Space isn’t silent. It’s abuzz with charged particles that — with the right tools — we can hear. Which is exactly what NASA scientists with the Van Allen Probes mission are doing. The sounds recorded by the mission are helping scientists better understand the dynamic space environment we live in so we can protect satellites and astronauts.
To some, it sounds like howling wolves or chirping birds or alien space lasers. But these waves aren’t created by any such creature – instead they are made by electric and magnetic fields.
If you hopped aboard a spacecraft and stuck your head out the window, you wouldn’t be able to hear these sounds like you do sounds on Earth. That’s because unlike sound — which is created by pressure waves — this space music is created by electromagnetic waves known as plasma waves.
Plasma waves lace the local space environment around Earth, where they toss magnetic fields to and fro. The rhythmic cacophony generated by these waves may fall deaf to our ears, but NASA’s Van Allen Probes were designed specifically to listen for them.
Read and Hear the sounds of space
Courtesy of Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
