Mysterious rumblings were recorded in Earth’s stratosphere #Science
Giant solar balloons were sent 70,000 feet up in the air to record sounds of Earth’s stratosphere — and the microphones picked up some unexpected sounds.
Daniel Bowman, principal scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, was inspired in graduate school to explore the soundscape of the stratosphere. He and his adviser Jonathan Lees of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “realized that no one had tried to put microphones on stratospheric balloons for half a century” Bowman said.
The balloons can take sensors twice as high as commercial jets can fly.
“On our solar balloons, we have recorded surface and buried chemical explosions, thunder, ocean waves colliding, propeller aircraft, city sounds, suborbital rocket launches, earthquakes, and maybe even freight trains and jet aircraft,” Bowman said via email. “We’ve also recorded sounds whose origin is unclear.”
Bowman and Albert will continue to investigate the aerial sound channel and try to determine where the stratosphere’s rumbles are originating — and why some flights record them while others don’t.
Read more here and more about the technology on the balloons (including Adafruit tech) here.
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