--- title: "Scientists Intrigued by Stars Singing Ancient Songs" description: "Due to vibrations from their cores, stars are constantly fluctuating in brightness — and those waves, when converted to audio, make songs." date: "2025-04-05" modified: "2025-04-05" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/stars-singing-songs-age" categories: - "Off-World" - "Space" tags: - "light waves" - "star cluster" - "starquakes" - "stars" --- # Scientists Intrigued by Stars Singing Ancient Songs ![Due to vibrations from their cores, stars are constantly fluctuating in brightness — and those waves, when converted to audio, make songs.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Stars are constantly dimming and brightening due to their inner vibrations — and when those vibrations are converted into soundwaves, they become song. As a new study [published in the journal *Nature*]() explains, scientists were able to learn just how much star brightness fluctuates during these "starquakes" by translating those light frequencies into sound waves. With data from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, a massive database of star information, researchers [led by Australian National University]() astroseismologist Claudia Reyes focused in on 27 stars within the M67 star cluster. Sometimes referred to as the King Cobra cluster or the Golden Eye cluster due to its shape, M67 is considered the [oldest nearby star cluster]() in the Milky Way galaxy. With stars similar in age and composition to [our own Sun](), Reyes and her international team of astronomers wanted to learn what kinds of "songs" these stars have to sing. These astronomy researchers learned that at a certain point in their lengthy lifetimes — anywhere between a few million and [tens of billions of]() years old — stars, like people, get stuck in a rut. As a [press release]() from the Australian National University explains, an apparent midlife crisis leads to their wave fluctuations halting and being caught in a loop-like state. At that "plateau," as Reyes calls it, a star will start "repeating itself like a broken record, before resuming its progression." "Stars have multiple layers, similar to an onion," the starquake expert explained in the school's statement. "We discovered that the plateau occurs due to events in a specific layer of the star and at specific frequencies that are influenced by a star’s mass and metallicity." "This means we can predict when and at what frequency the plateau will occur during a star’s life cycle," she continued, "enabling extremely precise age estimates for stars currently in their plateau phase." Unfortunately, neither the journal nor the university released recordings of any of the M67 stellar melodies they researched. Luckily, a video from the National Science Foundation — which, like all other [American scientific endeavors](), is [being threatened]() by the new Trump administration — shared what some other star songs sound like. https://youtu.be/G-6u1sMN4yU Beyond getting the incredible opportunity to listen to the symphony of the cosmos, Reyes added that her team's discovery of this stellar fluctuation plateau will be a helpful astronomy tool moving forward. "This research helps us better understand how stars evolve, and provides a new tool to estimate their age," she said in the university press release, "which is crucial for studying the evolution of our galaxy." That's really awesome, of course – but we'd still love to hear the tapes. **More on stars:** [*Astronomers Investigate Whether Dying Star's Blast of Deadly Gamma Radiation Will Hit Earth*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()