What's The Loudest Possible Sound?

It's definitely higher than "11"
↓ More info and sources below ↓

What is the loudest possible sound? What about the quietest thing we can hear? And what do decibels measure, anyway? In this video you'll learn what makes sound

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It's Okay To Be Smart is written and hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D
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Theme music:
"Ouroboros" by Kevin MacLeod

Other music via APM
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French subtitles by Alessandro Dal Cero

[jamesodom]

At 3:00 in the morning the loudest sound is YouTube ads

[ianbattles]

Damn, I never even considered mere air displacement as an obstacle to teleportation!

[hs]

At around 1100 dB is where the fun starts to happen.

[DTravisClem]

Concerning the teleportation intro, I'd always imagined that such a device would isolate the matter between two places and swap them. Where you used to be would be instantly filled with the air (or water or brick wall or whatever) of wherever you're teleporting to. You'd get a nice "pop" teleporting between two locations of different air pressure (seaside to top of everest or vice versa), but your scenario of bursting eardrums would only happen if someone teleported to empty space, which doesn't sound fun for the person traveling.

[tritonmole]

My fart is about 150dB
i hate it when i shatter a toilet seat. Lots of cleaning and explaining afterwards...

[LiamE]

Krakatoa at 170 or 180dB is an oft repeated mistake.

It was 172dB 100 miles from the source. That equates to around 300dB at the distances the other loud noises are measured at.

To compare loudness you need to state how loud and how far. If you don't say how far at the source is implied and Krakatoa, or any large volcanic eruption come to that, is WAY louder than 180db at source.

[josephegleston]

there's also the problem that "teleporting" wouldn't be teleporting. It would be scanning everything in your body's exact position, destroying everything in your body, then constructing an exact copy of what was just scanned somewhere else, made out of different particles. In other words: you die and an exact copy of you lives on.

[Kejiim]

So coupled with teleportation you'd need the technology to take the atoms at the location being teleported to, and have them essentially swap places simultaneously with the object being teleported. This would both fill the void left from teleporting, as well as make sure the object teleported isn't crashing into matter present at the teleportation arrival point.

[mh]

The sun is SO POWERFULL that if space carried sound as well as the atmosphere, we would hear a constant 100 db roar that you could never get away from.

[alexkolberg]

Wow, I literally just learned about the mathematics of sound in physics today

[taestytoez]

When i stub my toe the intensity of my scream can knock out an entire nation

[n.m.]

This teleportation-air displacement-sound thing is a thing in "So You Want to be a Wizard" which is a fun series and it tries to be somewhat scientifically accurate and I highly recommend it to anyone in that age range. When they teleport in those books it doesn't do the eardrums bursting, nausea inducing part, it just makes a loud bang.

[CaptTerrific]

Of COURSE it's higher than "11" - my Marshall stack goes to 20

[vincentm.]

What if you do it the way Star Trek does it? Its pretty gradual... They don't just disappear.

[Enxuvjeshxuf]

the ending was like a slap on the face

[kaida_mtd]

omg that's something I've been wondering, whether or not sound could go faster than the speed of sound or would it become inaudible. You answered all the questions google couldn't thank you!

[dxdx]

2:59 SIL in excess of 200 dB was measured directly at the launchpad site during
Saturn V (Apollo 4 mission) launch. From other acoustic measurements it
can be concluded that at ground points 1000-1500 m away SIL dropped
below 150 dB. Still extremely loud, but no grass ignition possible with
150 dB, at any sound frequency

[Titanic-wobq]

Then.. shouldn't minecraft teleporting give anyone nausea nearby?

[chaoticprogramming]

I thought about the sound problem with teleporting, I assumes the air would switch places with you because otherwise you would have air shoved inside you which... would also be pretty dangerous.

Also just gonna say, the loundness in decibles is really hard to be certain of because coming right to it makes it almost infinite, and it quickly goes down.

Big enough to kill anything *queue earth explosion* in a few meters

[TheImmortuary]

I would assume that anyone designing a teleportation machine would have the wisdom to make it work both ways.  This is, if you teleport all the atoms in one space to another, you also teleport the matter back to other end.  It would also prevent deaths due to lets say, teleporting someone into solid rock.  Once the teleport is complete, if you have a statue of stone in the shape of the person (or the teleportation bubble) you just teleported, better reverse it quickly before that person suffocates.