I understand that sound waves essentially stretch and disperse very quickly, but technically, aren’t the very tiny sound waves still there, thousands of miles away?

Question

Could very very sensitive instruments pick up on sounds that happened far away?

In: 9

Answer 1

Technically, yes. It’s like ripples in a pond. Sound waves are energy, energy doesn’t just disappear. But it decreases significantly over distance, we’re talking down to 0.00000000…..1% of its initial intensity. Now try and pick that one specific wave out of every other noise that’s ever existed.