Starship Asterisk*

Chris Peterson wrote:

wonderboy wrote:How can you be so sure it wasn't? I know you might have heard of it, or maybe someone else would have seen it. Basically the evidence points more to it NOT being a meteor impact, however, that shouldnt automatically rule out the plume seen by dadman!

What caused this plume, if not a meteor?

I have no idea- since I didn't see it, I don't know what it actually looked like. If I had to guess, I'd say it was some sort of weather effect pushing out a plume of the cloud itself.

A meteoroid large enough to impact the ocean at hypervelocity and produce a water plume thousands of meters high would have destroyed ships for hundreds of kilometers around, would have produced a fireball brighter than the Sun and a smoke trail in the air that would last hours and be seen on satellite images, would probably have produced tsunamis, and would have been recorded on dozens of infrasound and seismic monitors all around the world. None of this happened.

Whatever caused the effect he saw, I am 100% certain it was not a meteoroid impact.

wonderboy wrote:How can you be so sure it wasn't? I know you might have heard of it, or maybe someone else would have seen it. Basically the evidence points more to it NOT being a meteor impact, however, that shouldnt automatically rule out the plume seen by dadman!

What caused this plume, if not a meteor?

Chris Peterson wrote:

dadman wrote:I agree with those who say that meteor impacts in the ocean are relatively common, yet go almost unnoticed. Perhaps the Bloop is rare evidence of one.

Meteorite impacts in the ocean are common- about four times more common than they are on land. Meteor impacts are very uncommon anywhere on Earth, with minor ones happening on the order of once or twice a century, and ones capable of raising a plume of vapor to cloud level happening every few thousand years or more. What you saw was absolutely not caused by a meteor impact, and it seems likely that the Bloop represents too much energy to have been caused by a meteor or meteorite impact as well. A meteor that could produce this much acoustic energy would have shown up in infrasound and seismic records.

dadman wrote:I agree with those who say that meteor impacts in the ocean are relatively common, yet go almost unnoticed. Perhaps the Bloop is rare evidence of one.

owlice wrote:Paul, there's a link to the sound on the APOD page; go listen!

neufer wrote:Japan has always been active in whale research primary for the purpose of fishing them out to extinction.

I think that this was "moose call experiment" to see
if they attract whales by playing back their own sounds in prime whaling territory.

They had the means, motive, and opportunity
just so long a Greenpeace didn't catch up with them.

Either it didn't work out as planned or, more likely,
the Japanese simply got cold feet when they discovered that their activities were being monitored.


Squid Fishing boats use lights to attract squid.

emc wrote:NEWS FLASH!!! KRAKEN PASSES GAS... scientists baffled... APOD not so baffled...

dfishershin wrote:
Could it be a huge gas bubble from methane hydrates on the ocean floor?

There seems to be a deposit in about the right spot.