US space agency NASA has recorded an eerie audio clip that captures sound waves emanating from a giant black hole located 250 million light-years away. The acoustic waves emanating from the black hole located at the centre of the Perseus cluster of galaxies were shifted up 57 and 58 octaves to make them audible to human ears.
The audio was released in 2022 and was the first time sound waves were extracted and made audible.
Sound waves exist in space, even if we cannot hear them naturally.
In a surprising discovery in 2003, astronomers detected acoustic waves from the vast volume of gas surrounding a supermassive black hole located in the Perseus galaxy cluster, now popular for its terrifying screams.
They are difficult to hear at the current volume, because it includes the lowest sound ever heard by humans in the universe – far below the range of human hearing.
NASA’s recent soundings have amplified these sound waves significantly, allowing us to understand what they might sound like as they pass through intergalactic spaces.
The report says the lowest note, identified in 2003, is B-flat, 57 octaves below middle C, and that its frequency at that note is 10 million years.
It is worth noting that the lowest sound frequency that can be heard by the human ear is equal to one twentieth of a second.
After being ejected from the supermassive black hole, these sound waves were transmitted in a counterclockwise direction from the centre.
This was done so that they would hear sounds emanating from the supermassive black hole in all directions that were between 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times louder than their original frequency.
Like many other waves recorded from space, the result was terrifying.
The thin gas and plasma flowing between galaxies, known as the ‘intracluster medium’, is denser and much hotter than the inter-galactic medium outside it. Since temperature helps regulate star formation, sound waves may play an important role in the evolution of galaxy clusters over the long term.