If you’ve ever heard a loud, distant booming noise with no obvious explanation like a thunderstorm or a car backfiring, then you might have experienced a skyquake.
Skyquakes have been reported around the world and locals have different names for them in different regions.
Near Seneca Lake in New York State, they’re known as ‘Seneca guns’; in Belgium they’re called ‘mistpoeffers’; and the Japanese refer to them as ‘uminari’, which literally means ‘cries from the sea.’
Many explanations have been put forward, including solar flares, shallow earthquakes, offshore tsunamis, collapsing underwater caves and avalanches.
Others believe they’re sonic booms from military aircraft. But this can’t explain historical reports of skyquakes.
Some scientists have suggested that a type of meteor, called a bolide, could be the cause. These space rocks explode when they hit Earth’s atmosphere.
If this happened above thick cloud, the sound could be amplified across a wide area, but no physical evidence would reach the ground.
An alternative explanation is gas escaping from lake sediments. Several hotspots for skyquake activity are close to large, deep lakes, such as Seneca. But skyquakes have also been reported away from such water bodies.
In 2020, researchers at the University of North Carolina cross-referenced local news articles with data collected by a network of atmospheric sensors and seismographs. They were unable to identify any earthquake activity that coincided with the events, so they concluded the sounds must be coming from the atmosphere.
Given the diversity of locations and explanations, it’s possible that skyquakes in different parts of the world have different causes. But for now, their true cause, or causes, remains mysterious.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Ronald Thompson, via email) 'Claire Asher'
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