By: Alice Dai

The news article, “Noises Sound Totally Different on Mars than on Earth. Here’s Why,” reports that on planet Mars, people’s voices sound differently. Some reasons for this are that Mars is very cold. The freezing temperature makes your teeth chatter, so when you speak it is hard to understand. Another reason is Mars’ atmosphere is mainly made up of carbon dioxide. According to the article “carbon dioxide doesn’t carry sound well. In fact, someone speaking next to you on Mars would sound as quiet as if they were talking 60 meters (200 feet) away.”

Air pressure, temperature, and humidity all affect the sound on Mars too. The news explains “scientists will be able to study how its soundscape changes over the course of Martian seasons. We’re very excited to see how sound behaves during winter and autumn during every season on Mars.” This shows how Mars is different from earth. Even the speed of sound is different on Mars. If people were to talk on Mars, their words would come out very fast. Scientists know this to be true because “within the range of human hearing, high pitched sounds travel at about 250 meters per second (559 miles per hour). Low-pitched sounds travel slower, about 240 meters per second (537 miles per hour).” Scientist Baptiste Chide and his team were the first people “to record the sound on Mars. On earth, all sounds travel at about 343 meters per second (767 miles per hour.)” If a radio was playing a song, it would be very hard to hear it. For example, “if a song were playing from a speaker on Mars, higher sounds would reach a listener before the lower sounds.” “Let’s say you somehow had a city on Mars, with birds,” says Chide. “Birds are too high in frequency. You wouldn’t hear them. You would only hear the sounds of the city.”