• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Arctic Ping

uair01

uair01

Antediluvian
Joined
Apr 12, 2005
Messages
5,449
Location
The Netherlands
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...ing-from-sea-floor/ar-AAjRZ1h?ocid=spartandhp

The Canadian armed forces have sent a crew to investigate reports of a mysterious “pinging” sound that seemed to be coming from the sea floor.

Hunters in a remote community in the Canadian Arctic have become concerned about a pinging or beeping sound they say they’ve been hearing in the Fury and Hecla Strait, a channel of water that’s 120km (75 miles) north-west of the Inuit hamlet Igloolik.
 
uair01 said:
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...ing-from-sea-floor/ar-AAjRZ1h?ocid=spartandhp

The Canadian armed forces have sent a crew to investigate reports of a mysterious “pinging” sound that seemed to be coming from the sea floor.

Hunters in a remote community in the Canadian Arctic have become concerned about a pinging or beeping sound they say they’ve been hearing in the Fury and Hecla Strait, a channel of water that’s 120km (75 miles) north-west of the Inuit hamlet Igloolik.
Click to expand...
Cthulhu's colder cousin can create catastrophe causing creature craziness.
 
Canada military probes mysterious Arctic pinging noise

The Canadian military has investigated a mysterious pinging sound coming from the sea floor in a remote region of the Arctic, officials have told the BBC.

The strange noise is reported by local people to have frightened animals away over the past few months.

A military aircraft conducted various multi-sensor searches in the area, officials said on Friday.

But the military says it is so far unable to explain the cause of the "acoustic anomalies".

"The [aircraft] crew did not detect any surface or sub-surface contacts," the military said in a statement released to the BBC.

"The only thing the crew did observe were two pods of whales and six walruses in the area of interest."

A spokesman in the department of national defence in Ottawa said the cause of the pinging noise - which locals say can even be heard through the hulls of boats - remains a mystery.

The sound, sometimes also described as a "hum" or a "beep", has been heard throughout the summer in Fury and Hecla Strait, legislative assembly member Paul Quassa told CBC, about 120km (74 miles) north-west of the hamlet of Igloolik.

Continued:
http://www.bbc.com/news/37875609

This reads like the beginning of a classic science fiction plot.
 
An ancient alien black box? Advanced submarine technology? Whales?
 
rynner2 said:
It's also been posted recently on another thread - but I can't remember where or by whom!
Click to expand...

I haven't seen it and didn't find it with the search function. Besides, it deserves its own thread in my opinion.

Will merge in the future of necessary.
 
kamalktk said:
Cthulhu's colder cousin can create catastrophe causing creature craziness.
Click to expand...
Caramba! Case closed! Completely-Canadian conundrum could've continued, consuming considerable critical cognitive capacity.

(Umm...unless unseen underwater uniqueness utilises unexpected utility umbrellas)

CU?
 
Last edited:
I'm not certain there's a single sound / phenomenon being reported from Fury and Hecla Strait.

The earliest news story I can locate is an online item from a local news source dating from 31 October:

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stori...und_might_be_scaring_away_animals_says_nunav/

... which describes how the area's representative announced the issue during a legislative session.

This earliest article includes a bit that doesn't appear in later ones:

“The sound that has been heard in the area seems to be emitted from the seabed and underwater,” Quassa said in his Oct. 25 member’s statement, adding that the sound is detectable by audio equipment but not the human ear.

“Our constituents as well as hunters and boaters have reported that the area in question is almost devoid of sea mammals and that hunting has been poor in the area for quite some time.”

This past summer, a sailboat travelling through the area confirmed the sound with onboard sonar equipment and informed the community.
Click to expand...

Some of the later reports mention locals having heard the ping and / or other sounds (e.g., a 'hum') without reference to any acoustic / audio equipment being used (i.e., as if they heard the sound(s) unassisted).

NOTE: According to another Canadian news story I located the sailboat incident occurred in June, and this incident seems to have been the first report on the Fury and Hecla acoustic anomaly.
 
@EnolaGaia
This is a very good point: the probable major difference in frequency between a sonar-detectable tone and one audible directly by the human ear would tend to indicate differing sources. Unless it actually is a covert malintended attempt to scare-away the sealife, coupled with a coterminous psyops aspect.

Surely these sounds must be both recordable and capable of being physically-triangulated back to their source location (irrespective of their sonic frequency)?

And also, alliterations and abbreviations aside
Yithian said:
This reads like the beginning of a classic science fiction plot.
Click to expand...
I really like this comment....it gives me the shivers.

(And, the URL cited earlier in the thread is useful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/37875609 )
 
Ermintrude said:
@EnolaGaia
... Surely these sounds must be both recordable and capable of being physically-triangulated back to their source location (irrespective of their sonic frequency)? ...
Click to expand...

Yes - on both counts.

At least one article I found indicated the June sailboat report involved a sound that had been detected and recorded on a sonar system.

Multiple articles have invoked the term 'triangulate' in describing how they determined the sound source is in / at the Fury and Hecla strait.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Multiple articles have invoked the term 'triangulate'
Click to expand...
Although I may just be conflating my flawed misunderstandings of the techniques involved with sonar, I always thought there were effectively two layers involved with sonar detection: relative amplitudes, integratively compared (for rough location), followed by a more-rigorous vector backpath intercept (using transducer detectors at multiple locations relative to a given target).

Sorry, this reads like an elementary school poor definition for RADAR, what I'm trying to say is that surely they should've been able to identify the exact point-source much-more precisely than they have.
 
None of the references I've seen that use the term 'triangulate' specify anything about (e.g.) number of sources used for analysis, their locations, etc.

The sketchy news stories all indicate multiple reported occurrences, but given the different characterizations of the noise itself and the overall lack of details I'm also having trouble understanding how any such 'triangulation' was done.

For all I know the invocation of 'triangulate' represents a journalist's gloss rather than factual reporting of a procedure.
 
EnolaGaia said:
For all I know the invocation of 'triangulate' represents a journalist's gloss rather than factual reporting of a procedure.
Click to expand...
Yep, as a navigator, I'd like more detail.
 
EnolaGaia said:
... According to another Canadian news story I located the sailboat incident occurred in June, and this incident seems to have been the first report on the Fury and Hecla acoustic anomaly.
Click to expand...

Just for the record ... Here's the article and the relevant text on this point:

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stori..._near_Nunavut_community_armed_forces_reports/

The sound was originally reported to community leaders in Igloolik by boaters passing through the Fury and Hecla Straits in June, who recorded the acoustic anomaly on sonar equipment.
Click to expand...
 
GNC said:
Could it be something cooling? Ice forming or cracking?
Click to expand...

Yes - it's conceivable the noise is natural.

However, with so few details it's difficult to coherently specify what the reported noise is like, how it presents, how variable it is, etc.
 
A quick context setting...

2016-11-05 22.35.42.png
 
Igloolik sounds like something icy and sweet you'd consume to refresh yourself on a hot summer's day. Hm, anyway, as you were...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top