Halloween Playlist! This time NASA records spooky sounds in our solar system

NewsBharati    30-Oct-2017
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Washington, October 30: Remember the NASA earlier gave us the different playlist of sounds around Earth! This time the playlist features the theme of ‘Halloween’- NASA has debuted a playlist of sounds from space. And even though we know none of it is aliens, those noises are creepy as hell. 

From cacophonic plasma waves to eerie Saturn radio emissions and whispers caught off Jupiter's moons, this playlist of space sounds is weird, beautiful, and a little unpleasant at times. Now, these sounds are not actually captured using audio recorders, so we just have to make clear - if you were hanging out in Ganymede's orbit, this is not what you would hear.

 

Instead, it's the output of data from when astronomers convert the readings captured by various space probes and instruments into audible sound waves. Judging from this playlist, the creepiest planet in our Solar System appears to be the gas giant Jupiter and its numerous gigantic moons. For example, some haunting screeching and roaring was produced when Juno crossed into Jupiter's formidable magnetic field - the protective shield that screens the planet from the blasting winds of our home star.

 

The sound is produced when the supersonic solar winds that are hurtling through the Solar System are suddenly slowed down and heated up as they plough into Jupiter's magnetosphere, resulting in bow shock - it's sort like the sonic boom produced when an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound here on Earth, and the compression waves coming off it combine to form a shock wave.

And even though we know what we're listening to is actually an awesome output of scientific data, we're still pretty sure Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede must be haunted - just listen to those unnerving whispers coming out of its own magnetosphere: Those eerie sounds come from converted radio signals caught by the Plasma Wave Experiment electric dipole antenna, housed on the Galileo spacecraft which passed by the moon back in 1996.

Meanwhile the radio waves captured from the intense emissions spewed out by Saturn are more akin to classic sound effects you'd find on Star Trek: The Original Series - but with added spookiness: But creepy noises don't just come from elsewhere in the Solar System - turns out our own planet's magnetosphere can generate some pretty intense noises, too.