Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/ping-beep-hum-sound-arctic-ocean-igloolik-1.3831861

by thom • 10 years ago

131 77 10 years ago

cbc.ca

hapless• 10 years ago

Well, there go the methane clathrate deposits.

It was nice knowing y'all.

pavlov• 10 years ago

Eventually some spacefaring civilization will visit this system, note that the second and third planet are very similar and almost skip further exploration... But when they do, they'll be shocked to find out that one of the planets is a naturally developed hothouse hell while the other was turned that way by hapless inhabitants.

mcbits• 10 years ago

After we figure out how to increase the mass of our atmosphere 90-fold, maybe. Venus is around human body temperature at the altitude where atmospheric pressure is similar to Earth's.

lholden• 10 years ago

I love this comment :-D

jfoster• 10 years ago

Explanation for anyone who doesn't know what the parent is referring to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

XaspR8d• 10 years ago

Is there any reason to connect subsea methane releases to this kind of sound, or any human-audible sound? I was under the impression it gradual dissolution (where "gradual" is not to diminish its geologic speed).

acqq2• 10 years ago

The news that are more recent:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/igloolik-ping-military-i...

"Military plane investigates mystery 'ping' near Igloolik Search turns up nothing"

andrewflnr2• 10 years ago

He said the noise apparently stopped after the military investigated.

So, man-made.

jklinger410• 10 years ago

Or coincidence.

astrodust5• 10 years ago

The bank robbers fled after the cops arrived, so obviously it was an inside job.

run4yourlives23• 10 years ago

What that article doesn't point out for laymen is that the CP-140 is essentially a P-3 Orion: A specialized anti-submarine warfare aircraft equipped with a MAD[1] and sonobuoys[2]. It's a pretty capable maritime surveillance aircraft.

The fact that the signal went dormant/was not able to be detected by something as sophisicated as an Aurora speaks volumes.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_anomaly_detector) 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonobuoy

acqq2• 10 years ago

The fact that the signal went dormant/was not able to be detected by something as sophisicated as an Aurora speaks volumes.

I didn't have the impression that the sound was continuously present or that anybody claimed that it was possible to hear it exactly during the "acoustic search for 1.5 hours."

dnautics• 10 years ago

what is the effectiveness of a MAD around the poles? There should be a lot of strange magnetic activity around there due to ionizing cosmic rays being redirected there (aurorae) and also you can't drop a sonobuoy under the ice, can you?

anotheryou2• 10 years ago

Why can't they triangulate it? Too deep to go?

AnimalMuppet2• 10 years ago

Sound doesn't always travel in a straight line in the ocean. Different depths (pressures), different water temperatures, different salinity... they can all change the speed of propagation to some degree. Currents may also bend sound. Triangulation assumes that the sound traveled from the source to you at constant velocity in a straight line.

anotheryou2• 10 years ago

I thought of something mobile, so you can home in. But very interesting to learn it can be bend and reflects so much .

imglorp• 10 years ago

A good question at least is, did it show up on any seismograph or hydrophone networks?

jjoonathan• 10 years ago

Even if it did, they're probably not going to say anything because they don't want to give away their capabilities and/or they were responsible for it in the first place.

jhwhite• 10 years ago

Godzilla. It's the only logical explanation.

SEJeff• 10 years ago

or THE KRAKEN!

the_watcher• 10 years ago

My first thought was "Kaiju are coming"

carterehsmith• 10 years ago

Nonono. Godzilla loves (hates?) Tokyo.

This is Canada stuff. Maybe this guy is involved: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ogopogo/

krylon• 10 years ago

It's the Ping of Death, obviously.

nom7• 10 years ago

Mysterious, unlocateable sounds have always fascinated me. Right now I was just looking for that impossible to triangulate low frequency vibration that plagued that one town i can't remember, but then I typed "mysterious sound" into YT and found out about this world wide event [1] [2] that occurred this year Jan 9-14 and nobody was able to explain it

1: https://youtu.be/mTOQvDzihTU?t=223

2: http://strangesounds.org/2016/01/unexplained-booms-increase-...

NetStrikeForce• 10 years ago

There's another referenced in the article, too.

astrodust5• 10 years ago

There's going to be a whole lot more of these mysterious sounds because of climate change. Nobody knows what it sounds like when the permafrost starts to thaw and methane starts to bubble out of it. Russia's already seeing some very strange geological effects: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-exploding-permafrost-...

This ping could be methane ice under the ocean melting, a sound akin to the cracking of ice cubes in water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

davesque2• 10 years ago

I sure as fuck hope not. Melting clathrates would be an unimaginable disaster for the climate.

misja111• 10 years ago

The craters in the Russian permafrost are a fascinating phenomenon but the explanation that they would be caused by methane is only a theory, nobody knows for sure yet where they are coming from.

MildlySerious2• 10 years ago

The ones in the first vid are most likely fake. There's videos on YT how to create them as well. Not to mention that "it happens every morning at 6am, sometimes in the evening" sounds a very suspiciously like someone mistaking something they can't identify as something noone can identify.

nom7• 10 years ago

yeah I don't know what to think of it. A search turns up a lot of news articles, all posted within that time range, and it doesn't look like a fake at second glance. But who knows.

davesque2• 10 years ago

You mean the Taos hum?

nom7• 10 years ago

Almost, I was thinking of the Windsor hum. Thanks!

More interesting sources in case anyone is interested:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyquake

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoseism

Oxsv2F3• 10 years ago

Absolutely fascinating, and slightly terrifying! I've heard a sound like this in Portland, OR several times over the past couple years, on the second occurrence my neighbor managed to get a video of it [1].

It sounded like absolutely nothing I've heard in my life, like a giant didgeridoo but so powerful you could feel the vibration in your chest. Many others in my neighborhood heard it too, as referenced by this Reddit thread [2].

Have thought about it for a long time and no explanation makes sense, I still get shivers listening to the youtube video; Play it plugged into a sound system for full effect!

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJbH8jd8dz0 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/3gf6qf/what_was_t...

throwawaycanada2• 10 years ago

Winsdor, Ontario is the town you are thinking of.

herbst• 10 years ago

I am surprised nobody explicitely told you they are fake yet. The time this videos became popular many people cross referenced the sounds with movies. I dont remember which movie tho, but google deeper :)

nom7• 10 years ago

Yeah it's definitely just a troll, looks like a whole scheme that works well because there really are many unexplained sounds and vibrations caused by e.g. heavy industry or geological events.

It's surprisingly hard to separate the fakes from the real stuff these days and the trolls exploit that to optimize the effect.

EmmEff• 10 years ago

Russian sub...

joshuaheard• 10 years ago

A seismic anomaly?

danaliv• 10 years ago

Whales humping.

eeZah7Ux• 10 years ago

One ping only.

nom7• 10 years ago

This paragraph somewhere in the middle caught my eye:

„He also says some of his constituents suspect the sound is being generated on purpose by Greenpeace to scare wildlife away from the rich hunting ground. The organization has a tense past with Inuit stemming from its opposition to the seal hunt in the 1970s and 1980s.“

social_quotient• 10 years ago

I'd think it was Megatron but "Revenge of the fallen" happened.

cyberferret• 10 years ago

Locator beacon ping from another US 'broken arrow' ??

(Sorry, got carried away with the other 'discovery of a broken arrow' thread here yesterday!)

yoda_sl• 10 years ago

Reminds me of a book from Barjavel (French author): The Ice People https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_nov...

gitaarik• 10 years ago

This could as well be some organization's military machine that they're experimenting with. Just like how mysterious objects in the sky could be explained. It's actually the most logical explanation in most of these mysterious cases. This is explained well in the awesome recent documentary "Hypernormalisation". Check it out!

marricks• 10 years ago

Given the escalation between Russia and the US a sub making the sound wouldn't be the most surprising thing, that is far north Canada...

kilroy123• 10 years ago

In that location? That's a very bizarre place for a sub to be.

codeonfire• 10 years ago

Why is that bizarre? It looks like a major passage to me. In a nuclear first strike scenario you want your nukes to be right at the front door so hopefully you can take out some silos before they launch. The militaries of the world have no doubt sprinkled hundreds of thousands of sea floor devices around the world since probably the 1950's. Some are probably nuclear powered, long since forgotten about, and will continue to emit for decades. There are fleets of autonomous ocean vehicles that go and gather their data and transmit it to satellites.

int0x80• 10 years ago

Yeah. I'm totally smelling Commie plot right there. :P

debt• 10 years ago

or just very sophisticated economic warfare

GarrisonPrime• 10 years ago

A 300 year-old human spaceship? :)

simooooo• 10 years ago

It's ice creaking

louithethrid2• 10 years ago

Triangulate, Track, Destroy ?

Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik

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