In order to detect black holes, astronomers have been concentrating on observing their event horizons, the edges where matter is just starting to be pulled in. While observing ripples in matter in the Perseus Cluster “caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure” of a black hole, astronomers observed that jets of matter were ejected, creating pressures that generated sound waves. Astronomer Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England says that “The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech,” but the B-flat “pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below the middle C at the middle of a standard piano keyboard.” This is obviously well below any tone that a human can hear, but I think it’s pretty cool to think of the universe as a cosmic orchestra. Although maybe this is annoying the hell out of someone out there… 😉
