From the sound of planets crying to the booming roar of Jupiter, here are 7 more of the most
incredible sounds from Space!!!
7.)
Sound of Pluto In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft
transmitted numerous images and other data from Pluto and its moons.When it launched
in 2006, Pluto was still a planet, but a few months later it was downgraded to a dwarf
planet and is now officially known as “asteroid number 134340”.
From the detailed images it looks like Pluto's’ surface is covered with light and dark patterns
suggesting glaciers like on Earth.
It has a hazy blue layer which might be a similar haze to that of Saturn’s moon, Titan.
It sometimes has an atmosphere, when it’s elliptical orbit takes it closer to the sun
and its surface thaws.
There is also a bright spot on Pluto’s surface that has been informally named the “heart”
which measures 1600 km across.
Pluto is one-third water, which is more than 3 times as much water as in all the Earth’s
oceans.
The other two-thirds is rock.
The data from charged particles, magnetic fields, and low frequency radio emissions
was captured by New Horizons and converted into sound waves that we could all hear.
The New Horizons spacecraft was powered down as it travelled through the Kuiper Belt and
was woken up on September 11, 2017 for its 16 month journey to MU69, an ancient object
thought to be one of the early building blocks of the solar system.
Like Earth, there are several different sounds for Pluto that are mixed into one audio.
Some people actually describe sounds like crying, which might be because Pluto is known
as being lonely.
(Since it used to be the loneliest planet, and now it’s not even that which probably
makes it even more depressed!)
When you listen to the audio, you might feel Pluto creates a good melody with a mix of
whistling, vibrations, and maybe the sound you might hear when you pick up a shell and
listen to it.
Pluto tends to give off a high noise frequency during most of the audio, which gives it the
sense of a musical instrument, but it might be a bit eerie.
6.)
Music of the Stars Recently, due to stellar seismology, astronomers
have been able to give us audio on the sounds of the stars.
There are several different sounds of stars, and the bigger they are the louder they tend
to sound.
One such star that has been recorded is nicknamed Gemma by researchers at the University of
Birmingham, more officially known as the KIC 11026764, my favorite name!
This star tends to give off the sound of flickering, which many feel makes sense because of how
the stars tend to flicker in the night sky.
The data collected over a month was filtered to remove noise outside of the range of the
star’s strongest “tones”.
Gemma is approximately 534 lightyears away but it is still part of our galaxy.
Fun fact: Gemma is 1 billion years older than our own sun.
Since it is larger, Gemma resonates with a deep sound like a cello more than a violin.
Thanks to the Kepler telescope, scientists can now analyse the way that stars vibrate
which causes them to shrink and grow in size, temperature, and brightness.
The vibrations also carry a low-pitched sound which scientists have sped up 1 million times
to bring the oscillations within the range of human hearing.
5.)
Sound of Mars The sound of Mars is unlike any other sound
of a planet or star.
If you listen closely, you can hear what sound like metal, almost like metal scraping against
something or someone waving a piece of metal like a fan.
However, you may also describe this sound as banging or pounding on something.
Some people, who are fans of the movie or game Silent Hill, feel the sounds of Mars
would be great for the soundtrack!
This might be due to the whistling of what sounds like creepy wind.
The screeching sounds in the beginning are also a bit unsettling.
Reportedly, the weather on Mars consists of sandstorms, winds, and dust devils which reflects
in the sounds we hear.
These sounds were captured by the Mars Opportunity Rover which remains active as of 2017, and
has already exceeded its operating plan by almost 14 years!
Sadly, Opportunity started suffering from amnesia and was failing to write data properly.
Definitely an age related problem but since then the vehicle has been reset and is operating
in RAM mode only.
It still continues to explore the surface of Mars.
The Curiosity Rover arrived on Mars in 2012 after travelling for a year and having a complicated
landing.
NASA dubbed it “7 minutes of terror”.
No one wants to crash a $2.5 billion spacecraft.
The rover has been looking for habitability and taking samples of the surface, among other
things.
In 2020, NASA is scheduled to send a new rover to Mars, currently called the 2020 Mars Rover
since it doesn’t really have a name yet.
The new rover which will land in 2021, will collect samples and for the first time ever,
have a microphone thanks to the work of The Planetary Society, which has been trying to
get microphones sent to Mars for the past 20 years!!
The microphones will help add another human sense to the visual imagery found by the rovers.
Microphones have actually been sent to Mars before, but they have never actually worked.
This new rover will have 2, one for entry, descent, and landing- like for the “seven
minutes of terror” and another one that will be on the instrument used to take samples.
We should be able to hear blowing wind and wheels crunching in the future!
4.)
Eclipsing Binary Star The Kepler mission was launched in 2009 to
search for Earth-like planets around 150,000 stars.
The Kepler measures the vital signs of the stars, measuring their size, structure, and
age.
Scientists looked at thousands of giant stars that could represent the actual fate of our
own sun.
In total, Kepler found 1, 284 new exoplanets.
Another sound released by NASA was that of an eclipsing binary, or more formally, KIC
12268220.
These sounds come from turning information on the star’s light output into sound waves
with amplitudes (intensities) and frequencies (pitches or colors).
An eclipsing binary occurs when one star passes directly in front of the other as viewed from
Earth.
It is estimated that about half of all stars are binary.
When you listen to this track on NASA’s soundcloud, you can hear a beat.
The Kepler Star tends to keep a rhythm between a high pitched continuous noise and the lower
beat that sounds like a bass drum.
While this sound has made the eerie list of sounds NASA has recorded, for some it might
sound more like techno.
3.)
Interstellar Plasma Sounds A few years ago, NASA’s Voyager caught the
sounds of Interstellar Plasma, or Ionized Gas.
According to NASA, the Voyager was able to capture these dense plasma sounds not once,
but twice.
The audio begins with a faint high pitched tone that tends to rise.
It is believed that this rising tone means that the density at the time is increasing.
At the loudest, the high-pitched sound can be compared to a woman’s scream.
While some find these plasma sounds peaceful, others find it a bit scary.
The soundtrack reproduces the amplitude and frequency of the plasma waves as “heard”
by Voyager 1.
The waves detected by the instrument can be amplified and just played through a speaker
because the frequencies are within the range heard by human ears.
2.)
Whistler Waves One of the most unique sounds in the cosmos
are what is known as the Whistler Waves.
Researchers explain that these whistler waves occur during an electron microburst.
This sound seems like it would be something out of a video game.
If you listen, you can hear what seems to be birds chirping while there are a bunch
of lasers going off around them.
Whistler Waves can be found in the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Stanford recorded whistler data at stations in the northern hemisphere and Antarctica
and were able to discover the plasmapause, a sharp drop in electron density at several
places on Earth.
These small whistler waves can be found on other planet’s magnetic fields as well.
These sounds are basically the sound of electron loss that happens in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The Cubesat FIREBIRD II observed the microbursts from 310 miles above Earth.
Another satellite, a Van Allen Probe, also captured the sound and the two satellites
were able to record the whistler mode chorus, or the waves of fluctuating electric and magnetic
fields and moving electrons at the same time.
The date of the recording was published on Soundcloud and researchers believe it is these
waves that cause the bursts and scattering of electrons.
1.)
The Roar of Jupiter In June of 2016, NASA’s spacecraft, Juno,
recorded sounds many people are referring to as a creepy “roar”.
The audio begins with almost a whistling or high pitched screeching, similar to wind blowing
through the top of a bottle.
Then you get the bigger sound, which is more like a booming roar.
NASA has explained that the noise you can hear in the audio tape is actually what they
refer to as a bow shock, which happens when the spacecraft enters the planet’s magnetic
field that protects the planet from solarwinds.
The sound is produced when the supersonic solar winds that are hurtling through the
Solar System are suddenly slowed down and heated up as they plough into Jupiter's magnetosphere,
resulting in bow shock.
Also referred to as a sonic boom.
The bow shock lasted for about 2 hours, which is pretty amazing, considering Juno was traveling
at about 150,000 miles per hour!
Thanks for watching!
Be sure to check out part 1 for more amazing sounds!
What did you think of these sounds from space??
Let us know in the comments below.
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