Black holes are one of the most awe-inspiring astronomical objects among scientists because of the mysteries they still hide. We didn’t know what they looked like until a few years ago, and now NASA has also given us an idea of ​​what they sound like, despite the misconception that there is no sound in space.

A misunderstanding, explains POTThis occurs because most of space is a vacuum that does not allow sound waves to travel through. However, they were able to capture real sound from a black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster, where there is so much gas that provides a medium for sound waves to travel.

can be heard for the first time

This was possible because astronomers discovered that the pressure waves sent by the black hole cause fluctuations in the hot gas of the cluster that a human cannot hear, 57 octaves below middle C, which can be translated into one note.

These sound waves, previously detected by astronomers, were extracted and made audible for the first time. Signals were resynthesized into the range of human hearing by scaling 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch.

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These sonifications were made by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). They were included as part of NASA’s Universe of Learning (UoL) program, with additional support from the Hubble Space Telescope and Goddard Space Flight Center.

The collaboration was spearheaded by visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand (CXC), astrophysicist Matt Russo, and musician Andrew Santaguida (both from the SYSTEMS Sound project).

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