Sound in Space: The Black Hole Hum and Other Phenomena Explained

INDONESIANS – When someone is thrown into outer space, screaming screaming for help, will that sound be heard? No one not even the space station heard. There is a vast vacuum of space, and many think that sound does not exist in outer space.

Outer space is not completely soundless, because it is filled with many objects such as stars, clouds of gas and dust. The interstellar gas is dense enough to transmit sound, but at frequencies inaudible to humans.

Sound in space exists. How could that be? An analogy is like an exploding firecracker, this will push the nearest air molecules. Molecules that are displaced will collide with each other (molecules) neighbors, continuously moving is known as a wave. They will vibrate (oscillation) up and down (like the ripples of water waves). One oscillation per second is translated as a frequency of one Hertz (Hz).

Dense media carries sound with shorter wavelengths, and vice versa. Sounds with longer wavelengths have lower frequencies, and we know them as low pitches.

Also read: Did you know, one-third of the most common planets in the galaxy are in the habitable zone

In a gaseous medium, sound waves travel at a very low frequency, inaudible to humans. These waves are called infrasound. Humans are unable to hear sounds below 20 Hz. If only we had super hearing, these very low notes would sound appealing to our ears.

There are three types of sound trails in space:

• black hole hum (blackhole song)
• Groaning planet (The groaning earth)
• The initial big bang (sound of big-bang)

Blackhole song (black hole hum). aka black hole blackhole is the phenomenon of the destruction of a star sucked in its own gravity. In 2003 NASA’s Chandra-X telescope captured sound from blackhole Perseus within 250 million light years (about 7.4 trillion km) of super-low frequency, about a billion times (1,000,000,000,000 x) lower than the lowest frequency that humans can hear. The lowest sound we can hear is one cycle oscillation every 20 seconds. Blackhole Perseus has a cycle of one oscillation per 10,000,000 years. And it’s playing out all the time. The Chandra X telescope found patterns in the filling gas Perseus form cluster, concentric rings light and dark, like ripples in a pond.