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Mysterious 'skyquakes' being heard worldwide baffle scientists
Mysterious skyquakes that were first reported 200 years ago are still stumping scientists today. People across the globe have experienced loud bangs coming from seemingly nowhere.
Mysterious 'skyquakes' have been heard around the world for more than 200 years, but scientists have yet to uncover the cause and origin of the bizarre noises.
The sounds could be mistaken for a gunshot or a car backfiring, and have been heard in areas ranging from Belgium and Japan to the Finger Lakes region in New York.
Scientists have tried to uncover where the resounding booms are coming, proposing theories like a meteor exploding in the atmosphere, military exercises, quarry blasts and distant storms or earthquakes.
The first skyquakes were documented in 1811 after people in New Madrid, Missouri heard the strange sounds during a 7.2-magnitude earthquake.
Residents reported hearing 'artillery-like sounds' before or during the quake hit.
Similar noises were then reported during an earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina in August 1886, which were heard for weeks afterward the 7.3-magnittude.
The skyquakes were described them as a 'roaring sound' or 'loud detonations.'
These noises have also been labeled as Lake Guns or Seneca Guns, after Seneca Lake in central New York state which also experienced the phenomena in 1850.
James Fenimore Cooper, who lived in Seneca Lakes during one of these skyquakes, described the experience in his short story 'The Lake Gun.'
'It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery, that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature,' Cooper wrote.
'The report is deep, hollow, distant and imposing. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply.'
In the years that followed, the booms were unidentifiable due to their random timing and were unaffiliated with any other natural events.
It wasn't until 2020 that scientists started using seismic data obtained from the EarthScope Transportable Array (ESTA) since 2013.
ESTA is a network of more than 400 seismic stations across the US that detects earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides.
A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cross-referenced ESTA's data with news articles to determine if the noises were caused by earthquakes.
'Generally speaking, we believe this is an atmospheric phenomenon – we don't think it's coming from seismic activity,' Eli Bird who, a researcher who was involved in the study told Live Science at the time.
'We're assuming it's propagating through the atmosphere rather than the ground.'
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