NASA has unveiled an eerie audio clip, capturing sound waves from a supermassive black hole 250 million light-years away. This haunting audio, released in 2022, was created by transposing the black hole’s sound waves up by 57 and 58 octaves to make them audible to the human ear. The black hole is located at the heart of the Perseus galaxy cluster, and the resulting audio is an unsettling, howling sound.

In space, we can't naturally hear sound, but sound waves do exist. In 2003, astronomers made a surprising discovery: acoustic waves rippling through the gas surrounding the supermassive black hole in Perseus. This particular black hole has now become famous for these eerie sound waves. While we can't hear them at their original pitch, they include the lowest note ever detected in the universe—well below human hearing limits.

NASA Reveals the Eerie Sounds of a Black Hole

NASA’s recent sonification has amplified these waves, giving us a glimpse of how they would sound in intergalactic space. The original note, identified in 2003, is a B-flat, situated more than 57 octaves below middle C. To put this in perspective, its frequency is 10 million years per cycle, compared to a mere fraction of a second for human-audible sounds.

The sound waves were extracted radially from the supermassive black hole and then played anti-clockwise to cover all directions. This enhanced pitch is now 144 quadrillion to 288 quadrillion times higher than the original. The result is a spine-chilling audio, much like other cosmic waves that have been converted into sound.

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The Science Behind Sound Waves in Space

These sound waves have more than just spooky appeal. The gas and plasma drifting between galaxies in clusters, called the intracluster medium, is much denser and hotter than the intergalactic medium. Sound waves travelling through this medium help distribute energy, warming the plasma. This process influences star formation, potentially playing a critical role in the development of galaxy clusters.

The heat from the intracluster medium is also what allows us to detect these waves. Thanks to the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the waves were first identified and later used for sonification.

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