NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, meaning it traveled outside the boundaries of our own heliosphere. Now, data has revealed what interspace actually sounds like.
Per NASA, Voyager 1 sent back interstellar sounds in November 2012, which was three months after it first passed over into interstellar space. Over time, Voyager 1 data kept showing new waves or whistles from interstellar space.
- “The interstellar medium appeared to be getting thicker, and quickly,” according to NASA.
The findings related to the data were recently published in a new study. And NASA recently released an actual recording of the sounds of interstellar space.
You’ll notice that the sounds come in waves. It’s not an eerie silence like you might expect.
According to NASA, interstellar space is full of waves caused by “our galaxy’s rotation, as space smears against itself and sets forth undulations tens of light-years across.” And there are also waves of radiation from “supernova blasts, stretching billions of miles from crest to crest.”
“The smallest ripples are usually from our own sun, as solar eruptions send shockwaves through space that permeate our heliosphere’s lining,” according to NASA.
Those sounds are, in other term, just interstellar gas floating about the universe, according to CNET.
“We’re detecting the faint, persistent hum of interstellar gas,” said Stella Koch Ocker, a doctoral student at Cornell University, according to CNET. “It’s very faint and monotone, because it is in a narrow frequency bandwidth.”
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were both launched in August and September 1977. The two spacecraft have been traveling away from Earth ever since. Voyager 2 left our solar system around 2018, traveling a different direction than Voyager 1.