The audio clip is filled with high-frequency “whistles and crackles” that occur when plasma waves hit our planet’s magnetic field lines, causing them to “vibrate like harps”, the space agency said.

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The space between the Earth and the Sun may seem empty, but it’s actually filled with plasma, ionized gas, and other high-energy particles that travel from the Sun to our planet, either as slow solar winds or fast bursts in a solar storm. When these plasma waves enter the Earth’s magnetosphere, which protects us from dangerous solar winds and radiation, create oscillations or vibrations that emit “ultra-low frequency” radio waves.

The new audio clip, released April 17, is part of NASA’s Heliophysics in Sound: Resonances in Plasma (HARP) program. Converts data about Earth’s magnetosphere into audio tracks. As part of the mission, 5 satellites were launched into space, flying in the magnetosphere and recording these ultra-low frequency waves. They’ve been doing this for over 15 years.

Now HARP transformed the data from these satellites into audible sounds., to facilitate the identification of irregularities in the Earth’s plasma shield. Such an analysis could lead to new discoveries about the magnetosphere and the Sun. The goal of the project is to enable scientists to listen to audio clips and identify unusual patterns., so researchers can study them more deeply. Converting data to audio helps people spot irregularities more easily.

This is how the earth’s magnetosphere sounds: audio clip

The team has already made a discovery by taking earlier audio tracks that contain patterns that contradict what they had previously predicted. They called these unexpected sounds the “reverse harp” and will delve deeper into the intriguing perturbations in the future. They hope the project will bring even more unexpected discoveries in the near future.