NASA Recorded The Sound From a Black Hole, and It's Super Eerie

An audio clip of sound waves rippling out of a black hole has been released by NASA.

The acoustic waves coming from the black hole are so loud that they can be heard.

The result, which was released by NASA in May, sounds a bit angry and spooky.

This is the first time these sound waves have been heard.

This recording has something going on. We can't hear sound in space, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.

The sound of acoustic waves coming from the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster was detected in 2003 and is now known for its eerie wails.

They wouldn't be heard at their current pitch. The lowest note ever detected by humans is included in the waves.

The sonification has brought the recording up to a whole lot of octaves, so we can get a sense of what they would sound like, ringing through space.

The B-flat is the lowest note, and it is 10 million years old. One-twentieth of a second is how long it takes for a note to be detected by humans.

The sound waves were played in an anti-clockwise direction from the center so that we could hear the sounds in all directions from the black hole.

Like many of the waves recorded from space, the result is an eerie one.

The sounds are not just curiosities. The intercluster medium is denser and hotter than the intergalactic medium outside of the clusters.

Sound waves can be heated by moving energy through the medium.

Sound waves may play a vital role in the evolution of galaxy clusters because of the temperature regulation.

Sound waves can be detected by the heat. The medium glows bright in X-rays because it's so hot. The sonification project was allowed by the Chandra X-ray observatory.

The sonification treatment was given to another black hole. The first black hole to be directly imaged by a telescope was also imaged by other instruments.

Chandra for X-rays and Hubble for visible light are included.

The images show a huge jet of material being launched from the space immediately outside the black hole, at speeds that look like light in a vacuum. They have also been Sonified.

The data was not sound waves but light in different frequencies. The lowest frequencies have the least pitch in the sonification. X-rays are at the top of the range.

The method of turning visual data into sound can be fun and useful.

Sometimes, changing a dataset can reveal hidden details that allow for more detailed discoveries.

The first version of this article was published in May of 1992.