Sonification of a black hole

 "I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in an apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 Sonification is the process of taking non-audio data, and turning it into sound.  In this case, the Chandra X-ray observatory provided the data.  The data was the x-rays emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas that are being affected by a massive, highly magnetic black hole at the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster (NGC 1275 for us astro-nerds).

 The vibrations in the hydrogen cloud around the black hole are 57 octaves too low for the human ear to pick up, so the vibrations have been sped up and converted into audio, so that we can listen to them.

To me they seem a bit haunting/disturbing - but also fascinating.

There was also an earlier sonification of two black holes caught colliding in 2015 by the LIGO observatories.  What I find so interesting about this, is that the gravity waves did end up in the human audible frequency range, just not as sound waves.  The fact that two ~30 solar mass black holes were circling one another at 10,000 times per second is tough to wrap one's head around.

The fascinating thing about this event is that the resulting black hole was only 44 solar masses, not 60.  The missing mass was released in the form of gravity waves!