After the
recent blackout we received reports from readers regarding sonic booms
such as this one from JD:
"At
around 4:05 PM today, I was on the computer and the electric power dipped
way down. The lights dimmed and my computer crashed. PRECISELY at that
instant, there was a "sonic boom" that originated, I perceived,
from south of my location, here in northern New Jersey. The boom lasted
for about five seconds. The skies were clear blue and the sun was very
bright. Later, my friend who lives near Cleveland, Ohio called me, told
me she had no electricity, and that a man called in to her local radio
station and reported that he heard two sonic booms shortly after 3 PM
at the same time the whole northeast United States lost power."
So far, we
have not uncovered media reports on sonic booms heard during this event.
Which does not mean it didn't happen. The media has a nasty habit of ignoring
eye witness data, particularly when there is much confusion and it can
be easily overlooked. In our Dear
Readers article, we suggested that we may all have to go out and be
our own journalists.
Jon Rappoport
of No More Fake News describes in his essay on August 20th, THE
BLACKOUT: EVERY CITIZEN IS CRAZY, the media's usual modus operandi
regarding eyewitness reports:
It's easy,
for example, to discount all reports of non-grid-connected car radios
suddenly going out as the blackout began, by saying that an EM pulse
would also have taken out these cars' ignitions-which event did not,
as far as I know, occur. [...]
I have
witness statements from several states about non-grid-connected electronic
devices that went out just before or as the blackout began. I'm not
about to throw them all out because "they don't make sense."
They do make sense. [...]
Time and
time again, the same trick is used. Nullify reports from the public.
Make the public think it must be crazy.
"You
didn't see that. You just think you did."
"If
your report were true, then X,Y, and Z would have happened too. And
they didn't happen. Therefore, you're wrong." [...]
Many of the
reports on sonic booms we have collected come from local sources that
were not necessarily picked up by the mass media.
Regarding
blackouts, The C's had something interesting to say about the 1996 West
Coast blackout that was very similar to this recent East Coast incident:
Q: Is there
a correlation to the massive power blackouts on the West Coast that
have been happening recently, to the government messing around with
the HAARP Project, and other related weapons testing systems?
A: Not HAARP.
Q: (T) OK, not HAARP. Something else that they're messing with? (L)
Well, why don't we just ask, what's the cause of the blackouts? (T)
OK, what's the cause of the blackouts? Good question!
A: 4th density bleed through has many "fun" possibilities.
Q: (L) Oh, fun! (T) 4th density Bleed through? This is part of the bleed
through from the different bases on the West Coast?
A: More or less.
It seems
that what is being said is that there are effects on our reality from
other densities. These bleed throughs may become a more common occurrence,
and perhaps explains other phenomena such as UFO sightings which have
also been seen during blackouts. There may or may not be a causal relationship
between UFO's and blackouts, instead they just may be visible due to the
bleed through. The Signs Team thinks it is important to remember that
we live in a complex, dynamic universe and should not count on a magic
answer that wraps everything in a neat package. We are always wary of
those who dogmatically declare that there is one sure answer to any given
situation. Truth at this level is usually not so simple. It is important
to remain open, and to not think that we understand something completely
otherwise we may blind ourselves to important new knowledge.
If you missed
our blackout coverage, our archived Signs
pages contain links and more information regarding this most recent
one and other major blackouts, as we attempted to sift our way through
the barrage of blaming and the use of what may very well be a "natural"
phenomenon for political and economic gain. By natural, we mean anything
that we do not completely understand the mechanics of, and what often
appears to be random events, such as earthquakes. We understand that earthquakes
are the build up of pressure of the tectonic plates pushing against each
other, but when they occur, why that day and not 100 years from now?
This supplement
is not intended to focus on the blackout, but rather to focus on sonic
booms. Recent reports of these booms from our readers inspired us to pull
together articles we have posted in the past and to do a little digging
on the internet. Perhaps these sonic booms are one aspect of these bleed
throughs. We don't know, but if we collect enough data perhaps we will
eventually have enough information to formulate an hypothesis. More than
likely there is more than one cause for these incidents.
If you have
such an occurance to report, or run across a report we missed, please
email
us and let us know. This page is a work in progress and we plan to keep
it updated.
MODERN
EPISODE OF OFFSHORE BOOMS
Science Frontiers ONLINE
No. 3: April 1978
Beginning in December 1977, offshore detonations heard
along the Atlantic Coast from Canada to South Carolina captured the media's
fancy. Newspapers and TV news programs all over the country described
these unidentified explosions. However, not a word about the detonations
appeared in most of the scientific publications we regularly monitor,
with the exception of the British New Scientist and a recent article in
Science , 199:1416, March 31, 1978.
Comment . The detonations were rather strong, shaking
houses and even causing picture windows to fall out. In some instances,
flashes of light and other luminous phenomena were reported. The sounds
were characterized as "air quakes" by some scientists because
they did not always register on seismographs, although they were usually
recorded on air-pressure monitoring equipment.
One's first inclination is to attribute such detonations
to supersonic aircraft and missles, but the U.S. military immediately
denied they were to blame. Seismic noises come to mind next, but the frequent
failure to register the events on seismographs suggested an atmospheric
phenomenon. The National Enquirer (January 24, 1978) rather predictably
linked the booms to UFOs. In the federal government, the Naval Research
Laboratory (NRL) was assigned the task of tracking down the booms. In
March, NRL reported that all of the 183 detonations they investigated
were due to supersonic aircraft. That seemed to end the matter -- just
as the Condon Report signalled the demise of UFOs!!
The booms
had an interesting side effect: they triggered urgent requests for the
two Strange Phenomena sourcebooks from several universities, think-tanks,
and intelligence agencies. There may be more to this than meets the ear.
For more information, see Walter Sullivan's articles in the New York Times
of January 13 and 19, 1978. [...] Sussex
noise remains a mystery
02/26/2004
Delaware Online
The cause of a
sharp boom that rocked parts of eastern Sussex County late last week remains
a mystery.
A spokesman for
the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in southern Maryland said Wednesday
that officials at the military base have determined none of their aircraft
was in the area when residents reported a loud bang about 3:15 p.m. Friday.
Some speculated
that what they heard was a sonic boom, the phenomenon that occurs when
aircraft travel faster than the speed of sound. The speed of sound at
sea level is approximately 758 miles an hour.
Patuxent spokesman
John Romer said the air station received nearly two dozen calls about
the boom, most from eastern Delaware and parts of Maryland. But officials
couldn't pinpoint what caused the noise.
Romer said a sonic
boom was caused earlier in the day by a training aircraft over parts of
the lower Maryland Eastern Shore.
Dover Air Force
Base officials last week said none of its aircraft was responsible for
the boom. The C-5s based at Dover cannot travel faster than the speed
of sound.
Earthquake
eliminated in mystery rumble
Times Colonist
staff
Friday, September 19, 2003
Sound rumbled
through the Victoria area Thursday morning, but it was not due to an earthquake.
Several phone
calls and e-mails came into the Pacific Geoscience Centre after a cluster
of rumbles were heard in this area about 9:45 a.m.
"It
is some kind of source of sound energy," said seismologist Garry
Rogers.
It was definitely
not an earthquake.
The sound
appears to have originated somewhere to the west, but the Geoscience Centre
could not be more specific. These sorts of sounds occur occasionally and
can be caused by a variety of events such as aircraft creating sonic booms,
meteorites blasting into the atmosphere, military gunnery practice, or
blasting.
"At
the moment it is a mystery and we do not often solve these things,"
said Rogers.
This is the
second sound mystery on the Island this month.
A blast that
shook Nanaimo last Wednesday around 1 p.m., was heard and felt as far
south as Chemainus, and as far north as Nanoose.
It was not
an earthquake, and military spokesmen said at the time that there was
no gunnery practice and there were no jets in the area that would have
been capable of creating a sonic boom.
Mysterious
blast creates panic in Gujarat
TIMES NEWS
NETWORK
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2003 11:57:19 AM
AHMEDABAD:
Panic gripped several areas in Ahmedabad other parts of the state on Monday
morning as a mysterious blast was heard around 10.20 am.
Window panes and doors rattled while in certain areas multi-storeyed apartments
shuddered and people thronged to the streets in panic.
Rumours of Mumbai-like bomb blasts went around in Ahmedabad, a city already
on its edge because upcoming Navratris beginning on Thursday. Frantic
calls to hospitals and the police control room yielded no explanation
about the cause and the location of the blast.
There were however speculations that the blasts may have been triggered
off by tectonic movements, on the lines of similar blasts which were heard
in some parts of Jamnagar in western Gujarat last month. [...]
Comment:
Having heard and felt sonic booms caused by planes we are wondering if
this update to this story is true: Blast
heard in Gujarat was 'sonic boom': air force.
Mystery
bangs plague town (UK)
By Daniel
Menhinnitt
Croydon Guardian
The cause
of a series of loud explosions is still perplexing people.
Since breaking
the story in last week’s Guardian the newsroom has been inundated
with reports of residents hearing the noise.
The Guardian
reported a mysterious noise described as a "bang like a firework
but a thousand times louder" had been heard on September 20 at about
6pm.
But now we
can reveal there has been a spate of bangs in the last month some loud
enough to shake windows and set car alarms off.
Neither the
council nor the police have been able to shed any light on the cause.
Spokesman
for Croydon council’s environmental services said: "We haven’t
any idea what could be causing the noises. It could be a series of very
loud fireworks, perhaps the new type of air bomb fireworks which cause
quite a loud noise." The MET office has confirmed that the explosions
are not due to the weather, while the Civil Aviation Authority has discounted
the idea that the noise could be due to an aeroplane’s sonic boom.
[...]
Sonic
boom? Earthquake? Big bang theories abound
BY TERRY
JOYCE
Of The Post and Courier Staff
Story last updated at 7:35 a.m. Saturday, August 2, 2003
The earthquake
experts say it wasn't a shaker, and military authorities say they didn't
have the kind of planes in the air that can make a sonic boom.
But whatever
it was, the noise that rattled Lowcountry communities about 1:30 p.m.
Friday commanded a lot of attention.
"There
was this extremely loud, percussive noise," said Reynolds Pommering
of Mount Pleasant. "My sister (on James Island) said she heard it,
too, and that's eight miles across as the crow flies. I first thought
somebody had run into the building." [...]
Mystery
'boom' requires old-fashioned investigative techniques
Monday, 23
April 2001
The mystery
'boom' that hit the Sunshine Coast of Queensland on Thursday afternoon
about 3.15 pm will remain a mystery until reports of the incident can
be analysed.
The QUAKES
Earthquake Research Centre at The University of Queensland has been inundated
with reports of the incident but will require more data to reach a conclusion
about its origins. Possible origins include an earthquake, a sonic boom,
a quarry blast, or an unusual incident such as the destruction or detonation
of explosives.
Initial indications
are that the disturbance was equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude
2-3.5 on the Richter scale.
Few working
seismographs remain in Queensland and none of those operating picked up
any sign of earthquake activity. However, the closest monitoring station
on Mt Nebo outside Brisbane may have been too far away to register a relatively
small earthquake.
Using the
old-fashioned techniques of analysing public reports of the incident,
Col Lynam of QUAKES will produce a map of effects that should give an
indication of possible causes. [...]
Residents
hear, feel mystery boom
But emergency
officials couldn't account for the source of the noise.
STAFF REPORT
Herald Tribune
June 18, 2003
It was the
boom heard -- and felt -- around the county.
From downtown
Bradenton to the outskirts of Palmetto to Longboat Key, folks heard a
noontime noise that rocked their world. Literally.
But emergency
officials couldn't account for the source of the noise that shook Bradenton,
Palmetto, and other parts of Manatee County around noon Monday.
"I was
sitting in my office, and it felt like somebody hit our building,"
said Will Horner of Southern Supply, 606 19th Ave., Bradenton. "The
doors shook. The building shook. It was almost like an earthquake."
The workers next door emptied out, trying to figure out what happened,
Horner said. "The whole neighborhood was out."
Horner said
his wife told him it "shook the house" at their home in north
Palmetto.
Courthouse
employees who heard the noise dismissed it as thunder. Diana Hughes, who
works in the courthouse's basement, said she also heard rumbling after
the initial boom.
Dennis Carlson
of Chicago was loading luggage into his car at the Holiday Inn when he
looked skyward. "Come to think of it, I thought I heard thunder,"
Carlson said. "I thought we might get more rain."
Reports of
the noise came from as far as Ellenton and Longboat Key, even Sarasota,
officials said.
Process of
elimination has so far ruled out a sonic boom, gas explosion or power
plant incident, at least according to the official spokespeople.
Florida Power
& Light Co. spokesman Mel Klein said nothing happened at the Parrish
power plant that could have caused the commotion. Emergency officials
and police and firefighters said there were no calls or responses to explosions
Monday. Air traffic controllers said there were no aircraft overhead that
could have broken the sound barrier.
Bruce Hall,
air traffic manager at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, said
the sound did not come from anything Tampa International Airport was tracking.
"We don't know what it was," Hall said. "It wasn't us."
MacDill Air
Force Base in Tampa said the noise was not caused by its operations. "It's
not coming from the base up here," said Sgt. Chris Miller, a public
affairs officer with the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill.
The base
wasn't doing any flight exercises, he said. "The only thing in our
fleet that makes that noise is the fighter jet." [...]
GEORGIA
- DID YOU HEAR THE BOOM?
COLUMBUS
-- Neither City authorities nor Ft. Benning officials could explain the
loud 'boom' that shook the area about 5:20 p.m. February 5, 2000. Many
concerned callers directed their inquiries to Ft. Benning officials and
Columbus 911 searching for answers.
"We
don't believe it was anything on Fort Benning," said Captain John
Hollar. "What a lot of people outside are saying is that it was a
sonic boom. But we had no planes in the area."
A 911 dispatcher
said she had four calls since arriving to work two hours after the incident."
But they got a lot more earlier." There have been no reports of injuries
or explanations of what may have caused the boom. The boom was also felt
and heard in Alabama and is similar to one heard on August 2, 1999, that
included UFO sightings.
The usual
suspect, the military have denied it was their aircraft. Seismic earthquake
activity was not detected, so a sonic boom is most likely responsible.
A full investigation was made of the 8/2/99 blast and was submitted to
GEMA [...]
Franklin
Boom
Hartsville,
Tennessee, about 30 miles northeast of Nashville, where mysterious, destructive
power surge killed dozens of birds and damaged transmitter, phone lines
and computer equipment at country music radio station WJKM (1090 AM) on
Friday, July 6, 2001 at 10:45 a.m. CST.
WKRM Nashville TN carries a video news report establishing the fact that
the Franklin mystery boom registered as seismic activity at 1005hrs on
July 7. The epicenter was pinpinted to four miles SE of the community.
In spite of this, authorities could not confirm it was due to an earthquake,
or even a underground cave collapse. However, a sonic boom has definitely
been ruled out. To view the newscast click: News 2 - Franklin Boom Clue
Uncovered. See also a similar story of the TVA report from The Review
Appeal & Brentwood Journal of July 18 2001. G-fs.
Folks in
Franklin felt a boom on July 7th. Now, there's a new clue in the mystery.
Was it an earthquake? Or an explosion? Or an underground cave collapse?
Whatever it was, it was strong enough to register 2.6 on the Richter scale.
[...]
Mystery
Boom Echoes Across 4 States
February
10 2002 at 10:17 PM
Pittsfield, Mass( AP) -- Something went boom Saturday, and people
in four states are wondering just what it was.
Some people also spotted something in the sky yesterday afternoon.
Calls to
emergency officials in western Massachusetts described a fireball, a sonic
boom and an explosion. There were similar reports in Vermont, New York
and Connecticut.
The Federal
Aviation Administration has ruled out a plane crash. And the National
Weather Service said it has no weather-related explanation.
One astronomer
guesses a meteoroid was likely the cause for all the commotion
A
Mystery Boom?
Several
reports from last night, 2/2/99, at about 7:30p.m. the town of Elk City,
Oklahoma, (100 miles w. of Oklahoma City) was rocked by a "Mystery
Boom" similar to what has been reported in other locations recently.
I contacted the local police and they reported multiple phone calls from
concerned citizens, all reporting windows being shaken and a loud booming
sound. I was monitoring the area military aircraft bands at the time and
I noted no unusual activities. This report comes on the heals of last
week's report of a sound described as being similar to a "rocket
taking off" heard over a large area of western Oklahoma. By coincidence,
Elk City is 15 miles w. of the old SAC Air Force base, which is under
consideration as a possible launching facility for NASA's new X-33 Space
plane...
One
man thought the noise was a sonic boom.
December
8, 2002
Another
guessed he was hearing rolling thunder. When a woman feared it was a bomb
or an earthquake, she called the police. But they had no answers, either.
No one in the Massachusetts Avenue Heights neighborhood of Northwest Washington
knows what is going on at the house of their neighbor, the vice president
of the United States. But one thing is certain: They're tired of the daily
blasting at the Naval Observatory that has shaken houses, rattled windows
and knocked mirrors off the walls.
The blasts, which last three to five seconds apiece, have been going off
two or three times a day -- as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m.
-- for nearly two months, residents say. But neighbors have received so
little information from government officials about the top-secret project
that speculation is running wild. The leading theory: A security bunker
is being built for Vice President Cheney. The second most-popular guess:
The government is digging tunnels to spy on nearby embassies. In third
place: A helicopter hangar is under construction.
January
28, 2003
Was
it a bird, a plane, a sonic boom? -Dozens of Hilton Head Islanders
called the Emergency Operations Center and Beaufort County Sheriff's Office
on Friday asking where "the earthquake" hit. The calls started at 10:03
a.m., after some roofs seemed to rattle and glass seemed to shake. Deputies
at the Sheriff's Office on Hilton Head felt it too. - "We were like, 'Oh
my gosh, what was that?' " said Beaufort County Sheriff's Office Spokeswoman
Debbie Szpanka. "The whole roof shook. For us, it sounded like something
landed on our roof with a big thud." Others described it as the sound
of a giant fist hitting outside walls or a giant gust of wind that lasted
only a second or two. Outside, some looked around, trying to spot a wreck.
"What was that?" No one seemed entirely sure Friday, but emergency management
workers knew what it wasn't. "All I can tell you is it was not seismic
in nature," said Steve Fields, deputy director of Beaufort County Emergency
Management. "Maybe Godzilla, I don't know, but it wasn't seismic."
Plane
Causes Sonic Boom, Rattles Four-County Area - A loud noise rattled
windows and shook buildings in a four-county area Saturday before last
around 4:20 p.m. Authorities aren't sure what caused the noise, but it
was suggested it might have been an aircraft sonic boom. The boom was
heard and felt by persons throughout Coffee, Moore, Franklin, Marion and
Lincoln counties while many were focusing their attention on the football
game underway in Nashville between the Titans and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Scott Ulm, an employee at the Tennessee Corrections Academy in Tullahoma,
said several employees heard the "boom" but exactly what caused it remains
a mystery. "It was probably a sonic boom," he said. "But you can't tell
for sure. All we heard is that there was a big blast."
Mysterious
rumble shakes up Florida area residents - "It wasn't your typical
sonic boom," said Woolford, an artist for Blue Dolphin at Ellyson Field.
"It just kept going and going, about five or seven seconds. It shook the
whole building. My pedestal computer monitor was rocking and rolling back
and forth." When he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble, he thought
it was an earthquake. Residents from Century to Perdido Key and east to
Milton flooded emergency call centers in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties
reporting the boom that rattled doors and shook pictures off walls. -
The source of the vibration remained a mystery after emergency management
and law enforcement officials ran into dead ends looking into the cause.
The strongest indication pointed to a sonic boom. They ruled out a space
shuttle flight over Northwest Florida. Military officials at Eglin and
Hurlburt Field said they had no bombing or training missions that would
have caused the rumble. - Officials with the Geological Survey of Alabama
say seismic data does not point to an earthquake. "I have nothing showing
an earthquake has occurred," said Dorothy Raymond, a geologist with the
Survey in Tuscaloosa. - If the military is responsible for the boom, Catherine
Olsen, who ran outside to investigate what shook her home near Cordova
Mall, said, "they need to fess up. Everyone is so scared with everything
going on in the world." This is not the first time the area has experienced
a mysterious jolt. Similar unexplained tremors were reported in 1990 and
1991.
Report
from Reader in Hawaii: Aloha Kakou! We
had a "sonic boom" last tues. the 21st. about 8:30pm It was VERY strange!,
our dogs started to bark a few secounds before the whole house shook with
a load boom, you could almost see things kinda "warp" right before the
bang. Friends of ours felt the same thing about 20 miles away at about
the same time. I've heard plenty of sonic booms from planes, but this
was different, we are surrounded by military bases so to hear bombs going
off is not that unusual, we hear some pretty strange explosions this was
oddly different! Its a weird coinsidence that this "sonic boom" was felt
over on the mainland also!
Mystery
boom rattles Greece (NY) neighborhoods
Staff Reports
(July 14,
2003) - GREECE - A loud sound shook houses in town Sunday morning and
sent some residents scurrying into the street. However, area fire departments
reported that there was nothing wrong on the ground.
Several area
residents in the Ridgewood Road and Benjamin Avenue area said they heard
a house-rocking sound about 10:47 a.m. Sunday.
Calls to
two area firehouses turned up no known source of the noise; no fire calls
were received at North Greece fire stations No. 1 and No. 2. [...]
BOOMS
ALONG THE BEACH
Mysteries,
Marvels and Things That Go Boom at the Beach
Asheville Citizen
September 4, 1990.
J. Fisher via L. Farish
Just because
we don't report them don't think that unexplained detonations are no longer
heard along the world's seacoasts. These "waterguns" are still
booming away, as they have for centuries. Take the Carolina beaches for
example.
"Sunset
Beach -- Just what is that noise that residents along the coast have been
hearing?
"Reverberations
powerful enough to shake beach cottages are heard several times every
autumn along the coast in New Hanover and Brunswick counties.
"'It
moves the earth, I tell you,' Minnie Hunt of Sunset Beach said. 'Sometimes
you get two or three in a row.' [...]
"Residents who are now grandparents say their own grandparents remembered
the rumbles, so they predate the sonic booms of jets breaking the sound
barrier. .....
"The
noises clearly emanate from the sea, she said...'It's not a land phenomenon.'
[...]
.....
"The sounds occur most often in the fall and spring, though they
occasionally shiver across the beaches in other seasons. Sometimes they
shake the coast more than once a day. Sometimes they happen a few days
in a row. Sometimes they are weeks apart. They have been reported as far
north as Carteret County, but are most frequent near Wilmington and southward."
Mysterious
rumble mystifies Space Coast residents
By Francis
X. Donnelly and Lyn Dowling
FLORIDA TODAY
For May 8, 1996
CAPE CANAVERAL,
Fla. For 30 seconds Tuesday morning, Brevard County rumbled and roared
just like it always does during a space shuttle launch.
Only there
was no launch Tuesday.
Then, 12
minutes later, it happened again.
What was
it that caused windows to rattle and citizens to hear what sounded like
a sonic boom?
Nobody knows.
Or they're not telling.
Either way,
it's easier to say what it wasn't. It wasn't a supersonic jet, the military
said. It wasn't an explosion, the police said.
And it probably
wasn't an earthquake, geologists said.
Don't laugh
at that last one. Florida has had eight quakes in 115 years with one striking
Brevard as recently as 1973, according to the Florida Almanac.
One thing
many north Brevardians knew, and it was this: They were scared.
"It
was unbelievable," said Norm Johnson, owner of Normano Pizza in Port
St. John. "I heard this rumbling and thought, 'This is it,' when
the whole house shook. It was really, really weird."
Residents
inundated the switchboards of the Titusville Police Department and the
Brevard County Sheriff's Office with calls.
Some callers thought somebody was trying to break into their homes, police
spokespersons said.
"We've
had all kinds of sonic booms and engine testing out at the industrial
center (in the past), but we've never had anything like this," said
Jay Cullen, Titusville police spokesman.
The noises
and tremors, which occurred 9:36 a.m. and 9:48 a.m., both lasted about
half a minute, witnesses said.
It was felt
and heard most strongly around Titusville and north Merritt Island, witnesses
said.
But it also
was felt as far south as Palm Bay, as far north as Daytona Beach in Volusia
County and in Orange County, according to Brevard Emergency Management
officials.
Some speculated
the sound may have emanated from a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier,
but officials at Patrick Air Force Base said they didn't know of any such
activity.
"We've
checked with everyone," Patrick spokeswoman Lila Edwards said. "Nothing.
We know of no flights, no tests, no drills, nothing. Zero."
Ditto for
Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Station.
NASA spokesman
Bruce Buckingham heard and felt the noise himself.
"It
was two distinct booms, one of which shook the building, with a loud rumbling,
almost like thunder," he said.
He said the
lights in NASA buildings were swaying during an operations conference,
causing space officials to pause to ensure everything was all right.
NASA then
checked to see whether its operations somehow caused the noise but didn't
find anything, Buckingham said.
"We
wish we knew," he said. "We were afraid at first that it was
something that would affect us. We called Patrick and they said it was
nothing they were doing."
Besides the
eight earthquakes since 1881, Florida has experienced 32 sonic booms and
explosions that caused similar rumbling during that time, the Florida
Almanac reports.
The most
recent in Brevard occurred in October 1973 when Brevard residents were
shaken awake at 2:18 a.m.
Centered
in St. Johns Valley, the earthquake also was felt in Indian River, Orange,
Polk, Osceola and Volusia counties.
Measuring
3.0 on the Richter scale, the quake didn't cause any damage but jammed
police phone lines with calls from concerned residents.
Geologists
seemed to discount Tuesday's phantom visit as anything related to a quake.
Douglas Smith,
professor of geology at the University of Florida in Gainsville, which
possesses the sole seismograph in the state, said the machine picked up
two anomalies in the morning.
But Smith
doubted it qualified as an earthquake.
"What
people felt was something other than seismic, something generated from
above rather than below ground," he said. "We didn't think it
was anything seismic at all."
The National
Earthquake Center in Colorado concurred.
With everyone
at wit's end, a UFO investigator's guess may be as good as anyone's.
Joe Jordan,
a Port St. John resident who does research for the Mutual UFO Network,
said unexplained sonic booms have been reported off and on since the late
1970s from New Jersey to Florida.
He and other
UFO hunters label them "skyquakes." Due to the lack of seismic
activity, they think the sounds emanate from the sky.
The most
recent "skyquake" over Florida occurred a year ago in the Gulf
Breeze region, which is notorious for UFO sightings, Jordan said.
The cause?
Classified military operations, Jordon says. But local military officials
scoff at the notion. Of course they would, UFO buffs said. That's why
they're classified.
Studies
of sonic booms with seismic networks.
Bradford
Sturtevant
Joseph E. Cates
Graduate Aeronaut. Labs., California Inst. of Technol., Caltech 301-46,
Pasadena, CA 91125
Hiroo Kanamori
California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA 91125
Seismographs
are sufficiently sensitive to detect ground motions induced by atmospheric
pressure waves, so seismic networks have the potential to monitor sonic
booms over large areas of the United States. They are especially well
suited for the analysis of long-range sonic-boom propagation. Ground motion
or displacement data provide accurate arrival times and useful estimates
of wave amplitude and waveform.
The instrumentation
is most sensitive to the disturbance produced by the arrival of sonic
booms at the measuring station, thus serving as sonic-boom event recorders,
but seismographs have also detected seismic waves remotely generated by
anomalous coupling of sonic boom into soil. Direct and indirect sonic
booms from aircraft operations are routinely detected by the Southern
California Seismic Network which consists of 250 seismic stations covering
50 000 sq km. Indirect booms from space shuttle landings has been observed
at ranges of hundreds of kilometers from the flight path.
Data from
the network identified "mystery booms'' heard in 1992--93 to be long-range
indirect sonic booms from offshore operations. Sonic booms generated by
space shuttle reentry at Mach 20 and by meteoritic entries into the atmosphere
have been detected by seismic networks in the Northwest and Canada.
Oz
Mystery: Sonic Booms, Silver Flying Objects
[Original
headline: Space debris ominous sign: expert]
AAP -- A
barrage of mysterious burning space debris over the New South Wales south
coast was a sign of more danger to come, according to a space junk expert.
A celestial
sound and light show complete with flares, explosions and a sonic boom
lit skies across parts of south-east Australia for two hours on Tuesday
night.
Police said
they received a substantial number of reports about the strange lights
and loud bangs, which were described as more powerful than fireworks or
thunder.
Scientists
said the light show was caused by either a meteor or space junk burning
up as it entered the earth's atmosphere. No debris was found.
Batemans
Bay's Bay Post newspaper editor Chris Graham said he heard what sounded
like an explosion, and which he could only describe as a sonic boom, triggered
when an object breaks the sound barrier.
"I still
haven't heard (another) credible explanation for it," he told AAP.
Australia
Institute Director Clive Hamilton said the rapidly increasing amount of
space junk left in space made random and dangerous collisions with earth
increasingly likely.
"There
are over a million pieces of space junk orbiting the earth, and some of
them are going to come crashing to earth sooner or later," he told
AAP.
"There's
certainly a lot of alarm about it in space circles. They now have to put
extra armour plating on satellites and space stations and so on because
of collisions with space junk.
"It's
also alarming when you see these events which could be meteor showers,
could be space junk reentering the atmosphere, could be the Mir Space
Station.
"No
one really knows, or at least they're not saying - we really are kept
in the dark when there's some particular threat."
The space
show came a month before Russia begins its controlled dumping of the troubled
Mir Space Station over the Pacific Ocean, off the east coast of Australia.
Experts have
warned that plan could easily go wrong, after a 1979 deorbiting scattered
the US Skylab over Western Australia instead of the South Atlantic as
planned.
Some scientists
said the meteorite would have been the size of a coffee cup, others said
it was as big as a fridge, while another said the earth may have passed
through a comet's tail.
They disagreed
about the possibility a series of grass fires around Canberra and Batemans
Bay were started by flying embers, a theory played down but not ruled
out by emergency services.
UFO Research
Centre Director Diane Harrison said a burning the ember could easily start
a fire in dry scrub, before burying itself in sand so it could not be
traced. • Originally published by • NineMSN News / Australia
- December 27 2000 [Original headline: Speculation 'space junk' caused
fire]
Unexplained
reports of sonic booms, flying silver objects and flares seen falling
from the sky were made to emergency services throughout the ACT and South
Coast last night [December 26] .
"Space
junk" sighted over Calwell was believed to have sparked a grass fire
beside the Monaro Highway, an ACT Fire Brigade spokesman said.
The fire,
near the intersection with Isabella Drive, was quickly contained by six
fire-brigade units, but speculation about the cause ran rife through the
ACT emergency services.
"An
eyewitness at the Calwell shops said she saw a piece of something silver
crashing into the ground," an ambulance spokesman said.
ACT police
confirmed that a flare had been seen falling from the sky near the Monaro
Highway, and said they had received similar reports of floating space
junk from the South Coast.
Batemans
Bay police were also fielding calls last night about sonic booms, flares,
and "big comets in the sky", but no damage was reported and
no objects were found, a spokesman said.
A total fire
ban in the ACT had been extended until midnight tonight, ACT Emergency
Services said yesterday.
Householders
have been warned that gas and electric barbecues may be used but that
wood, charcoal and spirit-burning appliances are banned.
• Originally
published by • The Canberra Times / Australia | By Stacey Lucas
- December 27 2000
Story last
updated at 7:35 a.m. Saturday, August 2, 2003
LOS
ANGELES SONIC BOOMS
At around
7am on a Thursday morning in June 1991, people all over Southern California
were awakened by a loud boom. It was enough of a shock to make people
call their local radio stations to ask whether the noise had been caused
by an earthquake; but it had not.
The boom
was unusual in that military pilots know booming urban areas is bad for
public relations. It was also unusual in that it could be tracked and
measured unlike any other way anywhere else in the world. Waiting for
signs of the next massive release of tension in the San Andreas fault
is a full-time job for United States Geological Service (USGS) seismologists
based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The CalTech
seismologists monitor and record every slight movement in the ground with
an array of over 220 remote seismographs from the southern coastline to
the eastern Mojave Desert.
During the
1980s, the USGS found that their instruments would respond when NASA space
shuttles descended overhead on their supersonic approach to Edwards AFB.
They also realized that they could track the shuttle's track and speed
by comparing the time at which the boom arrived at different points.
The USGS
calculated that the June 1991 boom, and other booms tracked between October
1991 and June 1992, were produced by something moving between Mach 3 and
Mach 4. The space shuttle flies much faster during re-entry, but no shuttles
were landing on those dates. The track calculated ran northeast over Los
Angeles, across the Mojave Desert and towards somewhere between Death
Valley and Las Vegas. Indications of its destination was that of the Nellis
Range, the largest area of military testing and practise in the world.
The unidentified
aircraft that boomed L.A. in 1991 and 1992 were not heard from again beyond
Nevada. They were most likely headed for the top-secret Groom Lake installation.
If they were headed for Groom Lake, some 300 miles from Los Angeles, even
at their record-breaking speed they were already deccelerating.
The Los Angeles
booms weren't an isolated incident. They were the first corroborated evidence
to support rumors, sightings and hearings that had accumulated since the
mid-1980s. The first reports were heard in 1986, not long after a large
section of land was sealed off to observers on public land. Clearly, it
was felt that the base's security was inadequate.
In February
1988, the New York Times reported that the USAF was working on a stealth
reconnaissance aircraft capable of Mach 6. Early in 1990, Aviation Week
also made reference to such an aircraft, reporting that witnesses had
heard an incredibly loud aircraft departing from Edwards AFB at night.
Considering
the coincidental timing of the retirement of the SR-71 Blackbird in 1990,
the newspaper and magazine reports of aircraft characteristic of hypersonic
propulsion, the expansion of the Groom Lake facility and the Los Angeles
booms, it isn't unreasonable to assume that a secret hypersonic plane
is operating from a secret Nevada location, and now flying operations
aroung the world.
Boulder-Size
Meteor Almost Struck Australia?
September
9, 2002
Residents
of Goolwa and Victor Harbour, south of the state capital Adelaide, inundated
police with reports of a flash of blue light, smoke trails and two sonic
booms. Bryan Boyle of the Anglo-Australian space-watching telescope in
the eastern state of New South Wales told the Australian Broadcasting
Corp that the sightings suggested the object was a meteor which came within
19 miles of the ground.
Finnish
meteorites
Homepages
of Jarmo Moilanen
1981 18 Oct
A bright
fireball with sonic booms. This fireball fly from NE to SW over western
cost of Finland at 22.23 local time. It fade away somewhere north from
Kokkola. North from Kokkola sonic booms were heard. I also saw this fireball.
It was about -16 magnitude and turn night into day. If something came
down, it unfortunately landed in sea.
1976 15 Nov
A bright fireball with sonic booms. A astonishing bright fireball light
up the sky in eastern Finland at 23.15 local time. A sonic boom which
shook windows was also heard afterwards. This meteorite was searched in
Palosenmäki area but without any success.
1957 Dec
A very bright fireball was observed in Savukoski, Lappland. Also sonic
booms were heard. There has been rumors and even search of a crater this
meteor produced. No crater has been found so far.
1803 21 Dec
The most
probable observation of fall of the Åbo meteorite . A fireball was
seen traveling south from Vaasa towards Turku (=Åbo) between 19.00
and 20.00 local time. Sonic booms have been heard. From Turku this meteorite
was visible as a bright ball on the sky. It seems that it came straight
toward Turku. It was observed also in Oulu, which is 540 km NNE from Turku.
See also June 1804 and 6 Aug 1820 cases.
|
An
FA18 Hornet was photographed breaking the sound barrier in 1999 |
Boom!
Mystery solved Noises in sky just Lockheed flight tests
By DAVE HIRSCHMAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The mystery
of the twin booms that have startled people from Chattanooga to Huntsville
since June has been solved.
The culprits
are new F/A-22 Raptor fighters and chase planes making supersonic test
flights over the region. So far 17 of the futuristic jets have been built
at Lockheed Martin's plant in Marietta, and all must show they can break
the sound barrier before being handed over to the Air Force.
The only
problem is that no one let folks in the flight path know the sonic booms
were coming. When residents asked the military about the alarming noises,
every branch denied having any planes in the area.
"Each
boom sounds like an explosion," said Jess Hornsby, 61, of Signal
Mountain, Tenn., a Chattanooga suburb. He estimates he's heard 10 in the
last three months. "There's no rumbling like thunder. It's a loud
crack that really rattles the windows. People here have been wondering
what in the world was going on."
Hornsby,
a self-described aviation buff, said he looked up the first time he heard
the booms and saw two white contrails streaking overhead. Each F/A-22
is shadowed by an F-16 chase plane.
U.S. Rep.
Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) said the first time he heard the twin booms, he thought
a coal mine had exploded.
"I thought
I was going to have a heart attack," Wamp said. "It was such
a high impact."
Greg Caires,
a spokesman at the Marietta plant, said the planes typically fly about
40,000 feet on a route that takes them from Crossville, Tenn., to Scottsboro,
Ala. The planes cover the 110-mile route in about four minutes.
The flights
follow an existing FAA-approved "supersonic corridor," so rules
that prohibit breaking the sound barrier over the continental United States
don't apply.
Lockheed
says it tries to minimize disruptions by avoiding Sunday flights and keeping
the planes high. Caires says security rules prohibit the company from
telling residents in advance when supersonic flights will take place.
Caires and
Randy Neville, an F/A-22 test pilot and University of Tennessee grad,
traveled to Chattanooga and Huntsville last week to let residents know
what the planes have been doing in the skies overhead -- and to expect
more booms in the future. Lockheed is accelerating F/A-22 production and
plans to build more than 300 of the fighters.
Once residents
learned the planes were on their side, Caires said, Lockheed got a warm
reception.
"People
are very supportive and think the supersonic flights are really cool,"
Caires said. "I tell them to look to the southwest next time they
hear the booms -- but they better look fast, because the planes won't
be there long."
Comment:
For
information on the new Raptor F/A 22 check the
link here. For a "tail-less" version check out this Jane's
article:
Raptor
could hatch a delta bomber
By Bill
Sweetman
Lockheed
Martin has briefed the USAF on a radically modified version of the F-22
Raptor fighter with a delta wing, longer body and greater range and
payload.
A company-funded
study of the so-called FB-22 will continue throughout this year.
The FB-22,
as its designation suggests, is clearly a bomber. Operations over Afghanistan
have driven home the fact that bases close to many potential targets
may never be open to US combat aircraft. Apart from extreme-range operations
by F-15Es, USAF fighters have been relatively little used in that theater,
and much of the burden has been carried by B-52s and B-1s. [.... more
available via subscription]
It
seems the USAF has indicated they are not interested in these.
HEARD
ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS
No. 108:
Nov-Dec 1996
In 1934,
Science printed several letters describing and speculating about the socalled
"Seneca Guns". (Lake Seneca is one of New York State's Finger
Lakes.) The locals and Indians of bygone days have repeatedly testified
about the eerie, unexpected booms heard around the shores of Lake Seneca.
It seems that the phenomenon is not restricted to this Finger Lake, for
a letter from G. Kuchar describes a modern "bombardment" of
"lake guns" heard at Lake Cayuga about 15 miles east of Lake
Seneca.
"In
the early morning hours of August 8th, 1996 (maybe about 6:30 or 7:00
AM), I was awoken by what I thought were loud explosions of thunder. It
was a very loud, abrupt sound, sort of like close-by thunderclaps except
that they seemed somewhat distant and yet had no reverberations or rumblings.
I went to the window which faced a large building across the way...The
early morning appeared warm, humid, and overcast. The explosive "thunderclaps"
happened again, a whole series of them, and they seemed to originate up
in the air and to my right, but I could detect no flashes of light, and
the blasts seemed to come at random points in the sky (which was not very
visible to me because of the big building looming across the lawn). I
couldn't figure out where the storm cloud was that was producing these
blasts, since everything was uniformly overcast, and there was no darkness
moving in or evident in my field of view. From the sound of the blasts,
which were very impressive, powerful noises, I pictured in my mind's eye
that huge cloud-to-ground bolts of lightning must be erupting somewhere
aloft and to the right and out of sight of my position at the window.
But they seemed too scattered about, and then one boomed to the rear of
my position, and that was soon followed by a blast slightly to the left
of that one and way to the left of all the previous ones. Yet, there was
no flash of lightning and no dark mass of cloud moving from right to left.
[..]
Lookheed-Martin
Admits To Sonic Booms
Hope To Lessen,
But No Promise To Stop
Mike
Chambers
WDEF-TV News 12
Aug 11, 2003
You heard
them.. then you called us to complain.
This week
Lockheed-Martin is taking responsibility for the sonic booms that have
rocked the Tennessee Valley over the last few months.
But they
aren't promising to stop them.[..]
Natural
sound of Congressman at simulator..."We've made it through here 'cause
we're stealthy..."
IT ALMOST
LITERALLY TOOK AN ACT OF CONGRESS TO PRY THE INFORMATION FORM LOCKHEED
MARTIN... CONGRESSMAN ZACH WAMP HAS HEARD THE BOOMS TOO.
Rep. Zach
Wamp, (R) Chattanooga "I was out on Saturday afternoon at Lookout
Valley and a sonic boom happened it juist, my heart almost exploded."
LOCKHEED
MARTIN'S EXPLANATION FOR THE RAPTOR'S BOOMING THROUGH THE VALLEY?
Rep. Zach
Wamp, (R) Chattanooga "We just happen to b e here without much going
on in the airspace west of Chattanooga."
COMPANY OFFICIALS
SAY THE F.A.A. MADE THAT DECISION... AND UNLESS THE AIR FORCE RELAXES
TESTING GUIDELINES, WE MAY HEAR 2, 3, OR 4 SONIC BOOMS A MONTH...POSSIBLY
FOR YEARS.[..]
Comment:
Expect more Sonic Booms and don't
expect them to ALL come from Lockheed Martin.
Cheney's
Home Sending Bad Vibrations
Construction Blasts Have D.C. Folks Shuddering, Speculating
By
David Nakamura, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, December 8, 2002;
Page A01
One man
thought the noise was a sonic boom.
Another guessed
he was hearing rolling thunder.
When a woman
feared it was a bomb or an earthquake, she called the police. But they
had no answers, either.
No one in
the Massachusetts Avenue Heights neighborhood of Northwest Washington
knows what is going on at the house of their neighbor, the vice president
of the United States.
But one thing
is certain: They're tired of the daily blasting at the Naval Observatory
that has shaken houses, rattled windows and knocked mirrors off the walls.
"None
of the neighbors object to any construction that is necessary in the Navy's
view," said Nancy Nord, a community activist who lives on Observatory
Circle. "What we do object to is that there is no sense of the magnitude,
no warning about something so intrusive to our lives and no clear sense
how long this is going to go or when it's going to stop."
The blasts,
which last three to five seconds apiece, have been going off two or three
times a day -- as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. -- for nearly
two months, residents say. But neighbors have received so little information
from government officials about the top-secret project that speculation
is running wild.
The leading
theory: A security bunker is being built for Vice President Cheney. The
second most-popular guess: The government is digging tunnels to spy on
nearby embassies. In third place: A helicopter hangar is under construction.
As the government
roots out terrorists around the globe and gears up for a possible military
confrontation with Iraq, nothing is out of the realm of possibility, neighbors
say.
"After
9/11, when you hear a big blast for the first time, you wonder what is
going on," said Iza Warner, who had a mirror fall off the wall of
her home on Davis Street, a few blocks away from the construction site.
Warner called the police after guests at a dinner party became frightened
by the racket.
"One
guest said, 'Oh, my God, what is going on -- an earthquake?' " Warner
recalled. "She said it sounded just awful. I called the police, and
they looked around but they couldn't tell us anything."
Thus far,
the federal government's only response to the residents has been a three-page
letter that the observatory's superintendent, David W. Gillard, sent to
the advisory neighborhood commissioner, Rosalyn P. Doggett, on Nov. 20.
The blasting
could last eight more months, Gillard said in the letter, but the Navy
has attempted to limit noise by silencing backup alerts on trucks and
removing most diesel-powered electric generators from the construction
site.
He did not
disclose the nature of the project, however. [..]
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