The voice of space: what a black hole sounds like

NASA has unveiled a recording of sound waves emanating from a black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster, 250 million light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have long known that the black hole in Perseus emits pressure waves propagating through a huge cloud of hot gas.

These waves have frequencies so high and low that the human ear cannot perceive them.

Among them is the lowest note ever recorded in the universe, which is well below the limits of our hearing.

NASA has managed to convert these waves into sound so that we can hear them. This process, called “sonification,” translates the data into an audio format.

On Earth, sounds are produced by the vibrations of atoms and molecules in the air, but in space, because of the vacuum, sounds propagate differently – through the vibrations of space objects.