To look at images or video of outer space scenery, most of us imagine and sense of feeling of total void, of darkness, and most of all, of silence. But is this really the case? Although space is a vacuum, NASA scientists have found that in actuality, a complex symphony of sounds is constantly filling outer space, echoing with its eerie chorus through space-time.
What produces these sounds? While the ‘sounds’ of outer space aren’t what we would experience when we play a song from our iPod through speakers here on planet earth, the sounds of space are also made of of vibrational waves. A multitude of heavenly bodies, interactions, and forces in the realm of space make music such as the electromagnetic pulses given off by the planets, their rings, and their moons, radio waves that bounce between a planet and the invisible borders of its atmosphere, the interaction of charged particles within planetary atmospheres, emissions of charged particles from the rings that circle some planets, and even solar winds.
NASA has developed special instrumentation allowing them to harness these sounds through several NASA space probes using Plasma Wave Antennae. Take a listen,
The amazing sounds you heard included Saturn’s rings, Miranda, Neptune, Voice of Earth, Saturn, Jupiter, IO, Rings of Uranus, Song of Earth, & Uranus.