IN SPACE, no one can hear you scream. That’s according to physics textbooks and the tagline of the movie Alien. But it seems that in some circumstances, sound can jump between objects in a vacuum after all.

Sound waves are travelling vibrations of particles in media such as air, water or metal. So it stands to reason that they cannot travel through empty space, where there are no atoms or molecules to vibrate.

Now a theoretical analysis by Mika Prunnila and Johanna Meltaus, both of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, suggests that sound may be …