Hearing Science: Our Ears May Be Able to Tell Cancer Cells from Healthy Ones and Detect Space Weather

Ears are such terrific pattern finders that scientists are using audio data to detect cancer cells and particles from space

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Composer Robert L. Alexander was sitting in front of his laptop computer about three years ago, listening to a sound file that would have put most people to sleep: it was a faint flapping, like a distant flag waving in a stiff breeze, repeated over and over, sometimes a little louder, sometimes quieter.

Alexander is a patient man, however. Forty-five minutes into his listening session, the flapping stopped, replaced by a sound like a wind roaring through a forest. It was, he recalls, “the mother of all whooshes.”

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