In space, no one can hear you scream. You may have heard this saying. It’s the tagline from the famous 1979 science fiction movie “Alien.” It’s a scary thought, but is it true? The simple answer is ...

Sound needs a medium (solid, liquid, or gas) to travel. Space is a vacuum, lacking the matter to carry sound waves. No sound in space means no echoes. While a near-perfect vacuum, some sounds can be ...

That now classic tagline (from Alien, one of the greatest science-fiction horror movies ever made) hinges on a big assumption that most of us broadly make: space is empty. And it is—mostly. But there ...

If someone farts in space and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What you just read is the most annoying thought experiment, and you’ll deserve these Dead Space codes if you never use ...

What if you could listen to music or a podcast without headphones or earbuds and without disturbing anyone around you? Or have a private conversation in public without other people hearing you? Newly ...

Sound, when emitted by a source — whether a person or a piece of equipment — propagates in all directions through space, being reflected, absorbed, transmitted, or diffracted as it encounters surfaces ...

Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation. Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...