Black hole sings the deepest B-flat

[Black Sun]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 Big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B-flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers said Tuesday.

THE INTENSITY of the sound is comparable to human speech, said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below the middle C at the middle of a standard piano keyboard.

This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.

The sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies 250 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers), the distance light travels in a year.

Fabian and his colleagues used NASAs orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory to investigate X-rays coming from the clusters heart. Researchers presumed that a supermassive black hole, with perhaps 2.5 billion times the mass of our sun, lay there, and the activity around the center bolstered this assumption.

Black holes are powerful matter-sucking drains in space, and astronomers believe most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, may contain black holes at their centers. Black holes have not been directly observed, because their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.

So researchers have concentrated on what happens around the edges of black holes, just before the matter is pulled in. When scientists trained the Chandra observatory on the center of Perseus last year, they saw concentric ripples in the cosmic gas that fills the space between the galaxies in the cluster.

Were dealing with enormous scales here, Fabian said in a telephone interview. The size of these ripples is 30,000 light-years.

Fabian said the ripples were caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure of the jumble of galaxies packed together in the cluster. As the black hole pulls material in, he said, it also creates jets of material shooting out above and below it, and it is these powerful jets that create the pressure that creates the sound waves.

Top scientists, he said, pressure ripples equate to sound waves. By calculating how far apart the ripples were, and how fast sound might travel there, the team of researchers determined the musical note of the sound.

Fabian said the notion of singing black holes might well be extrapolated to other galaxies, but not necessarily to the Milky Way.

Chandra has looked at X-ray emissions from the Milky Ways center, and astronomers believe there is a black hole there, but because it is a young, rambunctious galaxy with lots of activity at its heart, this may interfere with any note our black hole might sing, Fabian said.

(reuters)

[soundian]

Originally posted by Black Sun

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 Big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B-flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers said Tuesday.

THE INTENSITY of the sound is comparable to human speech, said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below the middle C at the middle of a standard piano keyboard.

This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.

The sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies 250 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers), the distance light travels in a year.

Fabian and his colleagues used NASAs orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory to investigate X-rays coming from the clusters heart. Researchers presumed that a supermassive black hole, with perhaps 2.5 billion times the mass of our sun, lay there, and the activity around the center bolstered this assumption.

Black holes are powerful matter-sucking drains in space, and astronomers believe most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, may contain black holes at their centers. Black holes have not been directly observed, because their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.

So researchers have concentrated on what happens around the edges of black holes, just before the matter is pulled in. When scientists trained the Chandra observatory on the center of Perseus last year, they saw concentric ripples in the cosmic gas that fills the space between the galaxies in the cluster.

Were dealing with enormous scales here, Fabian said in a telephone interview. The size of these ripples is 30,000 light-years.

Fabian said the ripples were caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure of the jumble of galaxies packed together in the cluster. As the black hole pulls material in, he said, it also creates jets of material shooting out above and below it, and it is these powerful jets that create the pressure that creates the sound waves.

Top scientists, he said, pressure ripples equate to sound waves. By calculating how far apart the ripples were, and how fast sound might travel there, the team of researchers determined the musical note of the sound.

Fabian said the notion of singing black holes might well be extrapolated to other galaxies, but not necessarily to the Milky Way.

Chandra has looked at X-ray emissions from the Milky Ways center, and astronomers believe there is a black hole there, but because it is a young, rambunctious galaxy with lots of activity at its heart, this may interfere with any note our black hole might sing, Fabian said.

(reuters)

What a lot of complete tripe! How can something that's set up for detecting X-rays ever detect something with the frequency of a mildly agitated slug.

I take it this is an attempt to advertise your 'new band'.

Please don't.

[spellchecker]

mutter, mutter, i think the man has a point

[soundian]

Mmm, you're right, but so am I about plugging a new band.

They didn't actually detect the 'soundwave' only the excited gasses in between.

Calling it a sound wave is really stretching it. True, they have detected the compression and rarefaction of gasses, but sound is normally thought of as what we can hear, surely this is subsonic.

According to spellcheckers link, this was caused by something that happened a while ago, so it can't be humming either.

Another piece of science mangled for mass consumption.

[Black Sun]

re: Black hole

I think there might even be a hint of humour in the Black hole article. Considering no-one will be able to go there and check it out or even hear it, it's the idea I find kind of entertaining.

Thanks

Russell

[spellchecker]

what a gentleman. i bet they'd be a breeze to soundcheck.

[soundian]

I knew you'd be on his side. Harumph!

(Was breeze a feeble joke or what?)

[soundian]

Re: re: Black hole

Originally posted by Black Sun

I think there might even be a hint of humour in the Black hole article. Considering no-one will be able to go there and check it out or even hear it, it's the idea I find kind of entertaining.

Thanks

Russell

And even if you could go there, you couldn't hear it. It would be entertaining compared to a lot of bands though.

[spellchecker]

Originally posted by soundian

I knew you'd be on his side. Harumph!

(Was breeze a feeble joke or what?)

Me, take sides? With my reputation? Well, I was very, very dr...

Breeze was no joke. If I was going to make a really bad joke, I would make sure it was at least one iota less bad than yours.

[Frosty Jack]

Awww.... Barry White made it to heaven...

[spellchecker]

Sweet jesus. I hope they stay in the studio. I can't quite work out if they were an acquired taste, not my cup of tea, or just absolutely fucking shite.