When a spaceship whooshes by in the middle of a sci-fi movie, every nerd worth his salt blurts out, "There is no sound in space!" There isn't. No sound detectable to the human ear, that is. The only vibrations that survive the vacuum of space are electromagnetic waves.
NASA has found a way to hear them.
Using a "plasma wave antenna" to record vibrations within 20 to 20,000 hertz, the range of human hearing, NASA has captured the actual sounds of our planets. It should come as no surprise that our Solar System sounds more majestic than any sci-fi director could fabricate.
Like waves crashing on the beach, thunder rolling across the heavens, or wind whistling through a canyon, the sounds of our planets are majestic and chillingly perfect. Warning: when it hits you that this is real, you might just cry a little unexpectedly. We won't tell anyone.
To put these larger-than-life sounds in perspective, our Solar System is centered around one of over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and our galaxy is just one of over one hundred billion in the universe. Behold, the hums and glows of our huge yet miniscule patch of territory.
