Mystery Of Weird Seismic Hum Heard Around The World Solved

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A weird and mysterious seismic hum was detected around the world last year.

According to a new scientific study, the origin of that strange rumbling noise was an unconventional geologic birth announcement.

The birth of the new underwater volcano off Mayotte is responsible for the seismic hum recorded around the world in November 2018
The birth of the new underwater volcano off Mayotte is responsible for the seismic hum recorded around the world in November 2018. Picture via Twitter

The hum is a mysterious noise annoying 2% of the world population. But in 2018, a mysterious seismic hum rolled around the world without being notified accurately. Now, a new study testifies previous assumptions, suggesting that this hum frequency were most probably caused by the birth of a new underwater volcano off the coast of the island of Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique in the Indian Ocean.

In other words, the seismic hums detected around the world an unconventional geologic birth announcement, likely caused by the rumblings of a magma-filled reservoir deep under the Indian Ocean. 

According to the lead author of the study, it took only a few weeks for the magma to propagate from the upper mantle to the seafloor, where the new submarine volcano is born.

A new volcano is born in Mayotte

The birth of the volcano began in May 2018, when global earthquake-monitoring agencies detected thousands of earthquakes near Mayotte, including a magnitude-5.9 quake, the largest ever detected in the region.

Then, in November 2018, seismologists recorded weird seismic hums, some lasting up to 40 minutes, buzzing around the world. All in all, researchers found more than 400 such signals.

In May 2019, so just a year after the beginning of the seismic swarm, a French oceanographic mission showed that a new 3.1 miles (5 km) long and almost a half mile (0.8 km) high volcano had been born near Mayotte.

The volcano was built in two main stages:

  1. First, magma from a 9-mile-wide (15 km) reservoir flowed upward diagonally until it reached the seafloor, leading to a submarine eruption. As the magma moved, it triggered energetic earthquakes along its path to the surface.
  2. The magma path became a highway, allowing magma to flow out of the reservoir to the seafloor, where it built the volcano. As the reservoir drained, Mayotte sank almost 8 inches (20 centimeters) and the area above the reservoir cracked and fissured.

Scientists have determined it is when earthquakes shook this particular area above the reservoir that they triggered the resonance of the deep reservoir and generated the peculiar, very long seismic hums. More similar headlines on Strange Sounds and Steve Quayle. [Nature, LiveScience]

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2 Comments

  1. Not hogwas, I can hear them myself. I’m glad to know what some of them are. Those who can hear them get driven nuts at night trying to get to sleep!

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