Blackholes may still be one of the great mysteries of space, but at least scientists now know what they sound like.
On Sunday, NASA tweeted a 34-second audio clip featuring the sound of a black hole located 200 million light-years away.
“The misconception that there is no sound inspace originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel,” the agency said in a post on its NASA Exoplanets Twitter page.
“A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound,” they wrote. “Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”
The post quickly went viral, garnering more than 429,000 likes and 101,000 retweets on the platform.
Many on social media shared their differing opinions on the sound featured in the clip, which many described as being eery.
“I’m not religious, but I’m starting to think that those souls sent to Hell actually end up in a black hole,” wrote one user. “Sound ON to be horrified.”
Added another: “Everyone keeps talking about how scary this sounds but genuinely to me it just sounds like the song it makes. Everything vibrates and has a hum to it, she’s just singing to us.”
According to NASA, the black hole is located at the center of the Perseus galaxy, located 240 million light-years from Earth.
Scientists have known since 2003 that the area is filled with sound after pressure waves sent out by the black hole “caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note,” the agency said in a news release from May.
But the note was one that the human ear can’t pick up, NASA explained, which is why they used technology to interpret the sound.
Source: People.com