According to a report from Kansas State University, the “sounds” of individual molecules have been captured.

Part of a graphical depiction of the mole­cular vibrations. (Courtesy Max Planck Inst. for Nuclear Physics)

The report, which can be found in the February 6, 2008 edition of World Science News, says that physicists have recorded “tiny vibrations of individual molecules, that could be called sounds.”

The sounds created from these vibrations are bell-like tones. Too fast and too small to hear in their original form, they none-the-less fit the standard dictionary description of what makes a sound. Their vibrations produce vibrations in neighboring molecules, which in turn excite vibrations in their neighbors, and so on, spreading the vibrations (oscillations) outward.

According to world.science.net, “Uwe Thumm, one of the researchers, said he ‘prefers not to call the effects of a single molecule’s vibration sound.’ But that, he went on to say, is “a matter of what you define as ‘sound,’.” In the end, all the researchers would agree, it’s a pretty safe conclusion that no one can hear a molecule.

Making the molecules’ vibrations audible is simply a matter of playing them back much slower and louder by recording them to a lower pitch and giving their volume a boost. Thumm and his colleagues used hydrogen atoms, striking them with short intense laser pulses.

You can listen to the sound here. Windows Media Video (WMV) needed.

Thumm said researchers hope to be able to do the same thing for more complex molecules like water or methane, which will have their own unique sound.

For more information on the sound of individual molecules, read world.science.net’s article, and yahoo.news