NASA just recorded actual sound in Space and it’s terrifying

A new audio clip from NASA depicts real sound waves rippling through gas and plasma in the Perseus galaxy cluster, which is 250 million light years away from Earth. The clip is unsettling.

Since at least 1988, this unexplained pulsating light known as GPM J1839–10 has been blinking in space every 21 minutes, and scientists are still attempting to identify what it is.

Since there is no medium for sound waves to travel through, the majority of space is a vacuum, which contributes to the widespread perception that it is silent.

But there's so much gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster that scientists have actually discovered sound waves there. These sound waves have never before been brought within the human ear's hearing range, despite being initially discovered in 2003 in data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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

This black hole is a cosmic baritone because the sound waves it emits are located 57 octaves below the note middle C in its native habitat. Scientists increased these earthquakes' frequencies quadrillions of times to make them audible to humans. The result is a spooky sound that sounds great on a Halloween soundtrack.

This finding falls within the category of "space sonification," which is the audio conversion of astronomical data. It takes us one step closer to solving the riddles of space and creates new avenues for understanding the universe. We should expect to come across more of these off-Earth bops as we carry out additional space exploration, as each one holds the potential to provide fresh perspectives on the cosmos.