- Hey, cool cats, I'm Dr. Universe, here to answer your baffling science questions, like this one.

Can you hear in space?

It's pretty quiet out here between the planets and stars.

Back on Earth, all kinds of sounds travel through air, water, and other objects.

When you hear a sound, somewhere around you an object was moving or vibrating.

If you've ever strummed a rubber band, you may have seen this in action.

These vibrations travel through a medium, like air.

They vibrate the molecules in the air and pass on those vibrations to their neighboring molecules, all the way to our ears.

But space is pretty empty.

There are no molecules there to help sound travel.

That's why on the moon where there's no air, astronauts have to use radios to talk to each other.

This is Dr. Universe, over and out.

You can ask a science question of your own at AskDrUniverse.wsu.edu.