Inaudible low-frequency signals recorded by solar-powered balloons floating 20 kilometers above the Earth have baffled scientists as they remain unlinked to any known source. “When we started flying balloons many years ago, we didn’t know what we would hear,” said atmospheric scientist Daniel Bowman from the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
“We can identify sounds of explosions, meteor impacts, aircraft, thunderstorms, and cities. But almost every time we send up balloons, we encounter sounds that we cannot identify.” Bowman and his colleagues measured infrasound signals, sounds with such low frequencies that humans cannot hear them, using solar-powered balloons.
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These balloons were sent into the stratosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere between the mesosphere and the troposphere. The lower part of the stratosphere is also known as the ozone layer and extends from 10 kilometers up to approximately 55 kilometers in height.
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The scientists designed balloons made of thin plastic, around 7 meters wide, and filled them with powdered charcoal that heats up under intense sunlight, causing the balloons to float. Over a period of seven years, they launched more than 50 self-made solar-powered balloons into the stratosphere. Unlike shorter-lived meteorological balloons, these DIY balloons can remain in the stratosphere for hours.
The data they collected revealed that the stratosphere sounds quite different from the Earth’s surface. Infrasound sensors on the ground capture signals deflected by the winds on their way downward, but the balloons floated above these winds and detected traces of turbulence in other parts of the atmosphere, as well as infrasound from sea storms.
However, they also discovered numerous signals of unknown origin. “These mysterious signals could be related to types of atmospheric turbulence that have never been observed before. But it should be noted that we have rarely studied sounds in the stratosphere, making it difficult to make grounded assumptions,” said Bowman, as reported by New Scientist.
Project Mogul, Roswell, and UFOs He added that the initial research of this kind was carried out by the United States Air Force under Project Mogul, an experiment aimed at detecting infrasound signals from nuclear weapon testing in the Soviet Union during the 1940s. One of the Project Mogul balloons crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, leading to the public becoming aware of this secret program.
Military cover-ups surrounding the balloon project gave rise to conspiracy theories often associated with extraterrestrial phenomena, specifically UFOs. Most of the data from later balloon experiments, which concluded in the 1960s, were classified, said Bowman.
Physicist Roger Waxler from the University of Mississippi expressed no surprise at the discovery of enigmatic infrasound signals in the stratosphere. “On Earth, you can set up sensors in arrays and precisely know where one is in relation to the other, which helps determine the source of the infrasound. Balloons simply travel where they go,” he stated.
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