The Mysterious Singing Comet

Rosetta Has its Own SoundCloud Channel!

Okay this one is pretty darned cool. According to the folks at the ESA/Rosetta blog, the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (a group of scientists using various instruments to measure the plasma environment around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko) have “heard” the comet’s “song”.

Listen to it here:

Now, if you were sitting in space right next to the comet, this isn’t exactly what you’d hear. It’s actually actually the vibrations from oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment.  The song is really pitched at 45-50 millihertz, which is far below what you or I can hear with our ears. So, the technical wizards on the RPC team increased the frequencies about a factor or 10,000 so we can hear it.

Sounds pretty cool, really. I have a bunch of questions about the exact mechanism, which is probably something to do with the solar wind somehow interacting with ejecta from the comet.  I’ve heard some similar-sounding kinds of files of what happens when the solar wind hits our upper atmosphere.  Perhaps there will be more explanation of how the comet is interacting with its environment to produce these sounds coming up soon.

For now, though, remember that the comet IS spewing material out from under its surface, and those particles can become energized (ionized) by the solar wind. This action is part of what forms the comet’s plasma tail (although I don’t recall hearing if the comet HAS  a substantial one yet).