Is it a myth that there is no sound in space? An audio clip Nasa recently shared on Twitter may suggest so. The clip is 34 seconds long and has been viewed by 15 million. On TikTok, people are going crazy with excitement. And wonder. – Scary!, read many of the comments. The sound of a black hole So what exactly has Nasa shared? The special thing is that the source of the sound is stated to be a black hole. Yes, you read that right. The black hole is located at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The reason why it has been possible to get sound out of it is that researchers discovered something special: The black hole emits pressure waves. These create ripples in hot gas that can be translated into a … note. – A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we have captured actual sound, Nasa writes on Twitter. What does the sound remind you of? A piece of classical music The sound of a thousand lost souls Something you can hear the DJ playing in an alternative night club Have no idea Show result Had to do a lot of editing The note is about 57 octaves below middle C on a piano, equivalent to a B♭. Nasa has therefore “remixed” the sound, so that it is audible to us humans. – It is amplified and mixed with other data, so that you can hear a black hole, they write. Composer Raymond Enoksen, originally from Mosjøen in Nordland, thinks the researchers have done an exciting piece of “musical” work. – It sounds absolutely terrible. A horrible sound! But fascinating at the same time. Composer Raymond Enoksen could well imagine using the sound in a production. Photo: private Enoksen is himself the owner and main composer of Dreamscores, which is one of the country’s largest suppliers of music for TV productions. He has the piano as his main instrument, and could well consider using the sound clip as a starting point for a production. – I have to check the rights! – What genre? – This is exactly what I imagine could fit in a horror or thriller. Or as a starting point for a commissioned work in art music. WATCH VIDEO: He thinks there is one reason in particular why the clip is attracting people: Researcher: – Exciting Svein-Erik Hamran from Fauske in Nordland has been central during the construction of the Norwegian georadar “Rimfax” on Mars. He also finds this interesting. – Yes, this was very exciting, says Hamran, who, in addition to research on Mars, makes music in his spare time. – They see that there are density variations in the gas around the galaxy which they believe originates from a black hole. They then measure this and turn it into sound. – Does this shatter the myth that the room is without sound? – It’s not a sound we would have heard if we had been there. But it can be called sound. Far away, Nasa has long worked on “sonifying” scientific data, and has its own website where you can hear sounds from the universe. The aim is to communicate scientific findings in simple language on social media, something that can be said to be successful. The Perseus galaxy cluster is about 240 million light-years away. Photo: NASA/CXC/IoA/A. Fabian et al. The “sonification” of the black hole in Perseus was also shared by Nasa earlier this year – as part of Nasa’s “Black Hole Week”. But has now “exploded” online, after Sunday’s Twitter message went viral. Several foreign news media have picked up on the “talk ice” this week. Among others, the Washington Post, which notes that the sound waves were actually identified almost two decades ago – but only now made “audible”. At the same time, it is pointed out that one must not believe that this is the sound one would want to hear if, contrary to conjecture, one were to be at a black hole with a sound recorder. The sound you hear has been edited up 288 quadrillion times above its original frequency, according to Nasa. Critics have also pointed out that a number of assumptions must be made in the process of converting such data into sound (the galaxy clusters are, after all, far away from us). ALSO READ:
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The internet is boiling after NASA shared a sound clip of a black hole – news Nordland
