Did you know you can hear the sound of the oldest stars in the galaxy?

The Milky Way, if you don't know it, has an estimated age of 13.21 billion years old, and there also reside very old stars, which formed shortly after our galaxy and total around 13 billion years old. Thinking older people usually have amazing stories to tell, have you ever thought if you could hear these stars?

Well, unfortunately, the stars don't "talk, " but a group of astrophysicists at the University of Birmingham in England has found a way to capture the sounds made by some of the oldest Milky Way stars. Data for the study were obtained through the Kepler space telescope, and the team of scientists focused on eight red giants 7, 200 light-years away from Earth near the constellation Scorpio.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

As they explained, the smallest of the "heard" stars is several times more massive than our Sun and at least three times its age. Moreover, to obtain the sounds, astrophysicists employed a technique known as asterosismology - which consists of studying the internal structure of the stars to interpret the spectra of the resonant oscillations they produce.

Scientists believe these oscillations are responsible for producing brief bright pulses that are created as the sound within the star interacts with its internal structure. What they did was listen to the notes of a kind of stellar choir created by the oscillations and, from that information, estimate the age and mass of the stars.

According to the researchers, the stars are true "living fossils" from the time of the formation of the Milky Way, and observing these stars can help unravel the mysteries of how spiral galaxies - like ours - formed and evolved. Ah! You might be wondering "where is the noise of the stars?" To hear the sounds captured by scientists, simply visit the University of Birmingham website via this link and hover over the yellow circles in the picture.