NASA's Summer Song: The Sounds of Saturn

Similarly, when the plasma particles jostle one another, they generate waves. We can not hear these waves, but we can build spaceships like Cassini to measure them. Back on Earth, scientists can translate waves into audible sounds, much like the way radio waves are converted into the Top 40.

Plasma waves were recorded in September 2017, two weeks before 19459004. the atmosphere of Saturn, ending its orbit 13 years around the planet. The data show that the waves result from an electrical current type interaction between Saturn and Enceladus, its sixth largest moon, according to the space agency. Enceladus, which is supposed to harbor an ocean, spews water vapor from cracks in its ice crust towards Saturn. In space, these particles can charge and jostle the surrounding plasma. Saturn reacts by emitting signals in the form of plasma waves, NASA scientists say.

The strange clip is a reminder that the space can be louder than what one would expect for a cold, dark emptiness. listen. Scientists have spent years translating observations of inaudible phenomena into familiar noises. In our own magnetic field, plasma waves send highly charged particles that bounce off. For us, the action sounds like a summer evening at the edge of a lake, enlivened by chirps of crickets and frogs.

When the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter in 2016, its instruments detected changes in particles in the Earth's magnetic field. The translated waves sound like a static roar. The lightning on Jupiter, captured by the Voyager spaceship, sounds like a fireworks fire in the sky.

The soundtrack extends beyond our solar system. As Voyager 1 broke through the blurred border between our system and interstellar space in 2012, spacecraft instruments recorded plasma waves. In our ears, the ripples sound like sharp whistles

We humans have even managed to hear the sounds of distant black holes, the mysterious cosmic objects from which nothing can escape, not even the light. In 2015, astronomers observed, for the first time, gravitational waves produced by the collision of two black holes at 1.3 billion light-years. When the scientists placed this signal in the audible range, they heard a little chirp.

We can even hear the beginnings of the universe, thanks to the remaining radiations that, 13.8 billion years later, fill the cosmos in all directions. day. This radiation, known as cosmic microwave background, is essentially the foggy residual heat of the Big Bang itself. According to a listening guide from Mark Whittle, an astronomer from the University of Virginia, it seems "slightly erratic", in part because of the presence of sound waves. "The extraordinary truth is that we can see the sound waves, exactly as they were, 400,000 years after the Big Bang," Whittle writes.

Using computer simulations, Whittle can excavate these sound waves and convert them into something we can hear. The first million years of the cosmos, compressed in just 10 seconds, sounds like a zappe, then a low rumble, then an intensive and intensive hissing sound. It's not exactly music, but it's still beautiful. This growing Whiss, according to Whittle, is the sound of the building blocks of the cosmos that eventually gave birth to the very first stars.