A CD of black hole music most likely can't compete with Britney Spears or the Soggy Bottom Boys, but a new study shows these venerable gravity instruments produce complex tunes whose underlying principles are remarkably similar to pop, bluegrass, classical or any other style you might think of.

The study's results, which will be announced today, have important scientific significance, too.

A stellar black hole typically feeds off gas and dust provided by a companion star, while a supermassive black hole can consume entire stars in a single gulp. So the similarity in their music implies that incoming matter's final moments are governed by similar principles of physics, supporting a long-held suspicion.

Once inside a black hole, all matter and even light are trapped.

The inaudible music of black holes cannot be directly compared to banjos, trumpets or any other specific instrument. Yet X-ray output from the objects is the sheet music of science for Phil Uttley and Ian McHardy of the University of Southampton. And this electromagnetic output describes the process that fuels the music.

Uttley explained for SPACE.com what he thinks their new study shows:

"Once the fuels starts to get close to a black hole, so that it is dominated by the black hole's enormous gravity, the turbulent accretion processes become the same, regardless of what supplied the fuel in the first place," Uttley said. "The presence of the black hole is the great leveler: Regardless of where the fuel came from, and what form it was in, it all ends up the same way, as a hot, turbulent plasma, spiraling in towards the black hole."

When black holes are actively consuming matter, their most notable products are X-rays, and lots of them. It is these X-rays, and the variations in their output, that make the music.

Uttley and McHardy have studied these emissions for the past six years, using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. They plan to present their findings today at the National Astronomy Meeting in the UK.

Uttley explains that the X-ray emissions can be compared to single notes and whole key changes. But there are differences.

"If you were to transcribe the X-ray output of these black holes as a series of musical notes, so greater X-ray output means a higher pitch, it would not sound quite like any [particular] sort of music, because the variations in X-ray output are essentially random, so no long sequence of notes will ever repeat," Uttley said. "But the 'tune' will still have a musical quality about it."

The general pattern of note changes -- the relative size of the changes in pitch from one note to the next, or from one bar to the next -- are the same as one hears in all kinds of music, he said.