The vocal folds (vocal cords) are attached within the larynx to the largest of the laryngeal cartilages known as the thyroid cartilage or “Adam’s apple”. The vocal folds produce sound when they come together and then vibrate as air passes through them during exhalation of air from the lungs.

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain.

Sound travels fastest through solids. This is because molecules in a solid are packed against each other. When a vibration begins, the molecules of a solid immediately collide and the compression wave travels rapidly. How fast, you ask?

No, you cannot hear any sounds in near-empty regions of space. Sound travels through the vibration of atoms and molecules in a medium (such as air or water). In space, where there is no air, sound has no way to travel.

Sound requires a material medium in which to propagate. It cannot travel forever because the material in which it propagates does not go on forever.

To create a sound, we have to set matter – whether it’s a gas like air, a liquid or even a solid material – in regular motion, creating a wave of specific frequencies, which we hear as a sound of a particular pitch. Eventually the motion ceases entirely and no more sound can be heard – producing silence.

The general consensus is that a loud enough sound could cause an air embolism in your lungs, which then travels to your heart and kills you. Alternatively, your lungs might simply burst from the increased air pressure. High-intensity ultrasonic sound (generally anything above 20KHz) can cause physical damage.

A sound of 194 dB has a pressure deviation of 101.325 kPa, which is ambient pressure at sea level and 0 degrees C. Thus, the sound waves are creating vacuums between themselves, and no higher amplitude is possible.

It’s not possible as a continuous sound in air because the maximum overpressure is double atmospheric, with the troughs a vacuum, which works out at 194 decibels. The answer is unfeasibly loud, and no, it can’t create a black hole that big. At 1100 db it creates a 5 kg black hole with the same volume as a neutron.

Apparently, a sound of 1,100 decibels would create so much energy, it would act as a immensely high quantity of mass. This would, in turn, create enough gravity to form an extremely large black hole! Larger, in fact, than our observable universe.

According to the Big Bang theory, Om is the cosmic sound that initiated the creation of the universe. This sacred syllable is not just one sound, it is actually three. The ‘Pranava’ (power) mantra comprises three syllables: ‘a’, ‘u’, ‘m’, indicating the continuity of past, present and future.

Yogis often meditate on the four “measures,” or parts, of om. Though commonly spelled om, the mantra actually consists of three letters, a,u, and m. (In Sanskrit, whenever an initial a is followed by a u, they coalesce into a long o sound.)