This probably sounds like a dumb question but I would really appreciate some help! I am very very interested in space but I don’t understand complex topics very well because of my learning disability. When I tried to google this I really couldn’t understand the explanations 🙁 thank you if anyone responds, I really appreciate it!!
Edit: thank you all for responding so helpfully and so quickly, its so nice to not be talked down to for not understanding things
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The reason sound doesn’t travel in space is because there’s nothing to travel _through_ – space is a vacuum. Sound is a wave, and needs a medium to travel through. Just like water waves travel through water, sound can only travel if there’s something for it to move through. Sound is basically a form of vibrations that our ears can pick up. But if there are no atoms to vibrate then it can’t travel. In spaceships they have air so that the astronauts can breathe without wearing their suits so the sound can travel through that air.
Inside the ship you have brought Earth atmosphere with you. There is oxygen and nitrogen that can be compressed to make sound waves that hit your eardrum and make sounds. Outside the ship there’s no Earth atmosphere. No oxygen, no anything that can be compressed into sound waves and hit your eardrum.
Sound is waves that travel through a medium. The main one we always talk about is air, but it can travel through water, wood etc.
In space there is no air for sound to travel through, hence why sound can’t travel through space. In a spaceship though, there will be air for sound to travel through, as well as materials like metal etc. Sounds that you typically hear on the spaceship though are created in that spaceship.
So in our normal air there are many particles. These particles get moved if you for example open your mouth and say something. Like moving your hand through water and small waves expand. So the particles basically hit each other and create soundwaves. These soundwaves can be detected and uncoded by your ear. But a vacuum has little to none particles and if your voice try’s to move them only a few or even non get pushed. So the lack of many particles makes it for the particles impossible to hit each other and create the „wace“. The spaceship basically mimics the earth because there is air. And then the particles can hit again.
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