Fascinating shots from space:
Researchers at the Institute of Technology in Massachusetts discovered what a black hole’s echo sounds like.
In a video, the researchers share the sounds from space, which sound like they come from an animated film.
These are recordings that show what black holes swallowing neighboring stars sound like.
These stars are also known in science as “X-ray binaries” when energy is released in the form of X-rays.
X-ray binaries are systems with a star orbiting and occasionally being “eaten” by a black hole.
MIT scientists have now looked for echoes from nearby stars to analyze them and thus reconstruct the environment of a black hole.
Using an automated search tool, the researchers searched satellite data for signs of such echoes.
In this research, they discovered eight new binary black holes with echoes. So far only two such systems were known.
Together with MIT educationalists and musicologists, they converted the emissions from X-ray echoes into sound waves that we can hear, which can be heard in the video.
“We are just beginning to use these light echoes to reconstruct the environments closest to the black hole” ” (Erin Kara, Assistant Professor of Physics at MIT)
But what exactly are black holes and where do the noises come from?
Millions of black holes are scattered across the Milky Way.
These are dark because both incident matter and light cannot escape from the holes.
However, it is different when a black hole feeds itself. As MIT researchers explain, bursts of X-ray light occur when a black hole sucks in gas and dust from an orbiting star. These outbursts are reflected by the incoming gas, briefly illuminating the hole.
The astronomers at MIT are trying to use the X-ray echoes to reconstruct the immediate vicinity of a black hole.