Listen to The Eerie ‘Sounds’ From A Black Hole, Captured by NASA : ScienceAlert
- In the vast expanse of the cosmos, a haunting melody echoes through the void, a symphony composed by the most enigmatic entities in the universe: black holes.
- The result is an otherworldly audio clip, released by NASA in 2022, that sounds like an eerie, angry howl.
- Space is essentially a vacuum, offering no medium for sound waves to travel.
Listen: The Eerie Howl of a Black Hole, 250 Million Light-Years Away
In the vast expanse of the cosmos, a haunting melody echoes through the void, a symphony composed by the most enigmatic entities in the universe: black holes. NASA has given us a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on one such celestial musician, located a staggering 250 million light-years away at the heart of the Perseus galaxy cluster.
The result is an otherworldly audio clip, released by NASA in 2022, that sounds like an eerie, angry howl. It’s the first time these sound waves, known as acoustic waves, have been extracted and made audible to human ears. But how did we go from detecting these waves to hearing them?
The Sound of Silence
Space is essentially a vacuum, offering no medium for sound waves to travel. Yet, galaxy clusters like Perseus are dense with gas and plasma, allowing sound waves to propagate. In 2003, astronomers detected these waves resonating around the supermassive black hole at the cluster’s center.
The waves include the lowest note ever detected by humans, a B-flat over 57 octaves below middle C. At that pitch, its frequency is a mind-boggling 10 million years. The lowest note detectable by humans, for comparison, has a frequency of one-twentieth of a second.
Bringing the Universe to Life
NASA’s recent sonification project transposed these waves up 57 and 58 octaves, making them audible to us. The lowest notes, originally at 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times lower than human hearing, now sound like an eerie, ethereal howl.
The sounds aren’t just a curiosity; they play a vital role in the evolution of galaxy clusters. Sound waves transport energy through the plasma, heating the intracluster medium and regulating star formation over long periods.
A Symphony of Black Holes
The Perseus black hole isn’t the only one to receive the sonification treatment. M87*, the first black hole ever directly imaged, also got the audio makeover. Its sonification uses different frequencies of light to create sound, with radio data at the lowest pitch, optical data in the middle, and X-rays at the top.
This new way of experiencing cosmic phenomena can reveal hidden details and deepen our understanding of the universe. So, turn up the volume and let the haunting melodies of the cosmos fill your ears. After all, every listener is a time traveler, hearing echoes from the distant past.