Extensive though the BBC's sound library is, even there they might have problems laying their hands on an actual recording from the birth of the planet. The only solution when the Sound of Life team wanted to bring Radio 4 listeners the noises of the start of life was to attempt to recreate them.

But as Aubrey Manning explains, by taking an educated guess, they can come pretty close to what it must have been like all those billions of years ago.

“We know the solar system coalesced out of stardust and at first all the planets were molten on the surface. One thinks of volcanic activity, the hissing of lava, bubbling and roaring of gas, all of that must have been there,” explains Aubrey.“Then water started to condense out of the rocks and we got hit by meteors – dirty snowballs – and that added water, and there would have been hissing as that water fell onto hot rocks, and then gradually as the Earth’s surface began to develop it began to cool on the surface a bit.Then you would have oceans, and you would have the lapping of water and the sound of rain.”

Aubrey - Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University - has been exploring these sounds, and many others, for The Sound of Life. In the course of his research to present this landmark series for BBC Radio Four, he's come to realise that in some respects, the background music of Planet Earth hasn't altered that much in millennia. Snowfall, lapping water, rainfall - these are all sounds that still occur in our natural landscape today, probably identical to those very first sounds. The difference, of course, is that they've since been joined by a cacophany of other sound, but for some 500 million years these were the only sounds to be heard. Eventually, though, life forms started to appear, and where there’s life, there’s certainly noise.

“For me, the most archetypal sound of life is really running water, because that’s what’s unique about our planet,” Professor Manning says, "then we had great fun thinking what the first sound was on Earth that was due to life.”

He pauses, then adds mischievously: “I shouldn’t say what it is, though; it was rather a surprise and I think I’ll leave it that way!”

One tantalising reason to tune in, and Aubrey promises lots more aural delights as well.

“The sounds on these programmes are going to be absolutely great; the producers are people who really care about sound. They really take trouble. This is state-of-the-art stuff we’re talking about, it really is,” he enthuses.

Some of his own favourites include the call of the Swedish thrush nightingale; the weird booming of the bittern, again on the Swedish marshes; listening to midshipman fish through hydrophones in the Pacific Ocean; and a group of elephants in Kenya.

“The elephants were quite at peace all around us and they were falling asleep; then you began to hear these very, very low sounds. Partly it’s the mothers talking to the infants, but after a time there was a sound that our guide said was saying, ‘let’s go now,’ and this sound was taken up by other elephants and the group began to move off. These sounds are really very low indeed – you don’t hear them so much as feel them on your chest.”

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