The previously posted comment that includes the statement, "But, I think at small scales sound is closer to buffeting (like how water is the consistency of gelatin for microscopic organisms, waves can't propagate)" at least gets to the idea of fundamental physical constraints. Brownian motion[1] shows that movement of molecules (which is what sound is) happens through mechanisms that don't scale down as well as propagation of light. You can magnify light down to images of much smaller objects than you can listen to sounds from small objects because small objects don't make specific sounds, but rather are buffeted around themselves by essentially random motion of the fluids that surround them.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion</a>
Sound can be recovered partially from visual observations of any vibrations (to some degree, this is your how CD works). So technically, you can 'listen' to bacteria with a compound phase contrast microscopes, which are used to observe living organisms.<p>With DNA its trickier. First of all, it's too small to be seen using compound (optic) microscopes. While an electron microscope scans a specimen, so either you have to do its with a frequency way higher than any vibrations, or 'focus' on a single place to 'listen' to it (pico stethoscope). There are few further complications, such as you may burn a hole though the specimen, not forgetting that it also requires special treatment to be observed in an electron microscope.
At a party I met an artist at residence at MIT who claimed to have a Eukaryote sized hook stepping force up to a man sized fly fishing rod.<p>But, I think at small scales sound is closer to buffeting (like how water is the consistency of gelatin for microscopic organisms, waves can't propagate)
We can amplify very quiet sounds. But I'm not sure why you want to "hear DNA's sound" and considering that biological processes occurring at the organ level will be much louder, it would be difficult.
Any changing value that is not a perfect progression can be converted into sound.<p>If you can measure it and it's changing rates, you can transform it into the human audible range.<p>Edit: It would likely be more interesting to listen to the DNA sequence itself. That is possible, though so far I'm just seeing an interpretation of the dna letters into musical notes: <a href="http://www.tokenrock.com/dna_music/dna_into_music.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.tokenrock.com/dna_music/dna_into_music.php</a> instead of something like raw data to pcm... Not a clean transformation.
Related to this topic, there are some ways of visualizing sound. Some options are:<p>* Spectrograms: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram</a><p>* Vectorscopes: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope</a><p>Digital audio workstations [DAWs] (used often by producers of electronic music) have lots of tools for visualizing audio in this way.<p>Here's an example of how some of the above work in FL Studio, a popular DAW: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnWlLS6Bqg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnWlLS6Bqg</a>
You can listen to collisions at the LHC!<p><a href="http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sounds_higgs/Higgs.html" rel="nofollow">http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sounds_higgs/Higgs.html</a><p>Of course these collisions don't actually make <i>sound</i>, these are "sonifications" of data recorded by the ATLAS detector, for some interesting events.<p><a href="http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sonification/Sonification.html" rel="nofollow">http://lhcsound.hep.ucl.ac.uk/page_sonification/Sonification...</a>
There was a great talk on Ted by Michael Rubinstein, with cameras they are able to extract audio from objects (visually) and they are able to detect the tiniest motions on magnify them, definitely worth watching:<p><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_rubinstein_see_invisible_motion_hear_silent_sounds_cool_creepy_we_can_t_decide?language=en#t-588554" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_rubinstein_see_invisible_m...</a>
It's a bit like asking whether there is a microscope for color. Color is how we perceive certain wavelengths of light. Sound is how we perceive certain frequencies of waves propagating through air. There are ways to look closely at light, and ways to closely observe vibrations in a medium, but color and sound are in our minds.
A microscope reflects light off an object to measure its optical properties, and bends the light with a lens to magnify its size.<p>The audio equivalent would be more of a sonogram than the amplifier I think you are looking for.
oh my mistake it has been done <a href="http://viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w03/davis_audio_scope.htm" rel="nofollow">http://viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_cult...</a>