On 7 June 2021, NASA’s Jupiter space probe Juno conducted a close flyby of the giant planet’s moon, Ganymede, and recorded some bizarre sounds. They used the probes “Waves” instrument to record the moon’s electromagnetic waves, which are the electric and magnetic waves produced in the magnetosphere.
When the frequency of those waves was shifted into an audio format, the result was a set of fascinating and eerie alien shrieks and howls.
This 50-second audio track was unveiled at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2021.
Physicist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, and Juno’s principal investigator said: “This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades.
“If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in Ganymede’s magnetosphere.”
Scientists like to transpose data into audio frequencies as a way of accessing and experiencing the data.
Doing so can often help them pick up on fine details that otherwise might have been overlooked.
NASA has been recording the mysterious “sounds” of the Solar System with a range of probes, including the Voyager spacecraft, as well as for its planetary missions.
While they are still decoding what the new data means, scientists have a few ideas.
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