IFLScience The Aurora Borealis, also known as the northern lights, is a spectacular meteorological event produced by the charged particles from the Sun hitting the upper atmosphere. Anecdotal stories suggested that some of these events can create weird sounds, and observations in the last few years not only found such sounds but also recorded them. Now, researchers think that they have an explanation for them.
As reported in research presented last year at the EUROREGIO/BNAM2022 Joint Acoustics Conference, the auroral sounds are a lot more common and they do happen even without a visible aurora. Recordings of these sounds that can assume various forms, like clapping or water falling, have shown an intriguing link with the geomagnetic activity of the planet.
“Using the geomagnetic data, which was measured independently, it’s possible to predict when auroral sounds will happen in my recordings with 90 percent accuracy,” lead author Professor Emeritus Unto K. Laine of Aalto University, said in a statement…
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