A research team has captured the dying sounds emitted by a devoured star.
“The [accretion] disk gets heated up and we can see emissions from the disk very close to the black hole in X-rays. As this matter is falling in, it gives a quasiperiodic wobble and that’s the signal we detected.”
“You can think of it as hearing the star scream as it gets devoured, if you like,” adds Jon Miller, astronomy professor and a co-author of the paper.
Musical note - paging Steven Burnett:
The researchers liken the signal to a sound because it repeats at a characteristic frequency, which they say would sound like an ultra-low D-sharp.
Cosmic Gothic, or Lovecraft updated.
(via Futurity Today and Steven Kaye)
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