NASA probe 'Juno' captures eerie sounds near Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede

After spending years studying Jupiter's origins, development as well as its moons, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has finally discovered something unexpected this summer in Jupiter's largest Moon, Ganymede. Researchers have collected certain radio waves from Ganymede which when tailored to human audibility, sounds very chilling as well as eerie, as per Sputnik. The data has been obtained by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it sailed through Ganymede's magnetosphere. 

The Juno mission, which commenced in August 2011, reached Jupiter in July 2016. The Juno space probe has made dozens of circles around Jupiter, but on June 7, 2021, as it was traveling closer to Jupiter's biggest moon, it picked up the radio waves. The information was obtained by Juno's Waves instrument, which detects electric and magnetic radio waves, and then transported 504 million miles back to Earth, where NASA analysed and displayed the data utilizing the audio spectrum perceptible by the human ear, Sputnik reported.  

Eerie Sounds of the Solar System was unveiled in the American Geophysical Union

Since Nasa's Galileo spacecraft's last close pass in May 2000, Juno has made the closest pass by a human-built probe, flying within 645 miles of the moon's surface. Further, the audio was revealed during the 2021 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as per the Science Alert.  

In addition to this, Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator stated, “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,” Sputnik reported. Further, according to Willam Kurth, the Waves project's principal co-investigator, the difference in frequency might be "due to passing from the nightside to the dayside" of the moon, CBS News reported.  

Planetary scientists are very interested in Ganymede. It is the solar system's biggest moon and the only one proven to have its own magnetic field. Ganymede is likewise thought to have a liquid ocean with a volume greater than all of Earth's seas combined. Ganymede is a possible home for extraterrestrial life due to its magnetic field and enormous volumes of liquid water, according to Sputnik.  

(Image: AP/ Twitter/ @Rainmaker1973)