[Seany (OP)]

We can't hear VERY loud sounds..
Say a REALLY loud sound and your standing next to it, you wouldn't be able to hear it..

But if you were like a mile off or something, would you then be able to hear it, as long as the pitch was within our hearing range?

That's really odd, because then someone closer can't hear it, though someone further away can!

[another_someone]

This is partly true, but it is also true not only for sound.

When I was at school, we did a little experiment with taste, to see how sensitive our taste buds were.  We have various strengths of sweat, salty, bitter, and sour flavours, and we tested each other to see how small a dose we could detect the separate flavours.  We could accurately detect very very minute amounts of flavour, but when I really piled on the flavour in very large doses, the person I gave this to immediately could detect a very strong flavour, but because his taste buds had become overloaded, he could not say whether it was a powerful sweet, sour, bitter, or salty flavour, only that it was a very powerful flavour.

We have the same thing with light - if you are blinded by a dazzling light, you cannot really see the light you are dazzled by, although you are aware of being dazzled.

[Seany (OP)]

That is cool... So you can hear the sound far away, but not close? And would it still hurt your ears, if you were close to it, but can't hear it?

[Karen W.]

OOH thats an even better question!

[Onanist]

surely it would.

there may be a level of sound above which, variations in volume no longer register, because the ears maximum capacity to measure volume has been reached.

just as a sound level meter would record a very loud sound as off the scale, regardless of how far off it was.

but surely sounds at or above this level would still do just as much, if not more damage to the eardrums, and the delicate bones of the ear?

and therefore presumably cause pain?

[Seany (OP)]

Apparently however.. When the earth rotates, it creates a massive noise.. That's what I've heard. But we are not able to hear it because it's so loud. But we don't feel pain from that?

[Onanist]

why would the earth rotating on its axis make any sound?

there isn't very much resistance involved. it's rotating in a near-vaccuum.

[Seany (OP)]

I guess.. But apparently it does. I think I read it somewhere lol

[another_someone]

I too am perplexed by what is mean by the Earth's rotation creating sound?

Where is it creating this sound from - the boundary between the Earth and space?  Even if this were the case, I cannot imagine much of this would reach ground level.

Certainly, the Earth's rotation creates weather, and weather creates sound (you hear the wind blowing), but this is scarcely deafening.

[Seany (OP)]

Nevermind.. LOL I think I got the fact wrong..

[Onanist]

I too am perplexed by what is mean by the Earth's rotation creating sound?

Where is it creating this sound from - the boundary between the Earth and space?  Even if this were the case, I cannot imagine much of this would reach ground level.

Certainly, the Earth's rotation creates weather, and weather creates sound (you hear the wind blowing), but this is scarcely deafening.

does it?

i'm sure weather is caused by pressure variables resulting from fluctuations in tempperature (as well as the more permanent temperature variation that causes the gulf stream)

[another_someone]

But the reason you have cyclones and anticyclones is due to the Coriolis force which is due to the Earth's rotation.

[Onanist]

oh yeah. the coriolis force.

i see now.