Image courtesy Overbye, Dennis. “That Famous Black Hole Just Got Even Darker”. New York Times, 13th April 2023 [source]
Released via NASAs YouTube channel 4 May 2022, an audio recording has been made available showing us what a supermassive black hole located 240 million light-years away would sound like.
Due to sound requiring a medium to travel through, such as air or water, one would assume that due to space being a vacuum, the expanse surrounding a black hole would be silent. However, due to the enormous levels of gas emitted, sound is able to propagate via this medium.
Actually, this audio is not a true representation of how it would sound standing close a black hole, as aside from the spaghettification you would experience(!), the sound would need to be shifted in pitch into something more audible. For this to be heard by human ears, the audio has been scaled up by 57 and 58 octaves above its original pitch, meaning what we hear is between 144 – 288 quadrillion times higher than the original audio!
Creepy, right?