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Mystery Booms From The Sky (Skyquakes)

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Anonymous

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Hello all,

Following on from yesterdays news item "Skyquake scares Scottish villagers", I report the following.

I was visiting an office in Peterlee, North east England today, and got talking to one of the security guards there. He mentioned that this morning (16/11/01) the building had been completely evacuated following what was initially thought to be an explosion nearby. The blast was violent enough to dislodge tiles from the office suspended ceiling. No damage, smoke or debris was apparent anywhere once they got outside.

He then said that they had later sought information from the police as to what may have happened, and were told it "may have been a sonic boom".

I have no further info, and have heard nothing on the local news....anyone else got any info?

Ferret
 
I saw on the news (local itv for tyne tees) a map of where it had affected and at the south was not far away from where I live (northside of the town). No-one in my house heard or felt anything though.

They said it could of been caused by aircraft on milatary manouvers going at super sonic speeds. That would create a sonic boom. The town where I live has the last recorded man made sonic boom.

Thats all I know.


luce
 
did anyone actually see the sky quake? did the clouds move or shake or did it rain heavy afterwards like when the thunder and lightening happens?

any links would be greatly appreciated :)
cas
 
lucydru said:
That would create a sonic boom. The town where I live has the last recorded man made sonic boom.l uce
??? You've lost me there, Luce. Military jets, and now Concorde once more, regularly break the sound barrier, creating a sonic boom. (Admittedly they mostly do it over the sea to avoid upsetting the ground-dwellers.)

So do you mean man-made as in 'not aircraft-made'? Did someone jump off a tall building and break the sound barrier? I think we should be told.
 
Do it over the sea? Isn't the sonic boom something that follows the aircrafts around? So if they came too low with supersonic speed you would hear it.
 
Xanatic

If I'm correct, the sonic boom only happens when the aircraft goes from subsonic to supersonic speed. I heard one once in Scotland and it was a real tooth-rattler.

Fizz
 
The sonic boom follows the aircraft, or trails it by several miles. Now Concorde is flying again Cornwall will be getting it's 4 o'clock bang again.
 
I stand corrected, Intaglio - thanks for the info. Having previously lived in the Heathrow area and experienced the noise of Concorde taking off, and heard the previously mentioned boom just the once, I'm surprised they let it go supersonic within "range" of Cornwall. Your windowpanes must work themselves loose on a regular basis. How loud is it? (Bit of a difficult one to quantify without going into dB, I know, but humour me!)

Fizz
 
Officially it ain't in range and it is pretty attenuated when it gets to us, it just sounds like a distant gun. When first I heard it I thought it was army excersizes at Penahale. But it's regular as airline schedules. In fact for years BA used to deny it, then someone did a sonic spectrum.
 
Sonic Boom over Canary Wharf!

Me and my girlfriend was standing in the Royal Victora Docks on the 14th July, and at about 9pm we heard a very strange kind of thunder sound coming from directly above me. The sky was clear, there were no clouds in it, London City airport is right next to the docks. I got back and for some reason thought it was a Sonic Boom, so i searched the web for sonic boom sounds and lo and behold that was exaclty what it was.
My question is did anybody else hear this, I've checked the BA flight plans and concorde wasn't flying then and even if it was surely it wouldn't go supersonic over London!

Cheers
Chopstix
 
It could of been military aircraft, Canary Warf would be a big target for any terrorist the IRA have already had a go at it. Plus im pretty sure that there would be a military base close enough to london so that Regualr fly overs isnt too strange.

Was it dark? maybe other people saw what you heard?
 
No it wasn't dark at all, we couldn't see anything else in the air or any vapour trails, Even if there were a military base nearby they still wouldn't go supersonic over central London surely!
For one the noise of the sonic boom!! I've never heard anything like that before and i've lived hear 24 years.

Cheers
Chopstix.
 
Funnily enough, about 4 weeks ago I saw an very fast moving aircraft flying at high altitude, and it left an odd contrail behind it. This was the very much like the 'donuts on a rope' contrail left by the supposed 'Aurore' aircraft. Another point to note was that the object was not constantly emitting the contrail, but that it started and stopped over a small stretch of the sky, as if whatever was creating the trail (i.e. an engine) was being switched on and off. An airliner that was travelling in roughly the same direction but at a lower altitude was a good refernce point - the object I saw was travelling much faster. I saw a similar contrail a few days later in roughly the same area of sky.

I dunno if what you heard was actually the Aurore, but it has been mentioned in connection with sightings of very high speed aerial objects and sonic booms over south-west England about 10 or 11 years ago (it was in an article in FT).
 
There was some curious stuff on Nationwide, like the mysterious Somerset Bumps - anyone remember them? Are they still, er, bumping?
 
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Sonic Boom?

At work on Monday (14th July) at about 10.30am I heard a really loud bang like somthing big had fallen onto the roof of the building. We all heard it but nothing else happened and although we thought it a bit odd we carried on with what we were doing.

Next day, I found out that the whole city had heard a huge bang at the same time.

It's been explained away as a "Sonic Boom" - has anyone else got any other ideas as to what it could be?
 
Blimey!

Isn't the sound barrier approx 742mph? So something must have been travelling pretty fast to create one.

Has there been any demolition near by? It could have been a bit of dynamite blowing up a dis-used building.
 
They may have blown something up to prepare for a prison that's being built, but there were no warnings that this was going to happen (it's in a fairly busy area with lots of houses and businesses around) and this hasn't been mentioned as an explanation.

I don't know much about sound barriers and aircraft etc., but from what you say it sounds pretty unlikely that it was a sonic boom.

Cover up for something that shouldn't have happened maybe? or am I just cynical?!!
 
The speed of sound (dependant on air conditions) at sea level is roughly 340 m/s, which is fast, but not so fast that a whole wealth of aircraft can easily break it, and when it happens, it is -extremely- loud, even when the said plane is flying at above 200 metres. The thing about when a plane does break the sound barrier, the actual bang tends to mingle in with the approach sound (psychology - people hear the bang, and forget all about the whoosh that came before it), and the departing noise can sometimes be less than a whistle while the echo of the bang continues for a second or two.

It could have been thunder. It was quite stormy yesterday, and what with the high humidity and low precipition levels, any thunder would have had a very deep and reverberating touch to it.

Or it could have been an earth tremor in some deep lying porous rock, which would have been quite loud, but not really have shaken anything.

I'm going with the second idea. Thunderclaps in such conditions can rattle the windows sometimes, but the absence of rain and 'typical' stormy conditions make people think it was something else.
 
It definitly wasn't thunder because it happened on Monday when it was totally bright sunshine and clear weather. The thunder and lightning started round here on Wednesday evening. Also, the sound was quite quick and didn't even seem to reverberate.

I think it was some other natural occurance or like you say we just forgot about the other aircraft sound that went with the boom.
 
Here's a picture of an aeroplane breaking the sound barrier which I thought was quite nifty!
 
Commercial planes aren't supposed to break the sound barrier over land though, esp over urban areas - they have to wait til they're over water. I know fighters do so on training missions, but that tends to be over moorland, etc - they get into all sorts of trouble if they do it over population centres.
 
Slightly OT but...

Don't ever think a trip to Elvedon Forest Center Parcs will be a quiet experience. No sonic booms but with Mildenhall and a US Airbase being just down the road, the peaceful country side twitter of birds is often shattered but the roar of jets just beyond the forest.

You do get used to it by the time you go home though! :rolleyes:
 
Tyger Lily said:
Here's a picture of an aeroplane breaking the sound barrier which I thought was quite nifty!

a few months ago i saw the clip that pic came from,,,,very impressive all these guy on the deck of an aircraft carrier as the thing comes by like a bat out of hell.... found it on Kazaa called something like "fast Jet"
 
stu neville said:
Commercial planes aren't supposed to break the sound barrier over land though, esp over urban areas - they have to wait til they're over water. I know fighters do so on training missions, but that tends to be over moorland, etc - they get into all sorts of trouble if they do it over population centres.


ah but concord was easily audible over Cornwall for years.... a short of rolling boom that bounced off the hills/cliffs so was realy a multiple boom... i went to the travel agents and checed out the times of Concord and they matched up.....tho recently ive heard sonic booms at odd times i presume its theCowboys (yanks) playing around...
 
There's a history of mysterious booms around Britain (and the rest of the world too, I think). Haven't heard of many for a while, maybe people got used to them.

Anyone remember the Somerset Bumps being reported on Nationwide?

Isn't there a term called "airquakes"?
 
GNC said:
There's a history of mysterious booms around Britain (and the rest of the world too, I think).

Sonic weapons testing? ;)
 
sidecar_jon said:
ah but concord was easily audible over Cornwall for years.... a short of rolling boom that bounced off the hills/cliffs so was realy a multiple boom... i went to the travel agents and checed out the times of Concord and they matched up.....tho recently ive heard sonic booms at odd times i presume its theCowboys (yanks) playing around...
Yeah: by the time it was over Cornwall, Concorde would have been nearly at Mach 1: once they got past Land's End they could accelerate through the barrier (and as sound travels a lot further over water you could probably hear it from miles away).

And yes, I remember the Somerset Bumps very well - do still hear odd rumbling booms in this part of the world from time to time. (edited for typo - thanks Ryn :D)..
 
Sonic booms in south Wales

A few year back (roughly 1992-1996 ) I used to live in Maesteg, in south Wales. In one particular part of the valley it was sometimes possible to hear what seemed to be sonic booms. They were audible as very low frequency double-thumps, which were felt as much as heard. The direction they came from was difficult to identify but my impression was that the shape of the hills tended to focus the sound of sonic booms from out at sea into that particular location. Wether the sonic booms were generated by Concorde or by military aircraft I did not find out.

Has anyone else heard similar in that area?
 
So it was concorde I used to hear quite often while living in Cornwall as a child? For some reason I always assumed they were military planes. Sonic booms were just ignored down there and weren't even commented on at home or in school when one occured.
 
The night Sydney went bang

This is a totally Fortean story: a big storm, a mysterious boom.

The Night Sydney Went Bang

The night Sydney went bang, and nobody knew why
By Neil McMahon
December 4, 2003 - 12:51AM

Buildings shook, windows rattled and terrified residents thought their homes were crashing around them - but nobody has any idea what caused a mysterious explosion that shook Sydney's north and west late last night.

Police began receiving phone calls about 10.20 of an enormous explosion, with reports coming from an area stretching from Wiseman's Ferry to the lower Blue Mountains.

In about 20 minutes, Riverstone police station alone received more than 100 calls from worried residents.

Sergeant John King of Riverstone said reports of the noise were widespread but that nothing had been found to indicate its cause. "There's no doubt in the world there was some sort of noise. Everyone thought it was an explosion. It sounded like a bomb."

Police stations at St Marys, Richmond and Mount Druitt were among others swamped by calls. One officer said she had heard and felt the explosion.

"The windows moved and the ground shook," she said.

"I thought it had happened right where I was, in the building I was in.

"Everyone who felt it said it felt like their house was going to implode. We had so many calls it was ridiculous."

Police were still investigating the cause of the explosion but had found no signs of any damage. Neither the Bureau of Meteorology or the Department of Seismology could shed any light on a natural cause.

"I've had a look at the seismic records and there's nothing there," said David Jepsen, the duty seismologist for Geoscience Australia.

He said there was a seismic station at Riverview, which would have registered any unusual activity. "It really could not be an earthquake."

Earlier last night, Sydney had been swamped by a fierce storm accompanied by heavy rain and lightning, but a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said that the bad weather had cleared long before reports of the explosion.
 
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