in the distant past people were both amazed and terrified by comets perceiving them as laded stars that appear in the sky unannounced today we know that they are giant bodies of ice the leftovers from the solar systems formation 4.5 billion years ago we have even visited eight of them capturing incredible images some of which are close-ups revealing their bizarre icy surface or streaming tals but we have also listened to some of the Eerie noises that surround them allowing us to experience what a comet an ancient object from the very edge of the solar system sounds
like you're watching v101 space my name's Rob and if you enjoy my videos then remember to subscribe for much more to come comets are giant bodies of fro gases Rock and dust that orbit the sun you can think of them like enormous dirty snowballs tumbling through space there are likely billions of Frozen comets orbiting far beyond Neptune in a region called the Kyer belt or even the more distant mysterious region called the or Cloud a hypothetical shell of icy objects that surround the entire solar system when frozen comets can be the the size of a
town but occasionally a comet's orbit can bring it close to the Sun heating it up causing dust and gases to spew into space creating an enormous glowing atmosphere sometimes larger than a planet This Magnificent Celestial feature is called the coma it was within the coma where the first ever sound recording of a comet was captured as NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew through through the gas and dust surrounding Comet 9p temple in 2011 the incredible audio clip provides a brief example of what it sounds like to pass by a comet as icy dust particles streaming off the
ancient object pelted the spacecraft [Applause] resembling a hail of bullet likee particles this sound recording highlighted the damaging environment that surrounds a comet interestingly a few years before Stardust listened to 9p Temple it also visited another named 81p wild in 2004 in which it collected the first ever sample of a comic its coma before sending it back to Earth to be studied this image gives you an idea of what the material that surrounds a comet looks like in 2005 NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft released a Lander designed to crash into Comet 9p Temple and as this
incredible footage reveals the probe successfully smashed into the comet causing a bright flash of ice and dust to burst into space the probe even captured images as it approached the comet showing us step by step until eventually crashing into its surface but in 2014 we got to hear exactly what it sounds like to land on a comet when the Rosetta spacecraft released the Lander f a soft Landing probe designed to touch down on the surface of comet 67p chumo gasa this sound recording is only 2 seconds long so I will play it a couple of
times but keep in mind that this is the sound of a space probe landing on a giant Cosmic snowball that is tumbling through space this short recording might not sound very significant but that thud noise that you just listened to is the very first time we have ever heard the contact between a human-made object and a comet upon Landing but it wasn't just F that allowed us to hear sounds from this Comet its mother spacecraft Rosetta discovered a very strange sound one that at the time was described as resembling a song as though the comet
67p jarum of gasa was singing this next audio clip you're about to listen to is thought to be oscillations in the magnetic field around the comet captured when the spacecraft was about 100 km away this is the bizarre sound of a singing comet I [Music] the comet song would not be audible to the human ear because it is being emitted at 40 to 50 MTZ far below the range of human hearing which typically picks up between 20 HZ and 20 khz to make the sound audible to humans Rosetta scientists have increased the frequencies by 10,000
times allowing us to experience this strange Comet song scientists think the sounds must be produced by the comet's activity perhaps as it releases neutral particles into space where they become electrically charged or ionized the precise physical mechanism behind the oscillations however remain a mystery [Music] I hope you enjoyed this video if you did then tap the like button and subscribe there is plenty more to come thank you for watching and I'll see you next time [Music]
