Name: Golden Record: Kiss, Mother And Child by NASA
Duration: 24 s
Description: This is a sound that was electronically placed onboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft.

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

Between Earth and the Sun, space is not truly empty but is filled with a soup of charged particles called plasma. This plasma comes from the Sun, pumped out in a steady stream called the solar wind and sporadically blasted away in explosive solar eruptions. When this solar plasma strikes Earth, it causes the magnetic field lines and plasma around Earth to vibrate like the plucked strings of a harp, producing ultralow-frequency waves.

In 2007, NASA launched five satellites to fly through Earth’s magnetic “harp” – its magnetosphere – as part of the THEMIS mission (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms). Since then, THEMIS has been gathering a bounty of information about plasma waves across Earth’s magnetosphere. 

The frequencies of the waves THEMIS measures are too low for our ears to hear, however. So a NASA citizen science project called HARP – or Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas – has sped up the waves recorded by THEMIS to convert them to sound waves.

In this clip from March 2-5, 2012, whistle sounds are repeatedly heard over ambient background whooshes and crunches. The whistles change in pitch as a THEMIS spacecraft moves toward and away from Earth on three orbits, with a maximum altitude of about 50,000 miles. These sounds are related to Earth’s magnetic harp, which has longer magnetic strings and lower pitches farther away from Earth. These three orbits happened when the solar wind was relatively quiet, but it’s still able to pluck the strings of Earth’s magnetic harp while also causing many other types of magnetic vibrations, most of which sound like background whooshes and crunches.

Multiple Passes through the Magnetospheric Harp on March 2-5, 2012

Courtesty of Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS)aboard NASA’s Van Allen Probes team at the University of Iowa

Chorus Radio Waves within Earth's Atmosphere

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which were monitored by our Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

Cassini: Saturn Radio Emissions #2

This is a sound that was electronically placed onboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. 

Golden Record: Train

Golden Record: Kiss, Mother And Child

Golden Record: Life Signs, Pulsar

This is a greeting to the universe that was electronically placed on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft.

English Translation: "May all be very well"

Golden Record: Akkadian Greeting

This is a greeting to the universe that was electronically placed on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft.

English Translation: "Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."

Golden Record: Amoy (Min Dialect)Greeting

Juno will improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter.

Juno: Crossing Jupiter's Bow Shock

Before settling into orbit around Saturn, Cassini faced a white-knuckle ride through the plane of the planet’s rings. When converted into an audio file, the interstellar cacophony is reminiscent of a hellstorm on Earth.

Cassini Shields Up

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.

Golden Record: Kiss, Mother And Child

NASA

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