Question: Is it true that space is silent?

Reka Nagy answered on 4 Nov 2016:

Short answer: Yes, it’s true that space is silent in the way that there is no sound that your ears could pick up – all those Star Wars movies showing epic space battles with laser sounds and explosions were wrong! Sound, being a mechanical wave, needs something to move through, and most of space is a near-vacuum with very few atoms or molecules, so sound can’t travel through it.

Extended answer: Another way to look at it, however, is that for example radio waves, which are electromagnetic waves, can travel in vacuum. Planets, stars, asteroids all emit electromagnetic waves. By using a combination of an antenna (to pick up these waves) and a computer (to decode the waves into sound), you could technically ‘listen to space’.