Ever since Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic “Alien” coined the iconic tagline “In space no one can hear you scream,” the mostly noiseless void of space has not gotten proper credit for the rowdy ruckuses caused by its more mischievous astral bodies. To remedy the situation, NASA scientists have recreated the sound made by one of space’s most fascinating residents — a black hole.
Space is, mostly, a vacuum, leaving no room in physics for sound to exist. But, galaxy clusters come chock full of gas, creating a medium for sound to travel through. Sound is consequently not non-existent in space. It is simply incredibly hard to find.
“Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound,” NASA said in a press release. “This is because 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 – one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. This new sonification – that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound – is being released for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.”
Thanks to data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and some crafty audio synthesis, scientists were able to create an audible version of the eerie drone manufactured by the black hole.
“Another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency,” NASA said, speaking on the black hole.“ (A quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000.)
NASA then took to Twitter to unveil the scientists’ creation, a roaring wave of audio almost certain to put any listener on edge. Check it out for yourself in the Tweet or YouTube video featured above.
For more sonifications of astronomical data, visit “A Universe of Sound” at chandra.si.edu.
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