NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope’s observatory recorded the sound waves of the black hole and it was released during NASA’s Black Hole Week, 2022. The audio surfaced on the internet in the month of May, 2022. Since then, space enthusiasts and pages on the web often shares the audio from time to time for various purposes.
The sound of a black hole. Recorded by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory 😱
pic.twitter.com/KJQsyjJ4vs— Latest in space (@latestinspace) August 9, 2022
The black hole is situated at the centre of the Perseus galaxy, more than 200 light-years away from Earth. The Chandra X-ray initially recorded the black hole’s sound waves as astronomical data and later translated it into sound. NASA stated back then that the black hole at the centre of the Perseus galaxy has been associated with sound since 2003.
According to astronomers, the pressure waves sent out by the black hole causes ripples in the cluster’s hot has which can be translated into a note. This particular note lies below 57 octaves of middle C. Thus humans cannot hear this note.
There exists a misconception that space doesn’t have any sound. However, according to astronomers, the hot has shrouding Perseus can be translated into audio. This gas that surrounds hundreds and thousands of galaxies paves a way for sound waves to travel through.
The audio that we hear is a re-synthesized audio by NASA. NASA re-synthesized the captured audio to human hearing range by scaling it 57 or 58 octaves above their real pitch. It is this audio that we hear as the black hole’s sound.
