By Alanna Hattori
Space, a mysterious and elusive part of our world, one filled with extremely powerful objects such as celestial meteor showers and asteroids, but by far the most powerful force in the universe is the black hole, with its ability to consume anything that dares to come too close, including stars, moons, and even whole planets. A couple of years ago, one of the most interesting things that NASA managed to capture was a clip of a black hole... singing.
To begin, what exactly is a black hole and what do they do? Well, "a black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into such a tiny space"(Wild). This shows how powerful black holes can be; they can just consume anything and everything around them, and since black holes are created when a star reaches the end of its life, the black holes still retain some of the star's powerful mass. These black holes then grow in size as they consume more and more matter. When the black hole increases in size, the point horizon of the black hole also increases in size, and the point horizon is the ultimate point of no return (Haynes). This means that as the black hole expands, things like matter, gas, or dust completely vanish when they enter the black hole due to the expanding point horizon. Overall, we can see all of the intricate and compelling details about the basics of the black hole, but how do these black holes sing?
Well, in 2003, NASA released a clip of a black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster emitting a strange, high-pitched tune. This clip baffled astronomers and people all around the world; not only were bodies in space making noise, which is strange enough, but most had been led to believe that noises could not be made in space. While sound waves can be heard on earth because we have mediums for the sound waves to move through, for example, air, where air molecules can vibrate and bump into each other, creating a chain reaction that transports the sound waves, in space there is no medium for the sound waves to travel through air or water (Scientific American). However the black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster is not like most other black holes; it also happens to be in a vast cloud of gas, providing a mode of transportation for the sound waves (Roberts), but how does the black hole create the sound?
Jonathan Blazek, a professor at Northeastern University with expertise in astrophysics and galaxy clusters, tries to explain this phenomenon. He says that due to all the gas around the black hole, it will start spitting out this energy in a sporadic way, similar to a speaker creating some frequency of sound. This means that the gasses in the hole are pushing against each other to create a physical sound wave (Blazek). This shows us how exactly the sound was able to be produced by the black hole in the first place, but the sound itself was too low for humans to hear, so it had to be edited up 57–58 octaves for humans to even hear the noise (Roberts). This then shows us exactly how this sound was able to be produced.
In conclusion, black holes have once again baffled scientists with the intricacies of their many capabilities, but overall, this is one step closer for researchers and astronauts to truly understand the structure and skills of black holes.
References
American, S. (2007). Strange but True: Black Holes Sing. Retrieved 7 November 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-black-holes-sing/
Hear the Weird Sounds of a Black Hole Singing. (2022). Retrieved 7 November 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/science/space/astronomy-black-hole-sound.html
How do black holes form?. (2022). Retrieved 7 November 2022, from https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/how-do-black-holes-form
NASA releases eerie ‘singing’ from a black hole and it’s straight out of a horror movie. Retrieved 7 November 2022, from https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/nasa-black-hole-singing-sound/
New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix. (2022). Retrieved 7 November 2022, from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix.html
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