How Does Black Hole 250 Million Light Years Away Sound? NASA Releases Audio

US space agency NASA has recorded an eerie audio clip that captures sound waves coming out of a supermassive black hole situated 250 million light years away. The acoustic waves, coming out of the black hole located at the heart of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, were transposed up 57 and 58 octaves to make them audible for human ears.

The audio was released in 2022 and it was the first time when the sound waves were extracted and made audible.

Sound waves do exist in space, even though we might not be able to hear them naturally.

In a surprising discovery in 2003, astronomers detected acoustic waves rippling out through the huge amounts of gas surrounding the supermassive black hole at the Perseus galaxy cluster, which is now popular for its eerie wails.

It is difficult to hear them at their current pitch as it includes the lowest note ever detected in the universe by humans – much below the limits of human hearing.

NASA's recent sonification has majorly amplified these sound waves, in order to get a sense of how they would sound like while ringing through the intergalactic space.

The lowest note, which was identified in 2003, is a B-flat and is located over 57 octaves below middle C, the report said, adding that its frequency is 10 million years at that pitch.

It is to be noted that the lowest note that can be detected by human ears has a frequency of one-twentieth of a second.

After being extracted radically from the supermassive black hole, these sound waves were played in an anti-clockwise direction from the center. 

This was done to make them audible in all directions from the supermassive black hole at the enhanced pitches of 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion higher then their original frequency.

Like several other waves recorded from space, the result for this one was eerie too. 

The tenuous gas and plasma, which drifts between the galaxies, in clusters known as the 'intracluster medium' is denser and much hotter than the intergalactic medium outside it. As the temperatures help to regulate star formation, hence sound waves could play a pivotal role in galaxy clusters' evolution over longer periods.