The world can be a very noisy place, and in the vast majority of cases, it is pretty easy to pinpoint what is causing a particular noise.

One type of sound, however, has been baffling scientists and regular people alike for hundreds of years.

Loud banging noises that seem to come from the sky have been reported in placed across the globe for centuries, so a team of scientists have set out to figure out what they are. Unfortunately, as of their 2020 presentation to the American Geophysical Union, they still really do not know.

This noise is so common that it has been recorded by several people, which you can hear in this video:

Eli Bird, who is one of the researchers, commented on this on Live Science, saying:

“Generally speaking, we believe this is an atmospheric phenomenon – we don’t think it’s coming from seismic activity. We’re assuming it’s propagating through the atmosphere rather than the ground.”

This is an important statement because previously, many people thought that the noises came from siezmic activity since some of them were reported to have occurred leading up to, or just after, earthquakes or aftershocks.

With these noises being reported in geographically diverse areas including New York, Michigan, Shikoku, Japan, Belgium, and many other places, it is a major mystery.

Some people suggest that it could be the shockwave from a jet crossing the sound barrier. Others believe it could be a shockwave from when a meteorite passes into the Earth’s atmosphere. While these things could explain some of the events, it certainly would not cover them all.

With reports of these events going back as far as the 1800’s where one was reported near Charleston, SC, it is clearly not just a modern phenomenon.

For now, researchers will continue to collect data and hopefully come up with a real explanation to these incredible events.

Here is another video where the noise was captured:

Have you ever heard of a ‘skyquake’?

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