What happened
In 1997, a network of hydrophones operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), deployed in the Pacific in part to monitor volcanic activity, recorded a strange ultra-low-frequency sound several times. Its pitch rose rapidly over about a minute, and the signal was so strong that it was picked up by sensors more than 5,000 km apart. The source was located in a remote area of the South Pacific, west of the southern tip of South America. Researchers named the sound “Bloop.” When the recording made its way onto the internet, people began speculating that it was the call of a gigantic unknown animal, and even linked it to the mythical R’lyeh from H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, which the writer placed in the same part of the ocean.
Witnesses
No eyewitnesses; the sound was recorded by NOAA’s autonomous hydrophones deployed in the Pacific.
Explanations and hypotheses
In 2012 NOAA announced that the Bloop was most likely the sound of an icequake – the cracking and calving of large icebergs from Antarctic glaciers. Later recordings made near Antarctica produced very similar signals. The hypothesis of a giant animal is rejected, because no known organism could produce such a powerful sound.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
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