Featured Image Credit: Cosmoknowledge/Youtube
Despite years of scientific endeavor, we're still learning new things about black holes all the time - they're one of the most mysterious parts of outer space.
While the exact mechanics of these enormous entities are still in many ways unknown, one thing that we're pretty much certain about is that they suck in vast amounts of mass - that's the thing they're probably most famous for, after all.
However, one really rare phenomenon has demonstrated what a black hole sounds like when it hits another black hole - a collision on a truly galactic scale.
This was observed by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) a few years ago and carefully translated into a sound wave.
The way space telescopes work means we don't have the ability to record sounds from vast distances away - rather, we use the radiation given off by events to interpret them and work out what sound they would have given off.
Advert
Using techniques like these, the LIGO team was able to produce a short sound file that shows what the collision sounded like - a short, dull pop of sorts.
It's a bit like what a firework might sound like if it went off in a closed steel box and you were stood quite far away from it - dull and muted, but still with enough power and brevity to suggest that something pretty major has happened.
When the sound is played at a much higher frequency, it sounds more like a drop of water hitting the ocean - a little plop, which is far more misleading in terms of how mild it sounds.
It's a great reminder of how impressive modern science is that we can hear these noises at all, and a YouTube upload of the sound files has a raft of people commenting under it with suitably awed reactions.
One person wrote: "The fact that this single event produced 50 times more energy than all the stars in the observable universe is mind-blowing." That's a pretty crazy fact that they've researched about the collision, but those who know how massive the black holes in question were (each one 30 times the size of our Sun) won't be surprised.
Another person, meanwhile, commented: "The fact that it sounds so harmless is even more terrifying." It's hard to disagree with that, too - the mundane nature of the sound is indeed completely impossible to wrap your head around when you consider what it was actually recording.
So, you can tick one thing off your bucket list - listening to two black holes colliding.
