If you were to imagine what songs would comprise an album boasting the “sounds of space,” it would make sense to think of awe-inspiring classical music—something like Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” or Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” The images of the cosmos are all usually inspiring and sublime, so it makes sense the music would be too. Except it turns out that that couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, the “sounds” of space are all horrifying echoes and ghostly calls, and after listening to NASA’s “Spooky Space ‘Sounds'” playlist, you may begin to question whether the frigid expanse of space is the final frontier, or the final resting place for an endless graveyard of ghosts.
The spooky space “sounds,” which come via Mashable, were recently posted by NASA to help celebrate the Halloween spirit. Plus they posted the nifty image above of a giant ghost grabbing Saturn and one of its moons(?), which has a bunch of little baby ghosts on it. Plus the giant ghost is apparently eating Cassini, which could be a little postmortem send-off to the spacecraft that spent 13 years orbiting around the ringed planet in order to study its rings and atmosphere, as well as its moons (one or more of which may have life on them).
As far as the sounds themselves, don’t kid yourself, they’re all pure sonic terror. And the reason “sounds” is put in quotations is because they’re all really sonic translations of waves produced by planetary magnetic fields, radio emissions from Saturn, and small dust and rock particles hitting spacecraft instruments. Sound doesn’t do so great traveling through space after all, thanks to there not being any air.
There are 22 tracks here, so you’ll have plenty of cosmic horror opera if you want to use it as background “music” to work, or contact the dead with the old spirit box. Especially creepy is “Saturn Radio Emission #1,” as there are some straight-up lost souls in that track. Also, “Speeding Through Titan’s Haze” sounds like a bongo drum circle.
What do you think about NASA’s Spooky Space “Sounds”? Creep us out with your comments below!
Images: NASA
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