NASA Has Made a Playlist of ‘Spooky Space Sounds’

This article originally appeared on VICE Australia.

You might think space is silent, but you're wrong. Space is vibrating with a range of electromagnetic waves that can be turned into sound waves and fed through speakers. The results all sound like the in-house sound effects on iMovie, but when you consider you're listening to the sound of a probe flying through a dust cloud, or the roar of Jupiter's magnetic field, the sounds get interesting. Spooky, even.

NASA has turned a bunch of these noises into a Halloween playlist called "Spooky Space Sounds." The noises have been captured by various probes from the 1970s onward, and include a range of pulses, roars, hisses, and some occasional soothing commentary from NASA personnel. A lot of the sounds are underwhelming, but others are pretty good, and so we've coupled our favorites with some fun facts.

Track five brings us the sound of lightning flickering around Jupiter, as captured by the Voyager spacecraft as it sailed by in 1979. You might know the Voyager program because Voyager 1 recently passed into interstellar space, traveling "further than anyone, or anything, in history." You might also know that each probe carries a gold phonograph etched with the details of Earth and its inhabitants. As the Voyager's site explains, "The spacecraft could last billions of years, so these circular time capsules could one day be the only traces of human civilization."

Track eight gives us a sonic rendering of Saturn's radio emissions, as captured by the Cassini spacecraft as it orbited the giant in 2004. The probe went on to figure-eight the planet and its moons until 2017, finally running out of fuel in September. After 20 years in space, NASA decided to send Cassini on a Kamikaze mission into the planet's atmosphere. This would ensure Saturn's moons remain pristine, which presented NASA with some potentially Earth-like conditions and are earmarked for further investigation. Cassini was steered into Saturn on September 15 and destroyed on entry.

For a track that sounds a little more like an actual noise, and not a bad synth, try out track six: "Stardust: Passing Comet Tempel." This sounds like hail falling on a tin roof because that's kind of what you're hearing. As the Stardust probe flew past a comet in 2011, it went through a cloud of debris, pelting the probe in dust and gravel. Like a lot of these sounds, it's not actually at all spooky, but it is interesting, which sums the entire experience of listening to "Spooky Space Sounds."

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