After revealing this Thursday, May 12 the first photograph of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole observed in the center of the Milky Way, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT, the largest virtual telescope in the world) were able to transform the picture in sound waves.
Their objective would even be, in the long term, to be able to capture videos, indicates
Numerama
.
Friday, May 13, on the site and the YouTube channel of the Chandra observatory, the scientists thus revealed audio files allowing them to “listen” to the supermassive black hole thanks to a process called sonification.
This consists of transforming the wavelengths of the image of the black hole into sound waves.
Sound produced in binaural audio
According to scientists at the Chandra Observatory, changes in volume are indicated by differences in brightness picked up by the EHT.
The highest sound frequencies are thus those found at the heart of the black hole.
They are accelerated by the rapid movement of the material in this precise zone.
Numerama
clarifies that if you listen to the audio file with headphones, you will have the impression that the sound is spinning around your head.
This is due to the fact that it was produced in binaural audio, a technique aimed at listening to a sound environment in the most natural way possible, in a three-dimensional space.
In addition to its innovative aspect, sonification could make it possible to advance research around this image, which has not finished revealing all its secrets.
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