https://www.livescience.com/agu-seneca-guns-cause.html
EXCERPTS: Enigmatic booming sounds called the "Seneca Guns" have reverberated off parts of coastal North Carolina for more than 150 years, with some powerful enough to rattle windows and vibrate buildings. [...] Though the Seneca Guns can cause ground shaking, the scientists didn't find any earthquake records that coincided with the events, effectively ruling out ground shaking as the cause of these booms.
"Generally speaking, we believe this is an atmospheric phenomenon — we don't think it's coming from seismic activity, we're assuming it's propagating through the atmosphere rather than the ground," Bird told Live Science. "The data I've most focused on in this project is infrasound data rather than seismic," Bird said, referring to sound that has a frequency below that of human hearing.
[...] Signals associated with booming varied in length from about 1 second to nearly 10 seconds, with the station near Cape Fear picking up the most prominent signals. Anecdotally, the Cape Fear region is also known for having numerous Seneca Gun incidents. However, the sensor array wasn't dense enough to pinpoint where the signals were coming from, and more data will be required to trace these big bangs, the researchers wrote.
"Presumably, these are not all the same thing producing the booming sounds," Bird said. Some military planes that fly in the area have broken the sound barrier, so some of the "gun" sounds may, in fact, be sonic booms. And even in those cases, a natural signal could be amplifying them even more, he added.
With the Cape Fear region identified as the most promising location to keep looking, next steps for solving this puzzle would involve collecting more data over several years, using an array of at least three stations with three microphones on each, to more accurately triangulate where the sounds originate. [...] But for now, the booming Seneca Guns remain a mystery... (MORE - details)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/eMVCPb7_jpQ
EXCERPTS: Enigmatic booming sounds called the "Seneca Guns" have reverberated off parts of coastal North Carolina for more than 150 years, with some powerful enough to rattle windows and vibrate buildings. [...] Though the Seneca Guns can cause ground shaking, the scientists didn't find any earthquake records that coincided with the events, effectively ruling out ground shaking as the cause of these booms.
"Generally speaking, we believe this is an atmospheric phenomenon — we don't think it's coming from seismic activity, we're assuming it's propagating through the atmosphere rather than the ground," Bird told Live Science. "The data I've most focused on in this project is infrasound data rather than seismic," Bird said, referring to sound that has a frequency below that of human hearing.
[...] Signals associated with booming varied in length from about 1 second to nearly 10 seconds, with the station near Cape Fear picking up the most prominent signals. Anecdotally, the Cape Fear region is also known for having numerous Seneca Gun incidents. However, the sensor array wasn't dense enough to pinpoint where the signals were coming from, and more data will be required to trace these big bangs, the researchers wrote.
"Presumably, these are not all the same thing producing the booming sounds," Bird said. Some military planes that fly in the area have broken the sound barrier, so some of the "gun" sounds may, in fact, be sonic booms. And even in those cases, a natural signal could be amplifying them even more, he added.
With the Cape Fear region identified as the most promising location to keep looking, next steps for solving this puzzle would involve collecting more data over several years, using an array of at least three stations with three microphones on each, to more accurately triangulate where the sounds originate. [...] But for now, the booming Seneca Guns remain a mystery... (MORE - details)