Thanks to the sonification process, NASA has created a real ‘song’ of a black hole! Listen to the result
Since 2003, the black hole in the center of of Perseus (Abell 426) was associated with a sound. That’s because astronomers found that pressure waves emitted by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note that humans can’t hear about 57 octaves below middle C. Sonification is possible thanks to the variation in brightness: the frequencies can be translated into an audible signal even to humans. The result is simply fantastic and the The following video is proof of this:
Advertisement
Sonification
The idea that there is no sound in space originates from the fact that most space is essentially a vacuum, providing no means for propagation of sound waves. The sound waves, in this case, were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the center. The signals were then synthesized back into the range of human hearing by scaling them up 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch.
so much gas
A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas enveloping hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing a medium for sound waves to travel. In this new sonification of the Perseus galaxy cluster about 240 million light years from Earth (it is part of the supercluster called Perseus-Pisces), the sound waves previously identified by astronomers have been extracted and made audible for the first time with a fantastic result that you have just heard.
Read more:
