Auroral Sounds
March 29, 2025 4:58 PM   Subscribe

There is folklore about the sounds of auroras, but auroras occur about 80-100km above the surface of the earth, too high for any sound to reach the ground. Finnish Aalto University Professor Unto K. Laine has determined that there are auroral sounds, but their source is only 70m above the ground. His paper: Sound producing mechanism in the temperature inversion layer and its sensitivity to geomagnetic activity.

A short article with a 15 minute interview with Professor Laine.
posted by ShooBoo (1 comment total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Meteors, too, are reputed to hiss as they burn up. It seems nonsensical as the speed of sound would make the light trail and the hiss well apart as perceived on the ground, but I've personally heard it a couple times out of the several hundred I've seen during meteor showers over the years.

I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't just the *expectation* of a sound that I was "hearing", but one spitballed theory is that there's an electrical effect being converted to sound after a journey at light speed to just above the ground, as hypothesized here for auroras. The tube of plasma generated by the heat of the meteor's passage high up is the presumed culprit.

"In conclusion, the sky is a land of contrasts."
posted by Quindar Beep at 5:17 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]


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