The sound emitted by the space agency comes from a black hole at the center of the galaxy.
The sound emitted by the space agency comes from a black hole at the center of the galaxy.
The passage of sound waves through space has traditionally been thought to be impossible because sound waves do not penetrate the vacuum that extends through the universe. However, space can be surprisingly noisy under the right conditions, Vice writes.
According to the American space agency NASA, the sound can be produced, for example, when hot gas surrounds the black hole in the middle of the Perseus galaxy group. NASA posted a video on Twitter showing sound waves passing through the gas and plasma of the galaxy cluster.
The Perseus galaxy cluster is located 250 million light years from Earth. The sounds produced by the black hole were first identified in 2003 by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. However, they have not previously been converted to be heard by the human ear.
NASA wrote in its statement that the sound waves previously collected by astronomers were separated and heard for the first time. In its natural environment, the sounds produced by a black hole are astonishingly low. To make the sounds audible to humans, scientists boosted the frequencies millions and billions of times.