As you probably know, sound can’t travel through the vacuum of space.
However, there is a process to turn scientific data into audio, called sonification.
While this may not have huge scientific implications, it does help us “see” space in a new way.
Now, you may think this is weird, but I want you to shut your eyes and listen carefully.
I’ll tell you when you can open them again.
Keep your eyes closed.
This beautiful piece of music is not randomly generated, not composed per se, but is the
sonification of an image of the centre of our galaxy, a 400ly region of space around
the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.
Now, listen again and I’ll give you context to what you are listening to.
The translation of the image goes from left to right.
Each ding you hear is a star, differing each time depending on that star’s brightness
and size in the image.
The gas and dust structures found near our galaxy’s centre fill the image, producing
much longer, droning sounds.
Now, imagine you were blind from birth.
What you are listening to now may have just been your first experience of what space could
look like.
Truly you can get a slight appreciation from just this of the vastness of space, and how
fully it is occupied by celestial bodies in just 400ly across.
Now, open your eyes.
Is this image how you imagined it looking?
Shut your eyes again throughout the rest of this video.
The particular image is a composite image of various wavelengths of light, taken with
a number of different telescopes.
Telescopes are instruments that are designed to pick up different wavelengths of light,
and adding them together in this case creates the full image, just like how the combination
of different instruments playing their own lines in an orchestra creates a beautiful
musical composition.
When we separate the lines of the piece, or in other words, separate the wavelengths of
light, we hear the image differently.
If we focus on the Chandra X-ray Telescope’s view of the same region, the image sounds
a lot emptier.
The main focus of this line of music is the superheated gas surrounding the supermassive
black hole found in the centre of our galaxy.
It’s the noisiest source here, building up into a crescendo as we pass over it.
The
Spitzer telescope’s music of the infrared showcases not only more stars, but the hum
of cooler, complex dust structures are also much more apparent here.
And lastly, the music of visible light through the Hubble Space Telescope.
The droning sound here is from the particularly dense regions of dust and gas structures,
where star formation is actively taking place.
Put them all together, and we have our composite image again, and our full orchestral piece.
This process can be done with many different images of space.
Do you know of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A?
Well, whether you know it or not, try and guess its structure from just listening to
the sonification of its image, this time from the centre of the image, outwards.
There’s no ding sounds this time as there are no stars in this image, just the ups and
downs in intensity of the nebula’s structure.
And how about this?
The Pillars of Creation, from left to right.
There are
the occasional stars here, and the location and intensity of the nebula’s structure
can sort of be imagined.
So, there we have it, space in sound form.
And maybe an insight too as to how you could experience space if you were blind.
Were you good and you only opened your eyes when you were supposed to?
I suggest now watching over this video one more time with your eyes open to visualise
and give context to what you were hearing.
It may surprise you.
And with that, thanks for watching!
This video is a little different from my other videos, but I was really impressed with this
process of sonification from the Chandra team at Harvard.
Do let me know if you want something similar to this in the future.
If you want more space related videos, be sure to subscribe and if you can, supporting
me as a YT member or through Patreon would really help too, and a big thanks to those
of you that do.
So, all the best, and see you next time.