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Mysterious Sounds Recorded During Near Space Balloon Flight

An anonymous reader writes: LiveScience reports on strange sounds recorded by microphones on board a high altitude balloon. The sounds were captured at altitudes of up to 36 kilometers, higher than any such experiment to date. Most of the noises are in Infrasound frequencies — below 20 Hz. Researchers aren't sure what caused the noises, but they have a few theories: "a wind farm under the balloon's flight path, crashing ocean waves, wind turbulence, gravity waves, clear air turbulence, and vibrations caused by the balloon cable."

12 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. The mating calls by Vinegar+Joe · · Score: 3, Funny

    Of a pod of air whales.

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  2. Re:The most plausible theory by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Funny

    its not politically correct. They prefer to be called undocumented martians

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  3. Hmmm by koan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On 31 May 2003, a group of UK researchers held a mass experiment where they exposed some 700 people to music laced with soft 17 Hz sine waves played at a level described as "near the edge of hearing", produced by an extra-long-stroke subwoofer mounted two-thirds of the way from the end of a seven-meter-long plastic sewer pipe. The experimental concert (entitled Infrasonic) took place in the Purcell Room over the course of two performances, each consisting of four musical pieces. Two of the pieces in each concert had 17 Hz tones played underneath. In the second concert, the pieces that were to carry a 17 Hz undertone were swapped so that test results would not focus on any specific musical piece. The participants were not told which pieces included the low-level 17 Hz near-infrasonic tone. The presence of the tone resulted in a significant number (22%) of respondents reporting anxiety, uneasiness, extreme sorrow, nervous feelings of revulsion or fear, chills down the spine, and feelings of pressure on the chest.[34][35] In presenting the evidence to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Richard Wiseman said, "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound. Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost—our findings support these ideas."[33]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    It teh guvernmint....

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  4. First thought... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...huh, so THAT'S what microphones sound like when they freeze over at low pressures.

    1. Re:First thought... by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 2

      Second thought, something with numerous plausible explanations is news because the news source didn't immediately choose one of them.

      It's like those rocks that water ski over the desert when no ones looking, or that fart that totally wasn't mine so must have been a ghost.

      Something just happened. Tune in to find out what it was. Click here to see what 300 autistic spectrum disorder sufferers think.

    2. Re:First thought... by slashmydots · · Score: 2

      Wait.......microphones aren't magical devices that capture all sound in realtime verbatim? What next? Cameras are interlaced frames of still images subject to alteration by the iris and the digital chip that also doesn't work a thing like the human eye? Shut up, you're scaring the ignorant people!

  5. ALIENS! by hack++slash · · Score: 2
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  6. Re:The most plausible theory by narcc · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's so racist! Not all undocumented extraterrestrial immigrants are Martians, neither are all Martian immigrants undocumented.

  7. Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Vibrations caused by the balloon cable" is listed last? I'd list it first!

  8. Spirits by mveloso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Obviously it's all those souls trapped in the vault of heaven.

  9. Dethklok by cstec · · Score: 2

    "It's .. Dethklok. It's Dethklok!" Dethklock

  10. Winds... by sugarmatic · · Score: 2

    The winds at the float altitude of 120k' (36km) have frequent and sustained gusts exceeding 25 m/s. The air is thin, and barely perceptible, but the effects of vortex shedding around structures is still vexing for those of us who try to keep payloads pointed and vibrations minimized. The PSD of the vibrations is sometimes significant in the lower frequencies. The PSD of the vibration profile shifts, sometimes dramatically, in real time to the measured winds and directional changes of the payload gondola at those altitudes.

    As for a microphone freezing over, the environment at those altitudes will very quickly shed any moisture accumulated in any phase on exterior surfaces. A balloon typically rotates throughout its mission, and the extreme cycling between view factors for albedo, direct solar radiation, and deep space cycle any moisture accumulated in the tropopause or below in minutes unless the surfaces are somehow unusually shielded.