All About Space

MUSIC OF THE STARS

What does a star sound like? It might seem like a strange question, but every star in the sky is generating sound waves, even if we can’t hear them across light years of vacuum. What’s more, these stellar waves have frequencies much too low for human hearing – periods of minutes to hours compared to the 20 to 20,000 cycles per second our ears can pick up.

In effect, these soundwaves are the same as the seismic waves that cause earthquakes on our own planet – most earthquakes are triggered in Earth’s relatively thin outer crust, and similarly stellar seismic waves are generated by the churning of huge masses of gas in the upper layers

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from All About Space

All About Space5 min read
Ask Space
Astrobotany is going to be critical for future space exploration, particularly in the realm of providing caloric support for extended spaceflight missions. In the near future it’s unlikely we will use plants as an oxygen source in a bioregenerative l
All About Space3 min read
Black Hole Power
Interstellar distances are difficult to conceive. Our nearest star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf that lies 4.3 light years away – that’s more than 266,000 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. Even if our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1, which i
All About Space3 min read
Scientists Find A Black Hole Spaghettifying A Star Remarkably Close To Earth
A stronomers have spotted the closest visiblelight example yet of a supermassive black hole ripping apart and devouring a star. This star’s gory death can be blamed on a black hole with a mass equal to around a million Suns. The event occurred in the

Related Books & Audiobooks