How Plasma Waves "Sound" in Space

In the near-vacuum of space, ordinary sound—a mechanical pressure wave—has too few particles to travel as it does through air. Spacecraft can still measure oscillations in electric and magnetic fields and waves in plasma. Researchers can convert these measurements into audio: for example, whistler waves and plasmaspheric “hiss” can be heard as whistles or static-like sounds. This is sonification of data, not acoustic sound a traveler would hear in open space.