“Instruments aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft … have detected a faint monotonous hum caused by the constant vibrations of the small amounts of gas found in the near-emptiness of interstellar space,” Reuters reported on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. (Read story here.)
“The persistent plasma waves that we’ve just discovered are far too weak to actually hear with the human ear. If we could hear it, it would sound like a single steady note, playing constantly but changing very slightly over time,” a Cornell University doctoral student in astronomy and lead author of a study published this week in Nature Astronomy wrote. (Buy the article here for $8.99 — you didn’t expect it to be free, did you? But this blog is; no paywall here.)
“Voyager 1 previously detected disturbances in the gas in interstellar space triggered by occasional flares from our sun. The new study instead reveals the steady vibrations unrelated to solar activity that could be a constant feature in interstellar space,” Reuters said.
Hmm. Kinda reminiscent of the cosmic background radiation.
I have a lot of books piled up next to my bed (my favorite reading place), about things like quantum physics and string theory, the invention of shipping containers, and a book called “The Last Stargazers” by a University of Washington astronomer who describes what it’s like to be a grad student in that subject, work at observatories, how astronomical research is done, etc., which makes for fun and enlightening reading if you’re at all interested in how the universe is explored.
Meanwhile, below is an artist’s rendering of Voyager 1. Cute little guy, isn’t it?
