The Music of the Spheres

Black Hole Strikes Deepest Musical Note Ever Heard:

Astronomers have detected the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos, a B-flat flying through space like a ripple on an invisible pond. No human will actually hear the note, because it is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano.

The detection was made with NASA (news - web sites)'s Chandra X-ray Observatory and announced at a press conference today.

The note strikes an important chord with astronomers, who say it may help them understand how the universe's largest structures, called galaxy clusters, evolve.

The sound waves appear to be heating gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster, some 250 million light-years away, potentially solving a longstanding mystery about why the gas surrounding this cluster and others does not chill out as existing theory predicts.

The gas is apparently dancing excitedly to the eons-long drone of a deep B-flat.

Kepler wrote in his Harmonice Munde (1619) says that he wishes

"to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions."

And later, "I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions."

It looks like Kepler was wrong. The spheres do emit a sound, and it is a very low B-flat