It is believed that the stratosphere, a layer of atmosphere above the Earth, is tranquil and peaceful. However, when scientists launched a solar-powered balloon between 10 and 50 kilometers above the earth’s surface, they detected enigmatic sounds of unknown origin.
The sounds, according to the Washington Post, are “infrasound” – inaudible to the human ear, just as infrared light is invisible to the human vision. When recorded with specialized equipment and sped up several thousand times, scientists were quoted as saying that it sounded like muted murmurs.
Scientists distinguished these odd noises from normal zone sounds like ocean waves crashing.
Siddharth Krishnamoorthy, a research technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, stated to the Post, “We spend a disproportionate amount of time arguing about what things are.”
Another researcher, Daniel Bowman, stated, “I’ve been doing this for about ten years, and the fact that there are mysterious sounds I don’t understand is unsettling, but it’s not a revelation.”
Mr. Bowman and his companions have previously sent up balloons to photograph the night heavens and planet below. CNN reported that they have also successfully constructed their own solar-powered balloons.
According to the source, Mr. Bowman conducted the experiment after realizing “no one had attempted to place microphones on stratospheric balloons in half a century.”
The balloons are capable of carrying sensors twice as high as commercial aircraft.
Thursday at the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago, Mr. Bowman and his colleagues presented their findings.