I’m betting most of you have had a moment in your life with a noisy neighbour, their music is too loud and all you want to do it tell them to STFU. It’s likely they only have a standard stereo system, so imagine what it would be like to live next door to the European Space Agency, who have a sound system so loud it would kill any human exposed to it!
Their horn system is part of their Large European Acoustic Facility in Noordwijk. The facility uses these horns to blast powerful sound waves at spacecraft components to test if they can survive the noise of launch. There are four horns in total, each creating a different range of frequencies as nitrogen has passed through them, allowing the horns to create noises of more than 154 decibels! Yikes.
What is unclear is how you would die if exposed to these speakers, would you just have your head explode, be slowly rattled to death by the vibrational forces, or kill yourself since the ESA have a love for extreme volume renditions of Justin Bieber, either way I wouldn’t like to find out.
To keep the scientists safe, the speakers are housed behind half-meter-thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete, coated with epoxy resin in a chamber that will not operate unless all of its door are closed.
Thank you Popsci for providing us with this information.
Image courtesy of Popsci.
I wonder how they’d perform as drivers in headphones…