What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
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- rideagain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29The video ends with a latin quote, "credo quia absurdum", meaning "I believe it because it is absurd". That piqued my curiosity because I thought it might be an indication that the story was a fake. The story is incredible and it might be true, but the bit in the end when the scientist says that they'll sell the CD in stores soon was a bit too much.
So I investigated a bit more, and I'm sorry to report that the story is a fake. See for yourself:
http://www.bilgesehir.com/c_filmo_principale/e_vases_sonores/Bilge%20Sehir%20-%20Vases%20sonores.htm
The author of the clip, Bilge Sehir (as acknowledged on the story link) acknowledges that the story was for an april fool's edition on Belgian TV (at the top: "Poisson d'avril de journal televise", translates to: "April fools newscast") - TheOtherGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Yeah.. its a bit of a stretch... but extremely cool...
My Latin isn't that good.. but I believe the voice on the recording is saying 'Hey Jupitum do you hear that rumbling sound coming from the volcano?.. meh... its probably nothing' - woodchucklove, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"Sorry guys, but as an audio engineer I can tell you that this is quite impossible...and a hoax."
As one of your breed, I can tell you that audio engineers are not real engineers. - rauz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Scary cool. I know I've seen this somewhere else...wasn't this technique used in an ep of CSI?
Can't be bothered to translate the whole thing for you guys, my french is not really up to par, but basically they say the voices were imprinted into the surface of the vase in the same way a vinyl lp is made. The potterer made the lines circling around the vase using some kind of a steel needle. Needless to say, it was not done to record any sound but as part of the design itself. - AstroZombie138, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm surprised the RIAA hasn't shut the site down yet.
- TheKillDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3With all the sulfur in the air it's probably just the pottery maker asking,'Who farted?!"
- leqin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Amazing - anybody notice that when you play it backwards you can hear those ancient Pompeii'ans saying 'watch this get dugg' LOL
- Dracos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That people here are arguing over which TV show demonstrated this first is a sad commentary on our society.
- darkvad0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quote from rideagain: "The author of the clip, Bilge Sehir (as acknowledged on the story link) acknowledges that the story was for an april fool's edition on Belgian TV (at the top: "Poisson d'avril de journal televise", translates to: "April fools newscast") "
And also the whole title is wrong, they aren't supposed to be french but belgian. - PDave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Riiiiiiight.
Is that the 2 gig or 4 gig vase? - cryptocom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sorry guys, but as an audio engineer I can tell you that this is quite impossible...and a hoax.
- nonlin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Better get the mythbusters on this one then.
- Reliant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Weird. I wish the explanation was in English. How did they get the recording on the vase?
- unarsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wrote the story treatment that was bought by CSI for this episode (look me up-- Uttam Narsu). Several posters are correct that it's an old technique; however, it hadn't been tried with a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) as far as I knew when I penned the treatment.
I wasn't aware that X-files aired something on this. Anyone have a reference? Never mind, I'll google. Anyway, here's my first footnote in the story treatment:
Recovering sound from pottery was suggested by Richard Woodbridge in "Acoustic Recordings from Antiquity", Proceedings of the I.E.E.E. 1969, pp. 1465-6). Years later, similar experiments were made in Gothenburg, Sweden, by archeology professor Paul Åström and acoustics professor Mendel Kleiner (see
The Brittle Sound of Ceramics - Can Vases Speak? by Mendel Kleiner and Paul Åström, Archeology and Natural Science, vol. 1, 1993, pp. 66-72, Göteborg: Scandinavian Archaeometry Center, Jonsered, ISSN: 1104-3121). They were able to recover some sounds.
I had some other footnotes, but didn't include all the citations, just enough so the staff was sure it was science, not science-fiction.
Uttam - DeckardRep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, if this is for real it's the most interesting archaeological discovery I've heard of in years.
- Tetra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The big question is whether they should play the pottery at 33 1/3 or 45 RPM.
http://bsalert.com/ - digitalArtform, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They've been talking about this possibility since I read about it in OMNI magazine decades ago.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Probably the laughter of the people in the lab.
- jhendrix86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11) I have no idea if this is fake or real. The one thing I know is that it is possible. Archaeologists find OUT OF PLACE artifcats all the time, but nobody cares and people would go nuts if they realized that our ancient cultures were much more advanced than we think.
2) It is not impossible to imbed sound in pottery. It would be no different than imbedding sound into a vinyl record if you knew how to do it.
3) One pot is from South America, one is from Pompeii.
4) The middle finger thing..I have many professors who lecture with their middle fingers.
5) Where exactly IS the proof that this is a hoax from people who say it is? - xtassin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ok, I go for the translation. But first, you need to know that the main speaker [the pipe smoker] sounds really like a fool. He does not sound confident or really serious, and, indeed, I think it is a hoax. (even if I would like to believe).
[voice over]
"It's in this building of the University of Cheurat(?) that a team of researcher has made this amazing discovery. Everything started with this vase made more than 5 centuries ago, in South America."
[the pipe smoker]
"We had in our stock some vases which were there for several generations and of which nobody really took care. We had been carrying out some analysis and we worked out that one of the vases, seeming really common, appeared to contain sound. You heard well ! sound contained on the surface of the vase itself. Sound was accidentally recorded by the potter when he was creating some features on the vase using a long stick. We suppose that the surrounding sounds were recorded by the frequencies through the stick, and so have been preserved in the clay of the earth."
[voice over]
"Other potteries are currently being analysed and result are realy stunning. A piece of sentence, said in Latin, almost 2000 years ago, has been found on an antic vase from Pompei."
[the recording]
[pipe smoker]
"We must consider that in the next few weeks, if these recording appear to be really instersting, the University of Cheurat(?), will produce a CD with all those recording and that it will be hopefully out within a few month."
My english is not perfect, but I think I managed to do a good translation. I also tried to put in it all the strange (and clumsy) expressions. Especially when the guy is talking about "the frenquencies putting some sound on the stick" or "the clay of the earth"
I have heard about this stuff in a very serious way (years ago) but it probably turned out to do not give any good results. And probably so did some funny Belgium guys. They made a joke of it.
Too bad. - pr0t3st, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The reason this is impossible, from my speculation ofcourse, is that when clay dries, it has to be slowley cooked. The vocal vibration is simply not powerful enough to make any indentation within a solidified, or solidifying, substance such as clay. Water on the otherhand is subseptable but regains it's natural form before it is able to be captured due to it's incredible bonding abilities and would capture the vocal vibrations in a completely different manner than that of a record. Ofcourse, I don't need to spell this out for most of you.
- Decimal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2What's up with that guy holding the pipe? He keeps putting it in his mouth, even though it doesn't appear to be burning. Is it some sort of prop?
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The sound was put there by aliens, because they knew it would only be discovered thousands of years later when mankind had the technology to decode it.
The recording has now been decoded, it says, "Buy Cosmic Cola. We are your overlords." - tnsimonson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What part of hoax didn't you understand? This story is a fake and common sense should have told you that after reading the title. But go ahead and believe it if you feel the need.
- VeteranRanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As previously posted : *THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOLS JOKE FROM 2005*
http://www.bilgesehir.com/c_filmo_principale/e_vases_sonores/Bilge%20Sehir%20-%20Vases%20sonores.htm - LostWolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What they are talking about is a discovery of sounds being transferred to pottery. The discovery was made after someone studied an forgotten South American clay pot in a Belgian museum. Afterward they started to examine other pots.. and found sound on a pot from Pompeii. A digital recording of the sounds will be released on CD later in the next few months.
- Crusoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Dude, this was from old episode of a TV show staring the Midget from Willow (Warwick Davis) who was some sort of tech-wiz.
He also had a soccerball that turned into a hovering robot, and they played the 'striations' on a pot to hear the last moments of Pompei!
I say this is 100% fake. There is no way this can work. The sound clip was probably taken from this TV show.
Hmm, I can't find it, but I could swear it starred Warwick - pmcall221, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0One digg for being a possible mythbusters episode. But it will still get reported.
- MonkeyFCoconut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah.. something stinks about this story..
- terrya64, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I seen a documentary on tv about this a few years ago. Very cool..
- blazo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey - I feel naked, I feel raw, Oh GOD I've been "dugg" - no wonder the French laugh at us!
- MrPhelps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really a shame it was a hoax :P
Did anyone understand what the recording actually says ? - dstz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's not a fake. It's a real Belgium TV april's fool joke like it was said earlier.
- bennetts2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Listen to the audio that they got off the pottery. I don't understand the words, but it sounds a lot like a French accent to me.
This is a hoax. - scheper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This actually was done in an old comic of Donald Duck many years ago, in a very similar manner.
- igutekunst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have to say this is cra[/
- gotama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i saw something similar on tv years ago, they were just taking old pottery and basically using it like a vinyl record. i think there is a slight possibility that some sound could be transferred into the pottery tools and recorded, but even so all you are going to hear is the sound of a pottery wheel. thats not very interesting even if it is thousands of years old.
- jhendrix86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've seen a guy record a vinyl album the old fashioned way. You can't really do it by accident, unless that audio is REALLY AMPLIFIED by the computer!
- tehgp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0shame on you nay sayers
its cool either way
and yeah, something like this was on a CSI episode
doesn't it just like, blow your mind ?! ?!
:p - Sintax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Can't anyone put captions on this for us ? Some of you have to know french or whatever language that is :-P
- Comsamvimes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Huh, I actually understood some of what they were saying. I guess my four years of french paid off after all.
- x00x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How profoundly eerie. Who knows? One day they'll be able to extract video from rocks
over a hundred million years ago. Finally get to see the totally freaky T-Rex sex we can only imagine. - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm so disappointed about this being an April Fool's joke. I was ready to believe right away - guess that just goes to show the power of self-delusion.
I WANT TO BELIEVE.
Damn. - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Fake.
- Svenson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well Digg is now a tabloid...*****
- shawgo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Seems completely possible. But it makes me curious as to the tools they used to shape the vases. It would have to be something sharp, which does seem weird.
- FelixdaaHack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0After playing the pottery some more they discovered yet another unreleased Notorious BIG album...truly ammmaaazzzinnngggg!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm keeping a skeptical mind on this. Those who believe it wholeheartedly, even to the point of making facts up, need to get some skepticism themselves.
- barium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Stupid diggers - click the drop-down box and select "Inaccurate"
- clos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0we killed it
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