NASA Black Hole 2022: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) released an audio of a black hole and the whole internet went crazy. In no time, the audio of the black hole went viral and was shared in the groups as well as on many popular social media platforms. NASA’s audio of the black hole sounds like a low drone sound making people wonder about their own significance amid the vastness of space. The Black Hole at the centre of the Perseus Galaxy cluster has long been associated with sound, however, the idea that there is no sound in space has been contradicted by the latest audio of the black hole released by NASA.
NASA Black Hole Sound: What does it sound like?
The Perseus Galaxy Cluster was made famous almost 20 years ago after sound waves were detected around its supermassive black hole.
The US Space Agency had shared new audio from the Black Hole in May 2022 but posted it on Social Media again this week. Listen to what black Hole sounds like.
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
How you can hear the sound of black hole if space is vaccum?
The audio of the black hole which can be clearly heard has also come as a surprise because of the popular misconception that there is no sound in space.
Most of the space is a vacuum that sound waves can’t move through, however, galaxy clusters can release a lot of gas, which envelopes many galaxies inside of them, creating a medium for sound waves to travel through.
In 2003, astronomers found that pressure waves sent out by the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas, which could be translated into a note.
As per NASA, the note was too low to be heard by the humans, because it is 57 Octaves below Middle C. To create audio of black hole that is audible to humans, scientists have done something known as sonification, which is the translation of this astronomical data into sound.
Audio of Black Hole: How the sound of Black Hole was created?
According to NASA, the sonification of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster is unlike any other done before as it uses the actual soundwaves discovered by its Chandra X-Ray Observatory Space Telescope.
Check in points on how sonification was put together;
- The Sound Waves were extracted outwards, from the Center to the Cluster
- The signals were resynthesised into a range of human hearing by scaling them up by 57 and 58octaves above their actual pitch.
- The radar like scan around the image allows us to hear waves emitted in different directions.
The scaling up of the sound signals means that what we are hearing is actually 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than the signals’ original frequencies.
Black Hole sound: What else can we hear in space?
National Aeronautics and Space Administration has shared a lot of sonifications in the past, which includes some that are created using radio waves captured by the spacecraft, which it converted into some pretty eerie sound waves.
The compilation of spooky sounds includes the sonifications of things such as the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, and the rhythmic waves of Plasma made up of energetic charged particles.
What can be learned from the sound waves in space?
While the sonifications use the different types of data collected from telescopes, NASA’s viral Perseus sonification is unique because it also used sound waves.
As per Professor Miller-Jones, sound waves are very important in astronomy and can carry a lot of information which includes details about the internal structure of stars and how they vibrate. He further added that sound waves do travel anywhere there is not a perfect vacuum.
They can be used to get a variety of information about a variety of things from the cosmological scale through to galaxy clusters and stars.
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