The earliest evidence that people can sometimes hear the sound of meteors dates back more than a thousand years. Many eyewitnesses today report that the meteor they saw was accompanied by a strange sound. However, since scientists have figured out why “lights flash in the sky”, such reports have come to be considered a collective delusion. At the same time, there is no reason to assume that eyewitnesses for some reason want to mislead scientists. But what is happening in this case? Science cannot give an exact explanation for this, but there are several assumptions.
Many people claim to have heard the sound of a meteor, but scientists cannot understand how this is possible. Photo source: starwalk.space
Can a meteor be accompanied by sound?
A meteor is a phenomenon caused by the combustion of meteoroids in the Earth's atmosphere. Meteors are often confused with meteorites, but these are different concepts – a meteorite is an object, and a meteor is a flash in the sky, that is, the phenomenon itself. Faint meteors are called “shooting stars”, and high-intensity meteors are called fireballs.
Meteoroids that cause meteor showers can be fragments of comets, meteorites, space debris, etc. Flying into the Earth's atmosphere at great speed, meteoroids heat up to a high temperature due to friction and burn up, and some even explode. That's why we see them as flashes of light or falling tongues of flame.
The sound of the meteor cannot be heard, as the object is very far away. Photo source: iflscience.com
But why do scientists believe that people cannot hear the sound of a meteor? The thing is that the speed of light is much higher than the speed of sound. We often hear thunder only some time after lightning. The distance between the observer and the meteoric material burning in the atmosphere is much greater than between the observer and the lightning. Therefore, the delay should not be seconds, but minutes. Accordingly, the flash cannot be accompanied by sound, as eyewitnesses claim.
Does the sound of meteors really exist?
One of the first astronomers who understood how far meteors are from us was Edmond Halley. He himself heard the sound, however, given the distance between him and the meteoric object, he called it “pure fantasy”.
It would be possible to write off all other cases as human fantasy. In fact, scientists did so for a long time, but the situation changed after the event in 1978. After the meteor over New South Wales, many people who did not even know each other began reporting sounds.
In 1998, scientists were able to record the sound of a meteor for the first time. Photo source: kuban.kp.ru
All doubts were finally dispelled after the event in 1998 over Mongolia. The expected meteor shower at that time did not happen, but several meteors were still observed. But the most important thing is that scientists managed to record their sound for the first time. In addition, this sound was heard by many eyewitnesses. Moreover, it did not occur with a delay, but at the moment of the flash.
From this we can conclude that the sound from a meteoroid somehow travels at the same speed as light. This is only possible if the sound originates not in the upper layers of the atmosphere, but in the lower ones. In this case, the energy that is its source is transmitted by some form of electromagnetic radiation.
Why do people hear the sound of meteors
Employees from the Australian University of Newcastle have suggested that radio frequencies play an important role in the sounds of meteors. They often accompany visible light, and they also pass through the atmosphere more easily than some other waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Perhaps the noise of meteors is associated with low-frequency radio waves. Photo source: vladivostok.livejournal.com
In laboratory conditions, astronomers have proven that low-frequency radio waves can make certain objects rustle, such as human hair or pine needles. By the way, eyewitnesses reported that the sound of a meteor is similar to a rustle or rustle. Edmond Halley also described the same sound. However, some eyewitnesses described this sound differently – as clapping or whistling.
In 2017, employees of the Sandia National Laboratory proposed another theory, according to which the sound is caused by bright light. Moreover, the team even demonstrated that wigs rustle if they are exposed to light of the right frequency. Most likely, human hair makes the same rustle when exposed to similar light.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to check in practice which version is true, and whether any of them are true at all. Meteors that make sound are unpredictable, that is, it is impossible to predict where and when they will occur. However, it can be assumed that the first version is still more plausible. The fact is that some “noisy” meteors were not very bright, in addition, the size of the objects was very small.
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In particular, the brightness of the meteor, the sound of which was recorded in 1998, was 100 times weaker than most other meteors. Therefore, the radio wave theory has an advantage. However, the question remains – what exactly vibrated and became the source of noise in the recording? The team that installed the microphones describes the recording location as devoid of human or animal activity, power lines and any kind of electrical equipment. Therefore, the question of why meteors sometimes make sound remains open.