What noise does a black hole make? People who have listened to an audio clip that NASA uploaded on Twitter have described it as ‘scary’ and ‘ethereally wonderful.’ The Perseus galaxy cluster, located approximately 240 million light-years from Earth, is home to a black hole that has been sonified, according to a tweet from the US space agency.
According to NASA, the sound waves discovered there over two decades ago were ‘extracted and made audible’ this year. People were astounded that anything, much less what sounds like a creepy, guttural moan, could exit a black hole after watching the 34-second film, which erupted on social media.
View this post on Instagram
The notion that there is no sound in space, however, is false, according to the organization. On the other hand, a galaxy cluster has a lot of gas around the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies inside it, giving the sound waves a path to travel, it noted.
Whereas most of the space is a vacuum with no medium for sound waves to pass through. The video, which NASA referred to as a “Black Hole Remix,” was initially made available in early May to coincide with Black Hole Week. However, a tweet from the NASA exoplanets team on Sunday got people’s attention, since the video had been viewed more than 13 million times.
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
After 53 hours of observation, scientists with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory found that pressure waves pushed out by the black hole generated ripples in the heated gas of the cluster that could be translated into a note, which led to the discovery of the sound waves in 2003.
Mysterious Black Hole Discovered by Researchers – ‘a Needle in a Haystack’
The frequency of that note, however, was too low for humans to hear because it was akin to a B-flat, which is roughly 57 octaves below the middle C note of a piano, according to NASA. So, Chandra astronomers altered the audio and raised the frequency by 57 and 58 octaves. The frequencies are being heard 144 quadrillions and 288 quadrillion times higher than they originally were, according to NASA.
The sonification project’s chief investigator, Kimberly Arcand, remarked that she leaped up in delight when she first heard the sound in late 2021, which she compared to a lovely Hans Zimmer soundtrack with the melancholy level set at really high. The visualization scientist and emerging technologies lead at Chandra told The Washington Post that it was such a fantastic picture of what existed in my imagination.
She added that it also served as a ‘tipping point’ for the sonification initiative as a whole since it truly aroused people’s imaginations. It also suggests potential future study areas. It is extremely intriguing to think that there are supermassive black holes scattered around the cosmos that are ‘belching out wonderful tunes,’ continued Arcand.
- Misleading Video Alters Prime Minister Shehbaz’s Speech Targeting Political Rival, Not His Party - 21/04/2024
- ATC Grants Three-Day Remand for Suspects in Ichhra Bazaar Harassment Case - 19/03/2024
- Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh Lead World in Severe Smog Crisis, Exceeding WHO Guidelines - 19/03/2024
