5 ms·

Balloon detects first signs of a ‘sound tunnel’ in the sky

166 points by amichail 5y ago

areoform 5y ago
Wasn't this exactly what the Project Mogul, the project thought to have sparked off the entire Roswell alien saga, was doing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul Is this the first time that the channel has been publicly verified? Or, in other words, has the data for the existence of this channel been known for some time and kept classified? Or, is there something else going on? edit - yes, I've read the article. And while the article mentions this. It doesn't seem to go into detail about what Mogul actually found, and how this diverges. At least not to my understanding of the text, > After geophysicist Maurice Ewing discovered the SOFAR channel in 1944, he set out to find an analogous layer in the sky. At an altitude of between 10 and 20 kilometers is the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere (where weather occurs), and the stratosphere. Like the marine SOFAR, the tropopause represents a cold region, where sound waves should travel slower and farther. An acoustic waveguide in the atmosphere, Ewing reasoned, would allow the U.S. Air Force to listen for nuclear weapon tests detonated by the Soviet Union. He instigated a top-secret experiment, code-named Project Mogul, that sent up hot air balloons equipped with infrasound microphones. > The instruments often malfunctioned in the high winds, and in 1947, debris from one balloon crashed just outside of Roswell, New Mexico; that crash sparked one of the most famous UFO conspiracy theories in history. Soon after, the military disbanded the project. But the mission wasn’t declassified for nearly 50 years. By then, Cold War tensions had settled and research in atmospheric acoustics had all but died out, says Stephen McNutt, a volcanic seismologist at the University of South Florida. “All of a sudden, the rug got pulled out, and infrasound wasn’t funded for 30 or 40 years,” he says. > But Sarah Albert, a geophysicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, never gave up on the idea. She was intrigued by the potential of new solar-powered balloons that can float passively at stable altitudes and wireless telemetry that can broadcast data continuously over long ranges. I raised this because the article seems to be a bit incorrect, because geophysical MASINT continues to be an important part of intelligence gathering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical_MASINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical_MASINT The DNI has a public primer on it, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/21-113_MASINT_Primer__2022.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/21-113_MASINT_Prime... Directly after Project Mogul, there was Project Skyhook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_balloon , which IIRC included a number of sensors including microphones. I'm struggling to understand whether or not they actually verified something that seemingly was known since the 1940s?
- ancientworldnow 5y ago
  The article discusses this if you read it.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Per the article, the main issue with Project Mogul is that the detection equipment wasn't reliable enough to confirm the channel (even just getting a weather balloon to stay at a constant altitude is difficult); the project fell into the low-priority list for military research and (due to being classified until recently) wasn't visible to the general public. Even now, researchers have only detected "signs" of an evasive channel; it appears to be far more inconsistent than the analog in the ocean (which makes intuitive sense, since pressures and temperatures in the atmosphere are far more variable than in the ocean).
- xeromal 5y ago
  Yeah, they mention this in the article.
- smm11 5y ago
  Then a couple years later we chucked Starfish Prime into space to see what might happen.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
MentallyRetired 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't this inevitably lead to articles with the title "Researchers detect subsonic boom but can't identify the source"? What other possible benefits could this have? Surely we know about the earthquakes this article says the "tunnel" it will detect.
- xeromal 5y ago
  They're seeking similar benefit to the tunnel in the ocean. Sure, they can't figure out what it is now but over time they can improve it. Could be very useful to detecting volcanoes for instance.
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  Article: "But to their surprise, the scientists also picked up other sounds in the channel. “There’s infrasound events of unknown nature that occur several times per hour,” says Daniel Bowman, a geophysicist at Sandia and collaborator on the project. “And there’s no good explanation.” This could help sort out those worldwide "hum" problems ('Taos Hum','Windsor Hum'. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum]
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    FWIW the now-silent Windsor Hum seems to have been a (particularly ill-maintained) steel plant on Zug Island, across the Detroit River. https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/infamous-windsor-hum-finally-dies-down-after-u-s-steel-idles-zug-island-plant-1.5041023 https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/infamous-windsor-hum-finally-dies...
zackmorris 5y ago
The link in the article about measuring global warming by the speed of sound through the SOFAR channel is genius IMHO: https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-s-hidden-heat-measured-earthquake-sounds https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-s-hidden-heat-... The embedded video shows how much energy in zettajoules the ocean has absorbed at the 20 second mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPH1TFgv6m8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPH1TFgv6m8 This is stuff that just can't be unseen, regardless of how hard deniers keep denying.
- zmgsabst 5y ago
  That chart claims there’s 0 ZJ in 1970… which seems unlikely, since the planet wasn’t at absolute zero then. I think you’d come across as more credible if the chart showed the contextualized change — rather than clearly being edited for dramatic effect.
  - throwaway5752 5y ago
    It's assumed the viewer will be able to understand that it is the starting frame of reference, not absolute zero.
    - zmgsabst 5y ago
      Duh — but a reference/baseline you don’t share and showing only de-contextualized change scaled to “look scary” is classic lying with statistics. How much change does 200 ZJ represent? We’re purposefully not told that information because that chart is propaganda meant to make an emotional argument and not informational argument — and I think it speaks to the person I was replying to that they’re using emotive arguments rather than fact based arguments. Particularly when lobbing ad hominems at others.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      There's this saying about assumptions, I forgot what it was... Anyway, it's better to be clear than make assumptions about the audience, and you know that bad charts are a big contributor to the spread of misinformation and confusion.
aaron695 5y ago
The fact they are using solar balloons is pretty interesting. Here's how they made it for ~$30 - https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/37/6/JTECH-D-19-0175.1.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/37/6/JTECH-D... Fun version on Amazon for ~$30 - https://www.amazon.com/TEDCO-Tedcotoys-Activity-50-foot-Balloon/dp/B00LW7WGRK/ https://www.amazon.com/TEDCO-Tedcotoys-Activity-50-foot-Ball...
JoeDaDude 5y ago
Some people are so nitpicky... From TFA: "He instigated a top-secret experiment, code-named Project Mogul, that sent up hot air balloons equipped..." I believe this is an error. Per Wikipedia [1]: "...rubber meteorological balloons, however, these were quickly replaced by enormous balloons made of polyethylene plastic. These were more durable, leaked less helium...". So the Project Mogul balloons were NOT hot air balloons. Which is not surprising. To fulfill the mission, a hot air balloon would have to carry fuel and perform controlled burns to maintain altitude. Not that this would be impossible, it is just easier IMHO to release ballast. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Why do you trust one source and not the other?
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Because simple hot air balloons (without gas buoyancy) would not be very effective at this sort of problem. It makes much more sense to use He lift weather balloons (even if they use temperature controlled solar power to maintain proper buoyancy). I'm just looking at the pictures, but they don't look/lift like simple hot air balloons to me. I'd lean toward the science writer simplifying the language.
  - JoeDaDude 5y ago
    It's not just one source over the other, it is also the impracticality of the hot air balloon for this purpose, as I stated in my post. This observation, borne out of my (admittedly brief) exposure to both hot air balloons (I know hot air balloon pilots and have ridden with them) and weather balloons (I planned, but did not execute, a project with my son's boy scout troop to launch a weather balloon to the stratosphere), combined with my engineering instincts (FWIW), convinced that the Wikipedia source was correct.
  - gumby 5y ago
    There are some specific replies but here’s the general one. There are two mutually exclusive descriptions. JoeDaDude didn’t just uncover one but provided the reasoning why the second explanation is far more likely. In other words they didn’t simply assert one over the other, but rather gave you the mechanism to say “oh you’re right” or alternately to point out the flaw in their reasoning.
dontcare007 5y ago
Wow, knowingly releasing data that could negatively affect National Security.... - "We didn't tell the Navy that if you published the signal, which we did, then you could figure out where the receivers were,"
grugq 5y ago
Related. Here is a good lecture on project modul, the initial work looking at sound propagation in the atmosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4ygiQHSNDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4ygiQHSNDc
galaxyLogic 5y ago
Finally the truth about the Roswell incident

166 points by amichail 5y ago

Wasn't this exactly what the Project Mogul, the project thought to have sparked off the entire Roswell alien saga, was doing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul Is this the first time that the channel has been publicly verified? Or, in other words, has the data for the existence of this channel been known for some time and kept classified? Or, is there something else going on? edit - yes, I've read the article. And while the article mentions this. It doesn't seem to go into detail about what Mogul actually found, and how this diverges. At least not to my understanding of the text, > After geophysicist Maurice Ewing discovered the SOFAR channel in 1944, he set out to find an analogous layer in the sky. At an altitude of between 10 and 20 kilometers is the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere (where weather occurs), and the stratosphere. Like the marine SOFAR, the tropopause represents a cold region, where sound waves should travel slower and farther. An acoustic waveguide in the atmosphere, Ewing reasoned, would allow the U.S. Air Force to listen for nuclear weapon tests detonated by the Soviet Union. He instigated a top-secret experiment, code-named Project Mogul, that sent up hot air balloons equipped with infrasound microphones. > The instruments often malfunctioned in the high winds, and in 1947, debris from one balloon crashed just outside of Roswell, New Mexico; that crash sparked one of the most famous UFO conspiracy theories in history. Soon after, the military disbanded the project. But the mission wasn’t declassified for nearly 50 years. By then, Cold War tensions had settled and research in atmospheric acoustics had all but died out, says Stephen McNutt, a volcanic seismologist at the University of South Florida. “All of a sudden, the rug got pulled out, and infrasound wasn’t funded for 30 or 40 years,” he says. > But Sarah Albert, a geophysicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, never gave up on the idea. She was intrigued by the potential of new solar-powered balloons that can float passively at stable altitudes and wireless telemetry that can broadcast data continuously over long ranges. I raised this because the article seems to be a bit incorrect, because geophysical MASINT continues to be an important part of intelligence gathering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical_MASINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical_MASINT The DNI has a public primer on it, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/21-113_MASINT_Primer__2022.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/21-113_MASINT_Prime... Directly after Project Mogul, there was Project Skyhook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_balloon , which IIRC included a number of sensors including microphones. I'm struggling to understand whether or not they actually verified something that seemingly was known since the 1940s?

ancientworldnow 5y ago
The article discusses this if you read it.
InitialLastName 5y ago
Per the article, the main issue with Project Mogul is that the detection equipment wasn't reliable enough to confirm the channel (even just getting a weather balloon to stay at a constant altitude is difficult); the project fell into the low-priority list for military research and (due to being classified until recently) wasn't visible to the general public. Even now, researchers have only detected "signs" of an evasive channel; it appears to be far more inconsistent than the analog in the ocean (which makes intuitive sense, since pressures and temperatures in the atmosphere are far more variable than in the ocean).
xeromal 5y ago
Yeah, they mention this in the article.
smm11 5y ago
Then a couple years later we chucked Starfish Prime into space to see what might happen.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

MentallyRetired 5y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't this inevitably lead to articles with the title "Researchers detect subsonic boom but can't identify the source"? What other possible benefits could this have? Surely we know about the earthquakes this article says the "tunnel" it will detect.

xeromal 5y ago
They're seeking similar benefit to the tunnel in the ocean. Sure, they can't figure out what it is now but over time they can improve it. Could be very useful to detecting volcanoes for instance.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Article: "But to their surprise, the scientists also picked up other sounds in the channel. “There’s infrasound events of unknown nature that occur several times per hour,” says Daniel Bowman, a geophysicist at Sandia and collaborator on the project. “And there’s no good explanation.” This could help sort out those worldwide "hum" problems ('Taos Hum','Windsor Hum'. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum]
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  FWIW the now-silent Windsor Hum seems to have been a (particularly ill-maintained) steel plant on Zug Island, across the Detroit River. https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/infamous-windsor-hum-finally-dies-down-after-u-s-steel-idles-zug-island-plant-1.5041023 https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/infamous-windsor-hum-finally-dies...

zackmorris 5y ago

The link in the article about measuring global warming by the speed of sound through the SOFAR channel is genius IMHO: https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-s-hidden-heat-measured-earthquake-sounds https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-s-hidden-heat-... The embedded video shows how much energy in zettajoules the ocean has absorbed at the 20 second mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPH1TFgv6m8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPH1TFgv6m8 This is stuff that just can't be unseen, regardless of how hard deniers keep denying.

zmgsabst 5y ago
That chart claims there’s 0 ZJ in 1970… which seems unlikely, since the planet wasn’t at absolute zero then. I think you’d come across as more credible if the chart showed the contextualized change — rather than clearly being edited for dramatic effect.
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  It's assumed the viewer will be able to understand that it is the starting frame of reference, not absolute zero.
  - zmgsabst 5y ago
    Duh — but a reference/baseline you don’t share and showing only de-contextualized change scaled to “look scary” is classic lying with statistics. How much change does 200 ZJ represent? We’re purposefully not told that information because that chart is propaganda meant to make an emotional argument and not informational argument — and I think it speaks to the person I was replying to that they’re using emotive arguments rather than fact based arguments. Particularly when lobbing ad hominems at others.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    There's this saying about assumptions, I forgot what it was... Anyway, it's better to be clear than make assumptions about the audience, and you know that bad charts are a big contributor to the spread of misinformation and confusion.

aaron695 5y ago

The fact they are using solar balloons is pretty interesting. Here's how they made it for ~$30 - https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/37/6/JTECH-D-19-0175.1.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/37/6/JTECH-D... Fun version on Amazon for ~$30 - https://www.amazon.com/TEDCO-Tedcotoys-Activity-50-foot-Balloon/dp/B00LW7WGRK/ https://www.amazon.com/TEDCO-Tedcotoys-Activity-50-foot-Ball...

JoeDaDude 5y ago

Some people are so nitpicky... From TFA: "He instigated a top-secret experiment, code-named Project Mogul, that sent up hot air balloons equipped..." I believe this is an error. Per Wikipedia [1]: "...rubber meteorological balloons, however, these were quickly replaced by enormous balloons made of polyethylene plastic. These were more durable, leaked less helium...". So the Project Mogul balloons were NOT hot air balloons. Which is not surprising. To fulfill the mission, a hot air balloon would have to carry fuel and perform controlled burns to maintain altitude. Not that this would be impossible, it is just easier IMHO to release ballast. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul

wolverine876 5y ago
Why do you trust one source and not the other?
- kurthr 5y ago
  Because simple hot air balloons (without gas buoyancy) would not be very effective at this sort of problem. It makes much more sense to use He lift weather balloons (even if they use temperature controlled solar power to maintain proper buoyancy). I'm just looking at the pictures, but they don't look/lift like simple hot air balloons to me. I'd lean toward the science writer simplifying the language.
- JoeDaDude 5y ago
  It's not just one source over the other, it is also the impracticality of the hot air balloon for this purpose, as I stated in my post. This observation, borne out of my (admittedly brief) exposure to both hot air balloons (I know hot air balloon pilots and have ridden with them) and weather balloons (I planned, but did not execute, a project with my son's boy scout troop to launch a weather balloon to the stratosphere), combined with my engineering instincts (FWIW), convinced that the Wikipedia source was correct.
- gumby 5y ago
  There are some specific replies but here’s the general one. There are two mutually exclusive descriptions. JoeDaDude didn’t just uncover one but provided the reasoning why the second explanation is far more likely. In other words they didn’t simply assert one over the other, but rather gave you the mechanism to say “oh you’re right” or alternately to point out the flaw in their reasoning.

dontcare007 5y ago

Wow, knowingly releasing data that could negatively affect National Security.... - "We didn't tell the Navy that if you published the signal, which we did, then you could figure out where the receivers were,"

grugq 5y ago

Related. Here is a good lecture on project modul, the initial work looking at sound propagation in the atmosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4ygiQHSNDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4ygiQHSNDc

galaxyLogic 5y ago

Finally the truth about the Roswell incident