Here’s what a black hole sounds like: NASA releases audio recorded by its Chandra X-ray Observatory and sounds like Hans Zimmer’s score
- The sound waves were recorded by NASA’s Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, as astronomical data, and then translated into sound that one can hear.
- Hot gas enveloping the Perseus galaxy cluster provided an environment for sound waves
- Sonication is created by scaling sounds 57 or 58 octaves above the pitch
By Lizzie May for Mailonline
Posted: 10:23, 7 May 2022 | Updated: 10:43, 7 May 2022
NASA scientists have released an audio recording of a black hole in the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster more than 200 million light-years from Earth.
The sound waves in them were recorded by NASA’s Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, in the form of astronomical data, then translated into sound that humans can hear.
Although there is a “popular misconception” that “there is no sound in space” because there is no medium to propagate sound waves, the newly released audio sounds a lot like Hans Zimmer’s score.
Astronomers at the space agency have learned that the hot gas enveloping Perseus, a beam of galaxies 11 million light-years across, could be translated into audio.
This gas, which surrounds hundreds and even thousands of galaxies, provides an environment for the passage of sound waves.
The sound system is created by resynthesizing the sound waves in the range of human hearing, “increasing them by 57 or 58 octaves” above their actual height.
Composer Hans Zimmer, who wrote the soundtracks to the Oscar-winning science fiction film Interstellar, has created music eerily similar to that of NASA’s latest sound.
NASA has released an audio recording of a black hole in the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster more than 200 million light-years from Earth, recorded by the Chandra X-ray Observatory (pictured)
In previous efforts to sonify astronomical data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, various musical instruments such as violins have recreated the noise.
NASA said of the process of amplifying sound waves: “Another way to say this is that they sound 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency.”
The sound was released to celebrate NASA’s Black Hole Week this year and was included as part of NASA’s Universe of Learning program.
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