NASA's 'Data Sonification' Project Creates 'Space Noise' With Earthly Instruments, You Can Hear a Supernova

In 2020, NASA uncovered what some of the most extreme phenomena in space sounded like through their project. The Data Sonification program at the space agency aimed to convert the sound of extraterrestrial events to the tunes of musical instruments, Live Science reported. The project used space entities like a supernova, a neutron star, and many more for their subject.

Despite what sci-fi movies have been depicting for years, there is no sound in space. Still, NASA decided to push through natural boundaries and created a setup that converted the sound waves produced by the phenomenons to that of the outputs produced by musical instruments. A huge part of this set-up is Chandra X-ray Center which has been imaging distant galaxies for around two decades. 

Researchers took three photos from the X-ray Center's archives and converted the different frequencies of light present in the images to sound pitches. The three images are of various prominent space phenomena that have occurred over the years.

The Crab Nebula (a supernova remnant powered by a windy neutron star) was one of the entities whose image researchers took to analyze. In the Data Sonification program, the X-ray light was converted to the tunes of brass instruments, optical light (purple) was given the pitch of string instruments while infrared light (pink) was represented by woodwinds. The pitch for each instrument increased as the process moved from the bottom to the top. Based on these regulations, the supernova remnant's picture was processed.

Experts noted that even though there were multiple audible tones because of so many different instruments, all of them converged with each other at a point. This point was near the center of the nebula, which contained a rapidly swirling pulsar blasting gas and radiation in all directions. 

Two other photos processed by this program were of the Bullet Cluster and a supernova explosion. In the bullet cluster the blue, dark-matter-y regions were given low sound frequencies and X-ray light was provided high frequencies. For the supernova explosion the brighter the halo, the louder were its pitches. The entity's loudest points came when the ring of gas achieved its peak brightness.