I came here hoping someone would mention this, it's really strange and for a while I had just attributed it to the Air Force base traffic or Tampa International nearby, but it keeps coming up. Always interesting to learn more
Seems like very misleading science reporting. It relies on the wow factor of a 12mm fish producing a sound as loud as what many people would associate with a jet engine (>140db).
- Sound levels are usually assumed to be measured 1m away. For the fish, it’s measured one body length away (inverse square law applies)
- Jet engines are often measured from many meters away (again inverse square law)
- The fish’s sound is pulsed and lasts only 2.5ms, while jet engine noise is continuous.
- The frequency emitted by the fish “exceeds 20kHz”. The frequency range of a jet engine spans almost the entire range of human hearing.
- Standing next to one might startle you a bit, the other will irreversibly damage you.
I don't think so and I don't see any mention of it being compared to a jet engine.
The article compares it to a sledgehammer, ambulance siren or a gunshot. A gunshot of which is not a continuous sound.
Regardless, it is impressive that a 12mm fish can produce such a loud sound regardless of whether it is continuous and/or throughout our frequency range of hearing.
It really does matter how far away the sound measurement is taken. 12mm vs. 1000mm away is not trivial for this "decibel" number to make any sense, contextually.
140dB at 12mm is equivalent to 100db at 1000mm. So that's 20dB less than an "ambulance" or "jackhammer" as listed here[0]. Which definitely would make the article misleading.
I only knew that I had one in my tank because I would hear the loud "crack" at night. Luckily it was the shrimp making the noise, not the glass breaking.
Months later when I drained the tank to move into a new house, and removed all the live rock I found it dead at the bottom. Amazing that such a tiny thing can make so much noise.
I'm fine with this place being orange Reddit but orange 4chan just sounds exhausting. You should probably delete this comment and revise how you approach discourse on this website
It's hard to accidentally vouch a comment, just like it's hard to accidentally flag a comment (submitted articles are another matter, I have accidentally flagged a lot of submissions since that's an option on the main page itself). You have to first select the specific comment (reply or click on its time stamp). Then you have to press vouch (or flag). You cannot vouch for them directly from the general comments page.
I agree with the other commenter, doesn't really seem to matter in this setting.
Colloquially, "decibel" is a widely known scale ranging from "I can barely hear that" to "holy crap, that's loud". 140 decibels communicates this fish is capable of a surprisingly loud sound - which is surprising. I don't really care if it's entirely accurate. I simply know that it's "surprisingly loud".
Pedantic nitpick: it's not nonsense if the common person understands the meaning. Your average english speaker uses "decibels" to mean "dBSPL" since most people aren't aware of the other ones.
It's still nonsense and devoid of meaning, and the nonsense has nothing to do with the unit presented or any simplification of that unit.
Sound pressure level measurements relate to the pressure at a point in space, and do not relate -- by themselves -- to the total sound energy being produced by a thing.
I can make an SPL measurement, in air, that is ~6dB higher or lower by halving or doubling (respectively) the distance betwixt the thing making the sound and the thing measuring the sound.
If a sound measures 100dB at a distance of 2 meters, then the same sound also measures 106dB at a distance of 1 meter, or 112dB at 0.5 meters, or 118dB at 0.25 meters.
A difference of 18dB is a difference of nearly two orders of magnitude.
The study says this fish made a sound at a level of 140dB at a measurement distance of one fish length of 12mm, in water.
To compare a 140dB fish-noise that to a the SPL of a gunshot, we'd first need to measure a gunshot -- in water -- at a distance of 12mm (or extrapolate for a larger distance).
And I have certainly not done this measurement myself, but I strongly suspect that the intensity of the gunshot will blow the noise of this fish out of the water in an an apples-to-apples comparison.
