Sounds heard simultaneously with the flight of large meteor fireballs are electrical in origin. Confirmation that Extra/Very Low Frequency (ELF/VLF) electromagnetic radiation is produced by the fireball was obtained by Japanese researchers. Although the generation mechanism is not fully understood, studies of the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Project (MORP) and other fireball data indicate that interaction with the atmosphere is definitely responsible and the cut-off magnitude of -9 found for sustained electrophonic sounds is supported by theory. Brief bursts of ELF/VLF radiation may accompany flares or explosions of smaller fireballs, producing transient sounds near favorably placed observers. Laboratory studies show that mundane physical objects can respond to electrical excitation and produce audible sounds. Reports of electrophonic sounds should no longer be discarded. A catalog of over 300 reports relating to electrophonic phenomena associated with meteor fireballs, aurorae, and lightning was assembled. Many other reports have been cataloged in Russian. These may assist the full solution of the similar long-standing and contentious mystery of audible auroral displays

Keay, Colin

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991, pp. 297 300
Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, 1992 / G 297
METEOR FIREBALL SOUNDS IDENTIFIED
Colin Keay
Physics Department, University of Newcastle, NSW.
Abstract:
Sounds heard simultaneously with the flight of large meteor fireballs are electrical in origin.
Confirmation that Extra/Very Low Frequency (ELF/VLF) electromagnetic radiation is produced by the
fireball has been obtained by Japanese researchers. Although the generation mechanism is not fully
understood, studies of MORP and other fireball data indicate that interaction with the atmosphere is
definitely responsible and the cut-off magnitude of -9 found by Astapovich for sustained electrophonie
sounds is supported by theory. Brief bursts of ELF/VLF radiation may accompany flares or explosions
of smaller fireballs, producing transient sounds near favourably placed observers. Laboratory studies
show that mundane physical objects can respond to electrical excitation and produce audible sounds.
Reports of electrophonic sounds should no longer be discarded. A catalog of over 300 reports relating
to electrophonic phenomena associated with meteor fireballs, aurorae and lightning has been
assembled. Many other reports have been catalogued in Russian by Bronshten. These may assist the
full solution of the similar long-standing and contentious mystery of audible auroral displays.
Instantaneously audible sounds associated with the flight of large meteor fireballs were first described
by the Chinese in 817 AD (Astapovich 1951, LaPaz 1958). Edmund Halley (1719), in his description
of a very large meteor fireball seen over England on the evening of 1719 March 19, was one of the
first to distinguish the sounds produced instantaneously by a distant meteor fireball from the delayed
sounds propagated acoustically. He wrote: "Of several Accidents that were reported to have attended its
Passage, many were the effect of pure Fantasy; such as the hearing it hiss as it went along, as if it had
been very near at hand: .... But what is certain, and in no way to be disputed, is the wonderful Noise
that foUow'd its Explosion".
More than half a century later, in 1783, another very large fireball passed over England and the
Secretary of the Royal Society, Charles Blagdon (1784), attributed the instantaneous sounds to "an
affrighted imagination, or an illusion produced by the fancied analogy of fireworks." But because of
the considerable testimony in support of such sounds, he decided that he "would leave it as a point to
be cleared up by future observers".
In the year 1784 a physical solution was impossible: Auguste Coulomb had not yet developed his
famous electrostatics law, and it was a further century before Heim-ich Hertz demonstrated the
existence of radio waves. Even when electrical discharges and radio waves became well understood,
the solution remained elusive. The only evidence was anecdotal and the incidence of the sounds was
highly capricious, sometimes being heard by only one or two members of a group of observers
standing close to each other.
Leading meteor investigators in the first half of the present century, such as W.F. Denning (1907, and
several other references) and C.C. Wylie (1932), were convinced that the anomalous sounds from
meteor fireballs were purely psychological in origin, despite some well attested cases where the sounds
clearly preceded the optical sighting of the fireball.
A Texas engineering professor, J.A. Udden (1917a), came rather close to the answer when he
discussed the detailed observations which he collected of a large fireball. After analysing nine reports
of instantaneous sounds, he concluded "If these observations are not subjective, the cause of the sound
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930009995 2020-03-17T07:30:25+00:00Z
298 Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991
may perhaps be sought in ether waves that, on meeting the earth, or objects attached to the earth, such
as plants or artificial structures, are in part dissipated by being transformed into waves of sound in the
air." This conclusion was evidently prompted by one observer who "seems to refer this sound to
objects attached to the ground." (Udden 1917b).
As recently as 1979, leading meteor specialists still invoked a psychological explanation for the
sounds, with the result that many potentially illuminating observations of the phenomenon were
ignored and rejected from the literature (except in the Soviet Union). One revealing report of instant
fireball sounds by a Cornell University radiophysicist eventually surfaced seven years after the event,
in the New York State Journal of Medicine! (Ingalls 1967). The observer, Dr Bruce Hapke, who was
with his wife, reported "The hissing and crackling noises were definitely associated with the meteor,
although we cannot be sure whether or not they appeared to be coming from the meteor or from all
around us. However, it can be stated with certainty that they did not appear to come from behind the
meteor as they would have, had the object been a high-fly|ng jet plane.,'_==_ =
On 1978 April 7, at 4.44 a.m., a magnitude -16 fireball passed over eastern New South Wales (Keay
1980a), and hundreds of observers swamped the news media with reports. Of 36 reports investigated,
no fewer than eight included sounds heard simultaneously with the fireball's flight, and a further two
people heard sounds prio r to sighting the fireball, or its glare.
A careful investigation of these reports (Keay 1980b) led to the following conclusions:
(i) Large fireballs produce electrical and/or electromagnetic energy in the Extra and Very Low
Frequency (ELFIVLF) region of the spectrum. Previous spectrum searches had proved negative
(Hawkins 1958a), leading to the comment "Meteors therefore show a surprisingly low efficiency in
converting kinetic to radio energy" (Hawkins 1958b). However the ELF/VLF region of the s_t_m
was not examined by Hawkins during his search. : _ :: _,
(ii) The generation of ELFIVLF energy by the fireball is at least partially explainable as the release
of energy stored as "magnetic spaghetti" when the geomagnetic field is trapped an d scrambled in the
turbulent plasma wake of the fireball. Bronshten (1983) has confirmed that through this mechanism
bright fireballs may produce radiated power levels of the order of kilowatts. For such a fireball the
kinetic energy dissipation rate exceeds ten gigawatts.
(iii) The ELFIVLF energy is directly transduced into acoustic form by mundane objects which happen
to be on or in the close vicinity of fireball observers. Early laboratory trials showed that rapidly
varying electric fields produced rustling sounds audible by test subjects with appropriate hair styi_: or
wearing glasses (Keay 1980c). Later laboratory tests showed that transduction by mundane artifacts,
such as household items, and plant foliage could generate acoustic sound levels of up to 60 DbA from
intense electric fields varying at audible frequencies (Keay and Ostwaid i991).
At any given location, the rare occurrence of large meteor fireballs makes it rather impract!cal to set
up suitable instrumen_t)on to record their ELF/VLF emissions. In the mid-1980s, after repo_
emerged of hissing sounds being heard during space shuttle re-entries over the American Midwest,
attempts were made to tape them (Keay 1985) but this effort came to an abrupt end when the
Challenger was lost. It will be interesting to try again, since overland shuttle re-entries...........have recently
resumed for some missions. The incentive for doing so has now diminished, because crucial records of
instantaneous fireball sounds have emerged from Japan.
Three cooperating groups in Japan have placed the emission of ELF/VLF energy from meteor fireballs
beyond doubt (Watanabe, Okada and Suzuki 1988). For an exceptionally bright Perseid fireball they
managed to obtain simultaneous ph0tographic and radio records, together with an_dectrbpho_e sound
report from a member of the photographic team. The radio emission lasted less than a fifth of a
second, coincident with maximum light, when the fireball flared to a maximum brightness of-7
magnitude (Figure 1).
Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991 299
10
fl _3'
t 0
[
db ( _ ".%'."_K,)
40 ;m
vuFt_1=_ (t_) VLF RADIO SIGNAL
2 o TOYOKAWA
v
3 .f3 41.0
: | |. | • | • |
ltlill-ltJlI l t
41.S
FIGURE 1 The Very Low Frequency radio signal recorded at Toyokawa, Japan, over 100 kilometres
from a bright Perseid fireball photographed simultaneously from Shimotsu (courtesy of T. Watanabe
and K. Suzuki).
Longer duration electrophonic sounds arise only from meteor fireballs brighter than -9 magnitude,
according to leading Soviet meteor researcher, I.S. Astapovich (1958), who reached this empirical
conclusion on the basis of an extensive body of observational evidence. A study of fireball light
curves, obtained principally from the Canadian Meteorite Observation and Recovery Program (MOP, P)
(l-lalliday, et al 1989, and personal communication), has verified Astapovlch's result (Keay 1991b).
The study indicates that the production of radio emission is dependent on the fireball penetrating the
atmosphere to the point where continuum flow conditions prevail, at which stage a shock front is
formed and turbulence arises in the plasma wake of the fireball.
The realisation and demonstration that intense radio emissions at audio frequencies are directly
transducible into sound has provided an explanation for the immediate audibility of lightning strikes
under favorable conditions. This may also hold for audible clicks derived from the electromagnetic
pulse produced by a nuclear explosion. There is also the strong likelihood that the audibility of intense
aurorae has a similar basis, but in this case the evidence for sufficient ELF/VLF electromagnetic or
purely electrical emissions from aurorae remains very tenuous and is a challenge to researchers in that
field (Keay 1990).
To ameliorate the scarcity of observational data on these phenomena, a catalog of over 300 reports of
instantaneous audible sounds associated with meteor fireballs, lightning and aurorae has been
assembled and is being expanded as data comes to hand. In a parallel endeavour, many reports have
recently been catalogued in Russian by Bronshten, et al (1988).
A last comment. The advent of a viable physical explanation for the so-called "anomalous sounds"
from meteor fireballs, and its acceptance, has led to a dramatic upsurge in the transmission of reports
of these sounds (Keay 1991a). Hitherto such reports had been shunned and, since the scathing verdicts
300 Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991 •
of Denning and Wiley, only rarely mentioned in the literature. The same is still true for reports of
auroral sounds. Hopefully the auroral research community may now take the matter of auroral sounds
more seriously and give it the attention it rightly deserves.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I am grateful for assistance and encouragement from Vitaly Bronshten,
Zdenek Ceplecha, Inn Halliday, Bruce Mclntosh, Doug ReVelle, Iwan Williams and others. Support
was received from the University of Newcastle and the Science and Engineering Research Council of
Great Britain.
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Meteoritika, 9, 71-101 (in Russian).
Astapovich I.S. (1958) Meteoric Phenomena in the Earth's Atmosphere, Fizmatgiz, Moscow (in
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Blagdon C. (1784) An Account of Some late fiery Meteors; with Observations. phil. Trans. Roy.
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Bronshten V.A. (1983) A Magnetohydrodynamic Mechanism for Generating Radio Waves by Bright
Fireballs. Solar system-/(_-eareh, 17, 70-7_i_i:i -F-_-_-_: -
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