Did you know that the deepest note in the universe — at least, the part of the universe that can be observed from Earth — is a B-flat ? And it’s coming from a black hole.
You might think there’s no sound in outer space — but that’s not entirely true. Sound waves need a medium to travel through, and while most of space is a vacuum, galaxy clusters have an abundance of hot gases that can carry sound waves.
In this episode of KQED’s Audible Cosmos, we hear how scientists used X-ray images of ripples emanating from a black hole in the Perseus cluster to figure out what it might sound like.
Hear the original sound.
Audible Cosmos is produced and reported by Amanda Font and Lowell Robinson, with original scoring by Lowell Robinson.
