The Sound of the Universe · A Black Hole's Whisper
A black hole itself makes no sound; but outbursts from the black hole at the centre of the Perseus galaxy cluster send real sound waves through the hot gas around it. In observations with the Chandra X-ray telescope the waves are about 11 kiloparsecs apart, which means one wave takes about 9.6 million years to pass (≈ 3.3 × 10⁻¹⁵ Hz). In this part the same wave speeds up octave by octave: at 2⁴⁴ times its speed a pulse every 17 seconds, twice as often at each step; then a tone 57 octaves up (≈ 476 Hz) and a second one 58 octaves up (≈ 951 Hz), like the two layers of NASA's 2022 sonification. This is a sonification, not a recording from space: data or measured numbers were turned into sound with a stated mapping. There is no claim of any effect.
Liner notes
- Bed
- Brown noise, Pink noise
- Body
- Tonal voice, Pure tone · 475.7 and 951.4 Hz
- What do you hear?
- wide · hissy · bright
How is this sound made?
- Brown noise−30 dB
- Pink noise−40 dB
- Tonal voice−18 dB
Tonal voice · 118 notes
- Pure tone−60 dB
Pure tone · 475.7 Hz
- Pure tone−60 dB
Pure tone · 951.4 Hz
- Reverb: hall, 22% mix
In the room you can listen to each layer on its own, change its settings and save it as your own recipe.
Sound is generated on this device in real time; no files are downloaded from a server. There is a 6 s fade-in at the start and a 0 min fade-out at the end.
Compare with another sound
Hear both at the same loudness; drag the slider to the middle and they blend.
These two sounds can't share one recipe (different tuning or effects): listen to the samples one after the other.
What do we know, what don't we know?
S · Soundscape, no claim
No health or mental-effect claim at all; it is simply a soundscape.
This session isn't linked to any claim of effect.
A session's level is the weakest of its linked claims; it is never raised by a strong but unrelated claim.
Its neighbours on the map
The five sounds closest to this one by measured sound features.
- 1Dream Gate · Attention at the ThresholdsWarm · textured · moving aroundNeighbour on the map
- 2Solfeggio Path · PauseDark · steady · wideBoth steady · same goal: explore
- 3Chakra · Pause · Quiet SpaceDark · steady · wideBoth steady · same goal: explore
- 4Deep Focus · Brown NoiseDark · steady · wideBoth steady
- 5Eastern Express CompartmentDark · textured · wideBoth steady
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