Cell Sounds: Death: The Pulse of the Planet daily radio program offers free legal online mp3 downloads, exploring the world of sound in nature, culture and science, with audio adventures, world music, extraordinary sound portraits, science diaries, and nature ring-tones; an amazing sonic experience.



Airdate: Jul 29, 2009
Scientist: Jim Gimzewski

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 HUMAN BIOLOGY ,Microbiology ,nanotechnology ,acoustics


Cell Sounds: Death

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For the first time on the radio--the sound of Death!
Transcript:
Music
Ambience: 86 degree yeast cell song

Its widely thought that with death comes silence. Well no! Im Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Coming up the sound of death. UCLAs Dr. Jim Gimzewski recently discovered that the motion within yeast cells produces a sound you can listen to, if its highly amplified. Now, after performing various tests on these living cellsraising their temperature to see if the pitch of their voices changedGimzewski decided it was time for more extreme measures.

The last experiment we did was we killed the cell. Sounds cruel? But we killed it in a very specific way. So we treated it with a drug, which essentially switches off the fuel that drives the cell. And when we did that, indeed, the sound stopped. And it was replaced by another type of sound, a hissing sound, which is not a sound relating to life. Its the sound of death, if you like.

Ambience: dead cell, molecular motion

What you hear now is the sound of death.

So when switch off the energy source for the cell, what we actually hear is there is no silence in nature at this level. At this level, there is always a sound. And it is essentially, the sound of the world we live in; it is just the motion of molecules. The vibrations are random; its just molecules bouncing around.


No human cells were harmed in the creation of this radio program. But, by analyzing the sound of a dying yeast cell, Gimzewski is working towards an understanding of cellular sound that he hopes could translate to the cells of the human body. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. Im Jim Metzner.

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Cell Sounds: Death