NASA Discovered Sound in Space: Listen Here

rocket launch nasa space sounds

BreakingModern - NASA just released a gamut of space sounds. That is, sounds from space. The eternal void is no longer quiet, the vacuum is plugged in, the … well, you get the idea. Waves have crashed, people, and there’s something to hear.

Remember that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the ape-men beat each other and one throws a bone into the sky, and the bone becomes a futuristic human-inhabited satellite? It’s sort of like that. At least in my mind.

Or maybe it’s like Dark Side of the Moon during the Eclipse and all that I’ve touched and seen and tasted and felt (etc., etc.) is now actually something I’ve heard. And there’s that stodgy British man saying there isn’t really a dark side, you know, it’s all dark.

 

Maybe NASA’s release is like the cold-hard science version of that, because, really, it’s pretty fantastic.

Planetary Sounds

The first batch of incredible noise came last week in the form of a YouTube video supplied by NASA. It says,

“The recorded sounds are the complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind, ionosphere, and planetary magnetosphere.”

The seven-minute video includes recordings of Saturn’s rings, Neptune, rings of Uranus and Jupiter (to name my favorites). And they are, put simply, weird. Ethereal, floating, harsh and full of what seems to be very-advanced, very-unearthly wind, each moment of the video seems like it shouldn’t quite exist. Still it does.

Check it out:

Video: NASA Space Sounds

Human Sounds in Space

As amazing as those clips are, NASA decided to just keep going. It has released, via their official SoundCloud account, a massive library of space-related sounds collected over the years.

Some are nuts, like the interstellar plasma sounds picked up by Voyager. Or the deep bass of star KIC7671081B. That celestial body has EDM (electronic dance music) written all over it. Rocket sounds, mission launch sounds, Solar System sounds — anything noteworthy they recorded over the last 50 years seems to be there.

I think I know what happened. Everyone was asking, “Hey, NASA, what have you been doing all these years? You landed on the moon when? What year is it? Didn’t Gravity just come out?”

So they’re blowing our minds with audio collections of the unfathomable.

Young_Galaxy nasa space sounds

Oh, and there’s the human element to all these releases, too. The SoundCloud has all those stellar clips from Apollo, from President Kennedy exciting a nation to reach to the moon. You can hear Armstrong say, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” on repeat.  And then download it to your phone and have him wake you up, or end your run or remind you to get your frozen pizza out of the oven.

Yeah, NASA made all the sounds downloadable, as individual little pieces, for us to use however we see fit.

This all means a couple of things. We have sounds of other planets, of space itself, which is just utterly awesome. We have a government body, NASA, who is pioneering the field of space exploration while realizing what us, the citizens of Earth, might want as a medium to measure their progress.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, we just have to wait for the crazy space remixes. Because they’ll be there.

For BMod, I’m Daniel Zweier.

First Image: Clouds of smoke around the 323rd Delta rocket on launch pad 17B” photo credit: NASA/Jerry Cannon - http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=31350. Licensed under public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Second Image/Featured: Young Galaxy Accreting Material” by ESO/L. Calçada - http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1040a/. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Daniel Zweier

Author: Daniel Zweier

Based in Oakland, Daniel Zweier covers culture, travel and tech here at BreakingModern. Follow him on Twitter @dbzweier and on G+ at +DanielZweier

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5 Comments

  1. Brant David McLaughlin

    I thought they already knew about this. Well, great reporting anyway! Another vindication for ‘Star Wars’! (And the existence of the aether.)

    Post a Reply
    • Daniel Zweier

      Maybe they’re just sharing the sounds with us now? Thanks Brant.

      Post a Reply
      • Dino Londis

        What gets me most is how close it sounds like 2001 a Space Odyssey. That was 1968. Thanks for this Daniel.

        Post a Reply

  2. Hi Daniel, Wonderful reporting and writing . Congratulations. Eddy and Linda forwarded and we are all very proud of you. Say hi to your so. Larry

    Post a Reply
  3. mat

    This is so awesome… Space, the final frontier lol. That’s the good ol space delay.

    Post a Reply

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