NASA Releases Audio Of What Black Hole Sounds Like—And Yes, It’s Spooky As Heck
Video screenshot via NASA Exoplanets
When space travel becomes more accessible, there’ll predictably be a rise in fascination for the cosmos. Likewise, more people will come out expressing a fear of space (the official word for it, in case you’re wondering, is astrophobia). In space, no one can hear you scream—and the way elusive black holes sound won’t help.
NASA’s Exoplanets Twitter account has shared a recording of what a black hole 200 million light-years away would sound to human ears. The space agency is also taking this time to correct the misconception that outer space has no sound. The reason you won’t hear anything out there is that most of space is a vacuum, sucking up sound waves before they move about.
There are certain places where sound can still be relayed, at least in post-processing. NASA’s audio comes from a galaxy cluster called Perseus that “has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound,” says the Exoplanets account.
NASA published the same clip, collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, back in May for Black Hole Week, explaining then: “Astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note.” This culminating note, it said, cannot be heard by humans as it’s “57 octaves below middle C.”
In the new post, the space agency says that the recording had been amplified and remixed with other data so humans would be able to perceive the black hole through their ears.
The resulting sound is particularly haunting and up there with the effects played in horror films. If you close your eyes, you might even be able to imagine yourself in the Upside Down.
The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we've picked up actual sound. Here it's amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole! pic.twitter.com/RobcZs7F9e
— NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) August 21, 2022
[via Mashable and New York Post, video and cover image via NASA Exoplanets]
