
Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik - thom
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/ping-beep-hum-sound-arctic-ocean-igloolik-1.3831861
======
nom
Mysterious, unlocateable sounds have always fascinated me. Right now I was
just looking for that impossible to triangulate low frequency vibration that
plagued that one town i can't remember, but then I typed "mysterious sound"
into YT and found out about this world wide event [1] [2] that occurred this
year Jan 9-14 and nobody was able to explain it

1: [https://youtu.be/mTOQvDzihTU?t=223](https://youtu.be/mTOQvDzihTU?t=223)

2: [http://strangesounds.org/2016/01/unexplained-booms-
increase-...](http://strangesounds.org/2016/01/unexplained-booms-increase-us-
uk-january-2016-video.html)

~~~
astrodust
There's going to be a whole lot more of these mysterious sounds because of
climate change. Nobody knows what it sounds like when the permafrost starts to
thaw and methane starts to bubble out of it. Russia's already seeing some very
strange geological effects: [http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-exploding-
permafrost-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-exploding-permafrost-
methane-craters-global-warming-2016-6)

This ping could be methane ice under the ocean melting, a sound akin to the
cracking of ice cubes in water:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate)

~~~
davesque
I sure as fuck hope not. Melting clathrates would be an unimaginable disaster
for the climate.

~~~
astrodust
Like it or not but we're already well into the "unimaginable disaster" phase
for climate change.

The biggest group of climate change denialists are those scientists that
insist we can cap things at 2°, which at this point is about the same as
thinking that Santa is real.

~~~
mveety
I'm not a climate change denialist, but I am a climate change optimist. I
think it would be possible to cap things off at two degrees, but we would have
to start sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and doing something with it (like
big tanks or put it underground as dry ice, etc). Anyone that thinks we can
stop this by producing less CO2 is deluded. We're well beyond the "unmitigated
disaster for our current environment" ppm level. If we can't fix this, at
least life will evolve and move on after we and many other species go extinct
due to human activity.

~~~
_coldfire
I have suspicions that most world leaders are aware of the work done on the
various geo-engineering mitigation strategies and are willing to risk it.

Such a terrible prospect to consider but that hasn't stopped scientists and
engineers planning for the worst. An ill-conceived quick fix scares me, yet
seems to be more likely than global agreement to reduce emissions in the
fractured world of international politics.

~~~
louithethrid
Actually, what is not appearing in those calculations, that the ability to
react with technology might shrink due to the costs added by the migrations
out of parts of the earth that become uninhabitable.

~~~
astrodust
The problem with this is funding. If one country took it upon itself to save
the planet they pay a huge price and everyone benefits, so there's no
incentive to do it.

It's only when things get so bad there's no option but to do it, by which it's
probably too late, when everyone might decide to fuck it and go solo instead
of waiting for consensus.

------
hapless
Well, there go the methane clathrate deposits.

It was nice knowing y'all.

~~~
pavlov
Eventually some spacefaring civilization will visit this system, note that the
second and third planet are very similar and almost skip further
exploration... But when they do, they'll be shocked to find out that one of
the planets is a naturally developed hothouse hell while the other was turned
that way by hapless inhabitants.

~~~
mcbits
After we figure out how to increase the mass of our atmosphere 90-fold, maybe.
Venus is around human body temperature at the altitude where atmospheric
pressure is similar to Earth's.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
The most Earth-like environment on the Solar System (other than Earth, of
course), ~50km high in Venus[0] :)

And to think that humans could've gone there... [1]

(mainly I refer to the Apollo Applications and TMK-MAVR, I'm skeptical about
Inspiration Mars)

[0]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110807004311/http://gltrs.grc.n...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110807004311/http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2003/TM-2003-212310.pdf)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby)

~~~
Pxtl
Iirc, the second-most human-like is Saturn, where there are zones of warm air
at around 10atms, which is manageable for humans. Not as radioactive as
Jupiter, but you can't float a zepplin in pure Hydrogen. Also, the wind speed
would obliterate any aircraft.

~~~
shagie
You can. Just you need to go the route of a vacuum airship instead. Or go for
a hot helium balloon.

While admittedly science fiction, The Clouds of Saturn by Michael McCollum
explores this a bit.

~~~
sqeaky
Now I want to build a hot hydrogen balloon. Put some drone motors and rotors
on it from control. Then one day land it near an open flame.

~~~
shagie
A chemistry professor that I was acquainted with did this as one of his
lecture demonstrations. Shakhashiri (and he's still doing it -
[http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/BZSPresentations/Presents.html](http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/BZSPresentations/Presents.html)
Once Upon a Christmas Cheery, In the Lab of Shakhashiri is going on its 47th
year!).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tsgh_T59gE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tsgh_T59gE)
has what you are looking for (at 3:42 though you'll likely want to start a tad
bit earlier).

------
acqq
The news that are more recent:

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/igloolik-ping-
military-i...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/igloolik-ping-military-
investigates-1.3835237)

"Military plane investigates mystery 'ping' near Igloolik Search turns up
nothing"

~~~
andrewflnr
> He said the noise apparently stopped after the military investigated.

So, man-made.

~~~
jklinger410
Or coincidence.

~~~
andrewflnr
Maybe, I guess. But for it to go on so long and stop right as it gets
seriously investigated is highly suspicious.

~~~
Hondor
Another explanation is that the people reporting it were lying and stopped
their false reports when the investigation was happening to protect their lie.

------
nom
This paragraph somewhere in the middle caught my eye:

„He also says some of his constituents suspect the sound is being generated on
purpose by Greenpeace to scare wildlife away from the rich hunting ground. The
organization has a tense past with Inuit stemming from its opposition to the
seal hunt in the 1970s and 1980s.“

------
gitaarik
This could as well be some organization's military machine that they're
experimenting with. Just like how mysterious objects in the sky could be
explained. It's actually the most logical explanation in most of these
mysterious cases. This is explained well in the awesome recent documentary
"Hypernormalisation". Check it out!

~~~
kilroy123
In that location? That's a very bizarre place for a sub to be.

~~~
codeonfire
Why is that bizarre? It looks like a major passage to me. In a nuclear first
strike scenario you want your nukes to be right at the front door so hopefully
you can take out some silos before they launch. The militaries of the world
have no doubt sprinkled hundreds of thousands of sea floor devices around the
world since probably the 1950's. Some are probably nuclear powered, long since
forgotten about, and will continue to emit for decades. There are fleets of
autonomous ocean vehicles that go and gather their data and transmit it to
satellites.

------
anotheryou
Why can't they triangulate it? Too deep to go?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sound doesn't always travel in a straight line in the ocean. Different depths
(pressures), different water temperatures, different salinity... they can all
change the speed of propagation to some degree. Currents may also bend sound.
Triangulation assumes that the sound traveled from the source to you at
constant velocity in a straight line.

~~~
anotheryou
I thought of something mobile, so you can home in. But very interesting to
learn it can be bend and reflects so much .

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't know if it's "so much". I can think of several causes, but I don't
know how big the overall effect is.

------
yoda_sl
Reminds me of a book from Barjavel (French author): The Ice People
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_nov...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_\(Barjavel_novel\))

------
simooooo
It's ice creaking

------
cyberferret
Locator beacon ping from another US 'broken arrow' ??

(Sorry, got carried away with the other 'discovery of a broken arrow' thread
here yesterday!)

------
EmmEff
Russian sub...

~~~
joshuaheard
A seismic anomaly?

~~~
danaliv
Whales humping.

------
GarrisonPrime
A 300 year-old human spaceship? :)

------
louithethrid
Triangulate, Track, Destroy ?

------
jhwhite
Godzilla. It's the only logical explanation.

~~~
the_watcher
My first thought was "Kaiju are coming"

------
social_quotient
I'd think it was Megatron but "Revenge of the fallen" happened.

