Venus is silent: I played lightning on five worlds by one rule, and the receiver that hears Earth crackle hears nothing at Venus
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Through one receiver and one rule, Earth's signal stands 460 times over Venus's and 333 times over Saturn's. Lightning has been reported on five bodies, and I sound all five by one rule. Three are heard through one instrument: Cassini's high-frequency receiver, which picks up lightning as brief bursts of shortwave radio. Passing Earth in 1999 it heard Earth's lightning and human shortwave stations; passing Venus the same year it heard none (Gurnett et al. 2001); orbiting Saturn in 2004 it recorded Saturn's lightning (Fischer et al. 2006). I map 1.2 to 16 MHz onto 1.5 to 20 kHz, the top of human hearing, and play the hours 240 times faster. Earth's strongest signal, 4.0 × 10⁻⁶ V/m/√Hz, stands 460 times over Venus's 8.7 × 10⁻⁹ and 333 times over Saturn's 1.2 × 10⁻⁸. Uranus's lightning is taken from Voyager 2's radio receiver, where it was found (Zarka and Pedersen 1986); Jupiter's from the Voyager 1 whistlers that first revealed lightning on another planet (Gurnett et al. 1979). I found no earlier audio of Uranus's lightning and no audio pairing of Earth and Venus through one receiver. This record holds the paper (OCO paper IP-A26) and its 5 sounds. Headphones. Part of The sound of the sky: 12 papers and their sounds: 10.5281/zenodo.23986764.
Author: Ivanov, Ivan Petrov
Language: English
Subfield: Atmospheric Science
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225317355