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Episode details

Radio 4,4 mins

What would your voice sound like on another planet?

Radio 4 in Four

Available for over a year

Oxygen appeared on earth over 2 billion years ago, and life took off. Now it makes up just over a fifth of the air. If oxygen levels radically changed, our voices could sound very different. We all know what a lungful of helium can do. Acoustician Tim Leighton has been looking at the acoustics on other planets, where the atmosphere has a very different composition to the one on Earth. Trevor Cox finds out what our voices would sound like on Mars and beyond. First broadcast on In Their Element, 2 May 2017.

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