By Tim Binnall
NASA has released an eerie audio clip which features the rather unsettling sounds of a back hole located at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. Initially produced by the space agency back in May, the unnerving noises caught the public's attention when they were shared by the Twitter account of NASA's exoplanet research division over the weekend. "The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel," the space agency said with the caveat that a galaxy cluster is different because it "has so much gas" that they are able to extract sound waves from the celestial location.
The sound waves emanating from the Perseus black hole were actually discovered back in 2003 when astronomers found that "pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster's hot gas that could be translated into a note." While that noise would normally be inaudible to human ears, the space agency extracted, amplified, and remixed those waves earlier this year to produce a 'sonification,' which they described as the "translation of astronomical data into sound." When the audio clip was posted on social media this past Saturday, it quickly went viral with many people marveling at the haunting nature of the noise.