According to NASA, This Is What a Black Hole Sounds Like. It’s Scary

NASA Shares the Sound of a Black Hole

In a recent social media post, the NASA Exoplanets team shared a 34-second audio clip that purports to be the sound of a black hole. This post challenged the common misconception that there is no sound in space. The audio clip was published on social media and quickly gained widespread attention.

The Misconception of Silent Space

The idea that space is silent is a common misconception. The NASA Exoplanets team notes that a galaxy cluster, such as the Perseus galaxy cluster, contains so much gas that it enables the capture of actual sound waves. The black hole’s pressure waves generate ripples in the heated gas, which can then be translated into audible sound.

How the Black Hole Sound Was Created

The audio clip presents a sonification of data collected from the Perseus galaxy cluster. Astronomers have been able to connect the black hole’s activity in this cluster with sound since 2003. The sound waves were amplified and mixed with other data to make them audible to the human ear. The original frequency of the sound is incredibly low, about 57 octaves below middle C. To make the sounds audible, the transmissions were increased 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their initial frequency. Thus, the audio clip is not an exact representation of what one would hear near a black hole, given that humans could even perceive such sounds.

The Perseus Galaxy Cluster

It is important to note that the Perseus galaxy cluster is located approximately 240 million light-years away from Earth.

Viral Reaction

The audio clip quickly went viral, amassing over 14 million views in a short time. Many social media users described the sound as creepy. Others found it somewhat Halloween-appropriate or oddly relatable.

Read also: Music Synthesized From a Black Hole 14 Billion Miles Away – Listen!