Have you heard about black holes — objects in space with so much mass packed into such a small region that not even light can escape them? Now you can listen to the "sounds" of a black hole! 

This playlist is filled with data sonifications (scientific data converted into sound) of these bizarre cosmic objects. Plus, adventure inside a black hole in an episode of our Curious Universe podcast.

Black Hole Sounds

Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note — one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. A new sonification — that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound — is being released in time for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.

In some ways, this sonification is unlike any other done before because it revisits the actual sound waves discovered in data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The popular misconception that there is no sound in space originates with the fact that most of space is essentially a vacuum, providing no medium for sound waves to propagate through. A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas that envelops the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing an avenue for the sound waves to travel.

In this new sonification of Perseus, the sound waves that were previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time. The sound waves were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the center. The signals were then resynthesized into the range of human hearing by scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch. Another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 and 288 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) times higher than their original frequency. The radar-like scan around the image allows you to hear waves emitted in different directions. In the visual image of these data, blue and purple both show X-ray data captured by Chandra.

Learn more: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/sonify5/ 

Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Black Hole Sonification: Perseus

Studied by scientists for decades, the black hole in Messier 87, or M87, gained celebrity status in science after the first release from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project in 2019. This new sonification does not feature the EHT data, but rather looks at data from other telescopes that observed M87 on much wider scales at roughly the same time. The image in visual form contains three panels that are, from top to bottom, X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, optical light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. The sonification scans across the three-tiered image from left to right, with each wavelength mapped to a different range of audible tones. Radio waves are mapped to lowest tones, optical data to medium tones, and X-rays detected by Chandra to the highest tones. The brightest part of the image corresponds to the loudest portion of the sonification, which is where astronomers find the 6.5 billion solar mass black hole that EHT imaged.

Learn more: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/sonify5/ 

Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Black Hole Sonification: M87

NASA’s Webb Telescope uncovered two views of the Southern Ring Nebula – in near-infrared light (at left in the track image) and mid-infrared light (at right in the track image) – and each has been adapted to sound.

In this sonification, the colors in the images were mapped to pitches of sound – frequencies of light converted directly to frequencies of sound. Near-infrared light is represented by a higher range of frequencies at the beginning of the track. Mid-way through, the notes change, becoming lower overall to reflect that mid-infrared includes longer wavelengths of light.
 
Listen carefully at 15 seconds and 44 seconds. These notes align with the centers of the near- and mid-infrared images, where the stars at the center of the “action” appear. In the near-infrared image that begins the track, only one star is heard clearly, with a louder clang. 

In the second half of the track, listeners will hear a low note just before a higher note, which denotes that two stars were detected in mid-infrared light. The lower note represents the redder star that created this nebula, and the second is the star that appears brighter and larger.
 
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-webb-s-first-full-color-images-data-are-set-to-sound

Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI; Accessibility Production: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Kimberly Arcand (CXC/SAO), Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida (SYSTEM Sounds), Quyen Hart (STScI), Claire Blome (STScI), and Christine Malec (consultant).

Webb’s Southern Ring Nebula Sonification

Messier 104 (M104 for short), located about 28 million light-years from Earth, is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is angled nearly edge-on allowing a view of its bright core and spiral arms wrapped around it. Spitzer's infrared view of M104 shows a ring of dust circling the galaxy that pierces through the obscuring dust in Hubble’s optical light image. Spitzer also sees an otherwise hidden disk of stars within the dust ring. The Chandra X-ray image shows hot gas in the galaxy and point sources that are a mixture of objects within M104 as well as quasars in the background. The Chandra observations show that diffuse X-ray emission extends over 60,000 light years from the center of the M104. (The galaxy itself spans 50,000 light years across.) In sonifying these data, we can listen to each type of light either separately or together. Either option begins at the top and scans toward the bottom of the image. The brightness controls the volume and the pitch, meaning the brightest sources in the image are the loudest and highest frequencies. The data from the three telescopes are mapped to different types of sounds. The X-rays from Chandra sound like a synthesizer, Spitzer’s infrared data are strings, and optical light from Hubble has bell-like tones. The core of the galaxy, its dust lanes and spiral arms, and point-like X-ray sources are all audible features in the sonification of these data.

M104 Sonification

For the first time, NASA released a sonification simultaneously with news results associated with two of its telescopes, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The data cover the region near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, is barely seen in the lower right-hand of the visual image that contains X-ray data from IXPE (red-orange) and Chandra (purple). In the sonification of these data, the cursor begins at Sagittarius A* and moves out as a growing circle toward the center of the image. As it encounters IXPE data, the volume of the notes changes according to the brightness of the X-rays. The brighter the Chandra data, the higher the musical pitch and vice versa. When the cursor travels over a large patch of X-rays both from Chandra and IXPE in the center of the image, a rushing sound is heard. This region is where scientists find a “light echo,” a high-energy relic left behind from an eruption from Sagittarius A* about 200 years ago.

Sagittarius A* Light Echo Sonification

One of the surprising features of black holes is that although light (such as radio, visible, and X-rays) cannot escape from them, surrounding material can produce intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. As they travel outward, these blasts of light can bounce off clouds of gas and dust in space, similar to how light beams from a car’s headlight will scatter off fog.
A new sonification turns these “light echoes” from the black hole called V404 Cygni into sound. Located about 7,800 light-years from Earth, V404 Cygni is a system that contains a black hole, with a mass between five and 10 times the Sun’s, that is pulling material from a companion star in orbit around it. The material is funneled into a disk that encircles the stellar-mass black hole.
This material periodically generates bursts of radiation, including X-rays. As the X-rays travel outward they encounter clouds of gas and dust in between V404 Cygni and Earth and are scattered at various angles. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have imaged the X-ray light echoes around V404 Cygni. Because astronomers know exactly how fast light travels and have determined an accurate distance to this system, they can calculate when these eruptions occurred. This data, plus other information, helps astronomers learn more about the dust clouds, including their composition and distances.

V404 Cygni Sonification

This image shows the region around the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), in infrared (orange and purple) and X-ray light (blue). The image is scanned from left to right and the data are transformed into sound. The brightness of the objects is represented by the volume, while the vertical positions of the sources in the image are mapped to musical pitches. X-rays are played with a soft synthesizer and the infrared data are heard as bass notes and plucked sounds. The brightest region in the middle of the image (and hence the loudest) is where Sgr A* the black hole, resides. It is within this area that the Event Horizon Telescope was able to peer to obtain the first image of Sgr A* itself.

Sagittarius A* Sonification

wind blows inside of me

https://soundcloud.com/user-417060945
https://soundcloud.com/beti-frim

whitegirlstudyplaylist & pixel bambi - pink nrg rising

Ring

集まった影の中　私は足跡を残し
点と点を移動する　人々の流れを見る
わたしはただ空白が欲しくなって
言葉と言葉の間をなぞる

緑（みどり）　石（いし）　移ろい（うつろい）　春（はる）

すぐにわすれてしまう記憶や
景色を留めるものがあるならば

椅子（いす）　影（かげ）　ピアノ　形（かたち）

名前（なまえ）文字（もじ）音（おと）光（ひかり）

haru

Asteroid Skipper

Two Years Since I Last Saw You

Sleep Research Facility - A-Deck

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida

Chandra X-ray Observatory: M16 Xray

Hello, we’re NASA. You may have seen our astronauts, rocket launches, or Mars rovers — but have you heard our sounds? From interviews with astronauts and engineers to stories that take you on a tour of the galaxy, NASA’s audio offerings let you experience the thrill of space exploration without ever leaving Earth.

Black Hole Sonification: Perseus

NASA

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