[Music]
black holes are some of the strangest
and most fascinating objects in space
they're extremely dense with such strong
gravitational fields that not even light
can escape their grasp
[Music]
because nothing can escape a black hole
they are invisible making them very
difficult to find however by using
special telescopes we have detected them
by studying the influence they have on
their surroundings
but what some of you may be surprised to
find out is that we can also listen to
these elusive cosmic monsters and nasa
has recently released the audio of a
super massive black hole located
250 million light years away
now i know many of you will be thinking
if space is a vacuum then sound cannot
travel through it but it turns out that
this is a popular misconception
although most of space is essentially a
vacuum providing no medium for sound
waves to propagate through a galaxy
cluster on the other hand has ample
amounts of gas drifting between the
hundreds or even thousands of galaxies
within it this means that sound waves
emanating from a supermassive black hole
can travel many light years through this
thin surrounding medium
the audio recording you're about to hear
was created after astronomers in 2003
discovered that sound waves sent out by
a supermassive black hole caused ripples
through the hot gas at the center of the
perseus galaxy cluster which is located
250 million light years away
these sound waves were recorded by
nasa's chandra x-ray observatory but
cannot be heard by humans the pitch is
well below the limits of our hearing but
for the first time astronomers have
extracted these sound waves and made
them audible
the sound waves were extracted in radial
directions as you will see in the
animation that comes with the recording
the signals were then re-synthesized
into the range of human hearing by
scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves
above their true pitch
another way to put it is that they are
being heard
144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion
times higher than their original
frequency
the result is this eerie intergalactic
howl this is the sound of a distant
supermassive black hole ringing
throughout the universe
[Music]
did you think this sound was eerie let
me know in the comments section below if
you want to listen to more other worldly
sounds then why not check out this video
about what the surface of mars sounds
like
thank you so much for watching remember
to subscribe for many more incredible
videos i'll see you all next time
[Music]
you