Where Does All The Sound Go? | QI 

Not to nitpick, but since qi as a show is founded on pedantic distinctions, I feel we have to point something out. When she asks if you can hear sound from the past, the unequivocal answer is absolutely yes. And the reason is because it takes time for sound to travel. That means that when a sound is made and when you hear it, a small amount of time has elapsed. The amount of time is proportional to the distance the sound travels. But all sound that you hear is from some unit of time in the past unless the sound you're hearing is made by your ears themselves. Much like a point Stephen Frye made once about seeing things in the past and how it takes time for light to travel as it is reflected from a mirror that you look into. So I was really hoping when she asked that question someone would say yes you can hear sounds from the past and then she would have to give it to them.

Super cool fun fact: when the massive Tonga eruption happened last year or maybe the year before, i don't remember, the University of Idaho was doing some research recording how sound was affected by snowfall or something, and when they analyzed the data, they saw some irregularities in their soundwaves. When they amplified the audio and played it back, they realized they had recorded the eruption from the other side of the world, not once, not twice, but three times over. The sound reached them first by going East, then they picked up the same sound of the same eruption, this time heading west, and the third spike in the audio was actually the first one again, circling the earth and being picked up again minutes later.

Joe's "me too" 😂

There's got to be a cool sci-fi story in there somewhere what with the whole "inventing a machine sensitive enough to detect ancient sound." It doesn't need to be accurate to be interesting. Hmmm... might write one myself lol

Since sound is absorbed by the air, if you whisper something quietly and chomp forwards with an open mouth, are you going to eat your own words?

I now have a greater appreciation for Soul Music by Terry Pratchett. It features an order of monks that practice extreme listening, and they're trying to detect the words of creation.

The only thing that bothered me about this is we didn't make the distinction between sound and radio waves. Radio waves are a form of light that travel (dependent on the medium it's travelling through) at the speed of light. Sound is nothing but a vibration and cannot travel faster than the speed of sound (dependent on the medium it's travelling through). If Jesus made the sermon via radio and we could travel faster than the speed of light, we could potentially catch up to the original transmission or the transmission could get reflected back to us. As all Jesus did was make some vibrations, these have dissipated long ago and could not possibly be retrieved as they do not exist anymore.

I would've thought that another problem with Marconi's idea is that sound waves can cancel each other out, so the sound field, if you will, would gradually lose information.

Pronunciation tip: it's neither 'NEWfoundland' nor 'NewFOUNDland'; we here pronounce it with stresses on both the first and last syllables, 'NEWfoundLAND' (like 'understand').

"You just said good question to your own question!" One of my favorite one-liners in the show

That concerned look that Sandy gets on her face when the guests say something off the wall is priceless

I love each and every single time Sandi realizes, she works with boys 😂

Frequently when I watch QI I can hear in my mind a story Sandi told of some of Stephen's parting words of: "You have no idea."

"the fish was THAT big?" "yes, all 5,000 of them..."

Alan seems to go to revolving restaurants a lot. He also told a story once of him going to the loo on the BT Tower and a few minutes later stepping out on the stage where Rick Astley was performing.

Love Sandy's nonplussed reaction to Alan's theory.

The reaction to Shazias men comment just kills me

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

It doesn't matter how often I see this snippet of QI. I laugh just as loud each time.

Ah yes, the Alan Davies Handbag Theory of Sound.