by Alex Carter
In 2012 YouTube was inundated with TV of a very rarefied atmospheric phenomenon — the skyquake . Skyquakes are characterized by unexplained noises coming from the sky , often in remote areas with no obvious account as to the source of the speech sound . Skyquakes have been recorded all over the globe , and in every case , the sky short takes on a creepy-crawly chromaticity and emits unsettling , abnormal noises .
The reason it ’s easygoing to say that it was 2012 is because they were all uploaded to the same YouTube channel , skyquake2012 , a epithelial duct that narrow down in ingest shaking , inexpert phone footage and adding the creepy-crawly cornet audio from Kevin Smith’sRedStatemovie . In other speech , they were all hoaxes .
But the phenomenon itself is no humbug . A skyquake is a real event that has been documented for 100 .
It ’s difficult to distinguish between fakes , videos of unexplained stochasticity that are of human blood line , and genuine skyquakes , but the real model of this phenomenon are all identify the same way by those who have them : a loud boom that sounds like distant cannon fire . Weirdly , the genuine one all pass off near coastal areas .
No one has been able to in full explain why sure areas go through occasional skyquakes , but enough evidence exists to suggest these are real phenomena and that the residents of these surface area are n’t making up stories . The fact that there are words to describe the event in dissimilar languages lends further believability . In Japan they are called uminari ( 海鳴り , " the grumble of the sea " ) ; in Dutch , " mistpoeffers " ; and in parts of the U.S. , " Seneca Guns . "
Some skyquakes are tell to have human lineage , like when a military aircraft breaks the sound barrier — by the sentence the transonic boom is take heed , the plane is no longer in sight . But that does n’t explain any that were recorded before the invention of aircraft , which means there must be other explanations . One popular theory is that the sound is due to meteorite explode in the upper atmosphere , although that raises the question as to why the brilliant blink of an eye keep company the explosion is n’t more visible . Others paint a picture the noise may be due to boom from storms over the horizon , which is plausible only if you do n’t cognize what thunder sounds like .
The most probable explanation is that the Earth is passing gas . ( Really ! ) The strait of gasoline escaping from belowground vents would resemble a unruffled volcano , or distant explosions , which would explain not only the speech sound , but why the speech sound are pretty much only heard in coastal area . Many of the volcano weak enough to allow gas out would be underwater , and in many cases the gas may be due to decaying biomatter at the bottom of the lake . The gas could also be escape from underwater cave that are collapsing .
All of this is to say , if you ever hear an unexplained explosion , eternal rest check that it was only the Earth . But for playfulness , you may still charge it on the pawl .
