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Observers of the spectacular northern lights are offering new testimony
on the amazing sounds produced from electromagnetic phenomena
in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Witnesses in Sweden reported hearing sounds similar to so-called
'laser blasts' from the Star Wars films.
A photographer and tour guide named Oliver Wright was able to capture audio of the sound
which seemed to grow louder as witnesses approached nearby power lines.
A link to the audio may be found in the description box of this video.
This is hardly the first instance that witnesses have reported
peculiar sounds associated with intense auroral displays.
In fact dating back centuries,
long before the existence of earthly transmission lines,
witnesses from the Arctic reported hearing hissing, crackling or clapping sounds.
Recently, the scientific mainstream has begun to recognize
that the audible phenomenon is actually real.
In 2012 a team of scientists in Finland discovered a pattern of audible clapping sounds
that appeared at times of high auroral activity.
The lead investigator of the study suggests that the phenomenon is:
"likely caused by the same energetic particles from the Sun
that create the Northern Lights far away in the sky.
These particles, or the geomagnetic disturbance produced by them,
seem to create sound much closer to the ground."
A space dot com report on the study states:
"Scientists still aren't sure exactly how the auroral sounds are created.
They can be quite variable,
ranging from claps and crackles to muffled bangs and sputtering sounds.
Because of this sonic diversity, several different mechanisms might be at work..."
The sounds produced by auroral activities seem similar to the sounds reported
over many centuries, associated with spectacular meteors.
Consider the case of the meteor explosion over Peekskill, New York in 1992.
Witnesses reported electro static crackling sounds for several seconds,
both before and after the meteor's fragmentation. Witnesses reported electro static crackling sounds for several seconds,
both before and after the meteor's fragmentation.
In the Thunderbolts Picture Of the Day article "The Peekskill Meteor",
author Michael Armstrong asks the question:
"Since the fragmentation took place at an altitude of about 41.7 km in a vacuum
where there is not enough atmosphere to carry sound,
how did this electrophonic noise propagate for over 25 miles?"
In 1992, the scientific paper "Electrophonic sounds from large meteor fireballs"
attempts to explain the phenomenon.
The abstract of the paper reads:
"Anomalous sounds from large meteor fireballs,
anomalous because they are audible simultaneously with the sighting,
have been a matter for debate for over two centuries.
Only a minority of observers perceive them.
Ten years ago a viable physical explanation was developed,
which accounts for the phenomenon in terms of ELF/VLF radiation
from the fireball plasma being transduced into acoustic waves
whenever appropriate objects happen to be in the vicinity of an observer.
This explanation has now been verified observationally and supported by other evidence
including the study of meteor fireball light curves reported here."
Although mainstream science is now recognizing the unusual sounds
associated with terrestrial Auroras and meteoritic phenomena respectively,
many mysteries remain that demand new theoretical perspectives.
In the early 20th century,
the Norwegian experimentalist and electrical pioneer Kristian Birkeland
proposed that charged particles from the Sun were the cause of auroras on Earth.
For decades the scientific mainstream,
including the renowned mathematician Sydney Chapman,
largely rejected Birkeland's hypothesis
favoring instead the idea that Earth's magnetosphere is an impenetrable envelope
squeezed by the solar wind to induce auroral activity.
Only when satellites detected the magnetic signatures of electric currents
in the Aurora in 1973 was Birkeland hypothesis irrefutably validated.
But even today the scientific mainstream resist the implications of the discovery.
Institutional science tells us that charged particles from the Sun
accelerate along magnetic field lines
and collide with oxygen and nitrogen gas particles in our upper atmosphere.
The gas particles become excited and release light.
But in recent years science discoveries confirmed that the auroras
are the product of the electrical circuitry between the Sun, Earth and all planets.
In 2007, NASA scientists reported the discovery of
"giant magnetic ropes" that connect Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun,
and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field.
The rope-like structures, NASA describes, are Birkeland currents
which are electrical current flowing through the conductive medium of plasma.
Recently, professor Donald Scott has published
his mathematical modeling of Birkeland currents
and identified the tell-tale structures of the currents in the upper atmospheres
at the poles of some planets, including the Earth.
Visual proof of the Birkeland currents' influence is counter-rotating bands
such as those seen on the screen at the North Pole of Saturn.
Similar counter-rotation may be seen in this particular video
of the Aurora Borealis on Earth.
Electromagnetic energy in Earth's upper atmosphere
is also the cause of some of the sounds associated with meteor explosions.
Standard theory tells us that friction ablation causes meteors to glow,
flare and fragment as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere.
But, as noted in the aforementioned Thunderbolts article, The Peekskill Meteor;
"At about 50 km above the Earth's surface,
is there enough material in space to begin a friction ablation process
for an object traveling 14.7 km/s?
If not, one is justified to conclude
that electrical interaction took place to initiate the glow and flareups."
In the Electric Universe view, any object that comes far away from the Earth
is differently charged than the Earth's plasma sheath
and the object will begin to electrically discharge
as the difference between it and lower layers of the sheath increases.
Again quoting the Peekskill meteor article:
"...meteors and spacecraft trigger the formation of instabilities in plasma layers.
The energy of the flickering and flaring, as well as of the low-frequency radiation,
comes more from the ionospheric plasma than from the meteoroid.
The meteors that we've come to think of as 'burning up in the atmosphere'
may instead be the targets of mini- thunderbolts from the ionosphere."
We also note the European Space Agency surprising discovery in 2014
of a so-called "mysterious song" emitted by the Comet 67P.
The song was detected in the form of oscillations in the cometary magnetic field
at a level of 40 to 50 millihertz.
To make it audible to human hearing,
scientists increased the frequencies by a factor of about 10,000.
As one scientist said of the discovery:
"This is exciting because it is completely new to us.
We did not expect this and we are still working
to understand the physics of what is happening."
A space.com report attempts to explain the finding as follows:
"The physical process is somewhat difficult to understand
without a deeper understanding of plasma physics,
but we can use a simple analogy to have a better idea of what's going on.
Consider your garden hose.
If you start the water flow,
there's a chance that the hose starts to oscillate, generating waves.
This is about what happens in the plasma.
Of course, the flow we have in the cometary situation is not like water,
but it's a flow of charged particles..."
But somehow the analogy is suitable.
The discovery of electromagnetically produced sounds from comets, meteors,
and the Earthly auroras remain a surprise to conventional science,
but they offer further proof of the electrical connectedness between the Sun,
the Earth, and all bodies in our Electric Universe.
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