which is surprisingly not shite, Ian simpson take note).

The thing that I was surprised the most about was the intonation, you have to go past the 12th fret before it starts to fuck up, not bad for a cheapo acoustic.

Maybe I was just lucky though?

Failing that, get a second hand one.