Sounds from the Perseus Cluster’s Black Hole

NASA has successfully captured and made audible the sounds from a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Perseus galaxy cluster, located around 250 million light-years from Earth. These sounds originate from pressure waves travelling through the hot, dense gas (called the intra-cluster medium) that surrounds the black hole, creating ripples detectable in X-ray data.

​Astronomers first detected these sound waves with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2003, identifying extremely low-frequency acoustic waves propagating through the cluster’s gas. The lowest note is a B-flat, an astonishing 57 octaves below middle C, with each wave having a frequency spanning millions of years, far beyond the threshold of human hearing.
 
Recent advances allowed NASA to extract these original sound waves and transposed them up by 57 to 58 octaves, making them audible for the first time. The process of sonification utilised translates astronomical phenomena into audible sound. The resulting audio is described as haunting and eerie, reflecting a unique, otherworldly wail from the depths of the cosmos. 
 
This sonification project offers a new dimension for studying black holes, star formation, and cluster dynamics. The propagation and reverberation of sound waves through the hot gas play a critical role in heating the intra-cluster medium, affecting how galaxies form and evolve over cosmic timescales. These results not only provide insight into the physics of black holes and their environments but also help debunk the myth that there is no sound in space. In galaxy clusters, dense gas allows for sound wave transmission, unlike the vacuum between stars and galaxies.
 
The audio clip released by NASA presents these sounds as a radar-like scan, sweeping through different directions around the black hole, making it possible to hear the cosmic howl transformed for human ears. Listen to the sound waves here:
https://x.com/NASAExoplanets/status/1561442514078314496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1561442514078314496%7Ctwgr%5E5742fa9c536eddae27d14feea06af94c7fdff8f2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencealert.com%2Flisten-to-the-creepy-sounds-from-a-black-hole-captured-by-nasa
 
References
Kwon, S. (2022, September 7). Yale Astronomers Weigh in on Newly Captured Sound Emitted by Black Hole. Yale News.
 
Mohon, L. (2022, May 4). New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix.NASA.
 
Starr, M. (2025, October 24). Listen to the Creepy Sounds from a Black Hole, Captured by NASA. Science Alert.