American space agency NASA has released the sound of a black hole, which can be heard by human ears. This black hole sits 200 light years away in the Perseus galaxy cluster, according to a report in Mashable. Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so intense that not even light can escape. The audio of the black hole’s sound has been posted by NASA on its Twitter handle where it also explained how does sound travel in vacuum.
“The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound. Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole,” NASA said on its Twitter account dedicated to exoplanets.
The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound. Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole! pic.twitter.com/RobcZs7F9e
— NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) August 21, 2022
The clip has sound resembling to rumbling and groaning, similar to soundtrack of a Stranger Things episode, but it’s actually pressure waves rippling through the hot gas. The eerie, scary and mysterious sound is often heard in sci-fi movies during space travels.
The sound has been created from the data captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the recording was originally released back in May this year.
Last month, astronomers spotted a dormant black hole in a galaxy adjacent to our Milky Way. They said it appears to have been born without the explosion of a dying star.
The scientists said that the great void discovered in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy differs from all other known black holes in that it is “X-ray quiet” – not emitting powerful X-ray radiation indicative of gobbling up nearby material with its strong gravitational pull – and that it was not born in a stellar blast called a supernova.
It is located about 160,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, (which is approximately 9.5 trillion km).