Data from the European Space Agency’s Cluster mission has captured a recording of the eerie ‘song’ Earth sings when it is hit by a solar storm. The song comes from waves that are generated in the Earth’s magnetic field by the collision of the storm. The storm itself is the eruption of electrically charged particles from the Sun’s atmosphere.
These audio clips contain a ‘sonification’ of the magnetic waves generated in the magnetic foreshock above Earth – the first region of our planet’s magnetic environment that solar wind particles encounter. The first clip was recorded during calm space weather conditions, and the second during a solar storm. The sounds were obtained by transforming the frequencies of these magnetic waves into audible sound waves. The eerie sounds heard during a solar storm are higher in pitch and more complicated than those heard during calm conditions.
Audio and video credit: European Space Agency/Cluster mission.
Read more about these eerie space sounds here:
Read a paper describing this research here:
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