

Mar 13, 2017

NASA Recorded OM Sound from the Sun: Truth or Fiction?

The Internet and your mail box is filled with the posts and messages, supplemented with various supporting videos, claim that NASA has recorded the sounds from Sun to be Om (Aum or Ohm) -- the ancient, mystic sounds. But how much truth is in such scientific discovery?


In mid-2010, for the first time, astronomers at the University of Sheffield managed to record the vibrations (eerie musical harmonies) produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of Sun. Huge magnetic loops known as coronal loops were observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, which behave like sound waves traveling through a wind instrument, i.e. vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.

Since sound cannot travel through the near vacuum of space, scientists cannot record the sounds produced in the Sun's atmosphere directly. So the scientists at the University of Sheffield used the satellite images of giant magnetic loops spread over thousands of miles to recreate the sound -- by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up their frequencies to make them audible to the human ear. The noise from such a large and powerful source as Sun sounded as a sort of music because it has harmonics. Shown in the short, first video is the same, received from a NASA space telescope TRACE (Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer) that was designed to study and investigate the magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures on the Sun's atmosphere. Note that the video actually shows eruptions from the solar corona, embedded with the recreated audio.

The motive of the investigation was to study the growing concerns about the increasing solar activity that can have catastrophic effects on earth. Professor Fáy-Siebenbürgen explained that studying the "music of the sun" can provide new ways of understanding and predicting solar flares before they happen. To study this and understand the power of the sun, the Faculty of Science at University of Sheffield also launched a project called 'Project Sunshine'.

In a news report released in late 2013, NASA published that Voyager 1 (another space probe to study the outer Solar System) has recorded two outbursts of "interstellar plasma music" -- one in Oct-Nov. 2012 and the other in April-May 2013. Both of them were excited by bursts of solar activity, and according to space physicist Don Gurnett, the principal investigator for the Plasma Wave Science instrument on Voyager 1, space can make music if you know how to listen. The second video is a report on these findings.

Why OM is Important

Om (also written as Aum or Ohm) is an ancient mantra and mystical sound of Hindu origin (India and Nepal), which is considered sacred and significant in various religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. Hindus believe that all the divine and other creation form of consciousness originated from the vibration manifesting as sound "OM". Like cross is sacred to Christians, so is Om to Hindus, which occurs in almost every Sanskrit prayer and invocation to deities.

In Vedas and other Hindu scriptures, AUM is the 'Sound of the Sun' and the 'Sound of Light'. In Chandogya Upanishad (before the 8th century BCE), the holy syllable OM or udgitha was meditated as Sun God. The Mandukya Upanishad details the significance of Om saying it is the imperishable word; the past, the present, and the future.

In a theory known as the Harmony of the Spheres, even Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum (orbital resonance) depending on their orbital revolution.

Om Sound from Sun?

The two study reports in 2010 and 2013 mentioned above did show samples of sounds recorded from Sun's atmosphere, however, none of them mentioned Om sound or such resemblance. As you can hear in the beginning of the audio in first video, only a segment of the recording (audio) sounds a bit Om-y. Apart from that, there are other sounds as well.

Some online sources, like a 2010 blog article on, mentioned the sound of the sun recorded by NASA to be precisely as the ancient Hindus had described it in the Vedas thousands of years ago; that it is a mantra which can be intoned with human speech as "OM". The article also featured a documentary film called 'Quantum Communication' that says human communication works from the Quantum level and is connected to the Universal Laws of Attraction. Then there came up many videos even concluding that NASA recorded the Om sound from Sun.

Truth or Fiction?

NASA, as such, did not say that the various samples recorded from the Sun's atmosphere sound like the sacred Hindu syllable Om. However, a segment of the audio in the beginning of first video can be interpreted as sounding Om. Some people even say that Om is among the sounds recorded in deep space, all of which needs further studies to draw any conclusion. In general, there is no overwhelming evidence that the sound OM was indeed recorded, and that is not just our wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, the actual sound of Om is very grounding and peaceful; that which gathers and focuses our mind.

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