It hurts my ears!

​Lily pad is a pretty awesome place to live. We don’t really have any severe weather and winter, when we do get it, is actually pretty mild by most standards. But every now and again we hear a thunderous “BOOM” in the sky. Having a somewhat scientific mind, I began asking around about the source of the noise. Our local scientist told me that it is a skyquake…a kind of earthquake that happens in the sky.
These BOOMS are extremely loud and would rattle the windows…if we had them. A sonic boom happens when an object, like a jet, breaks the sound barrier, while a skyquake happens for no apparent reason. Are they real? According to the scientists at the University of Lily Pad, they are very real and have been recorded for centuries. “Locations reporting skyquakes include the Ganges river in India, the East Coast and Finger Lakes of the United States, the North Sea of Japan, the Bay of Fundy in Canada, and parts of Australia, Belgium, Scotland, Italy and Ireland. Skyquakes have their own names in various parts of the world:

• In Bangladesh, their are called "Barisal guns" (regerring to the Barisal region of East Bengal).
• Italians have several names for skyquakes, including "balza," "brontidi," "lagoni," and "marine."
• The Japans name the sounds "umimari" (cries from the sea).
• In Belgium and the Netherlands, skyquakes are called "mistpoeffers."
• In Iran and the Philippines, they are "retumbos."
• In the United States, some recurring skyquakes are the "Seneca guns" (near Seneca Lake, New York) and "Moodus noises" in Connecticut.

I wanted to know what caused them and here’s what I learned. Some modern skyquakes can be sonic booms from meteors or large, military aircraft. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can be heard far away from their point of origin. Sometimes the noise can come from distant thunder, with the sound focused by the atmosphere, or from clear-sky lightening which occurs near mountain ranges or large open spaces like plains or lakes. Skyquakes can even be produced by coronal mass ejections (CMEs). A CME is a solar radiation storm that can accelerate protons to 40 percent of the speed of light, potentially generating shock waves that break the speed of sound and produce sonic booms. A related explanation is that the Earth's magnetic field produces the sounds, either by accelerating particles or from resonance. Although skyquakes can happen anywhere, they most often occur near a coastline. Some experts have focused their attention on the close proximity of these sounds to water. While scientists can’t all agree on what causes these skyquakes, they do all believe there are several occurrences which are not likely causes of skyquakes. There is no evidence booming sounds are associated with global warming, industrial disasters, tectonic plate shifts, the hole in the ozone layer, or ghosts revisiting past battles.
The booming sound of a skyquake isn't the only incompletely explained atmospheric noise. Strange hums, trumpeting, vibrations, and wailing have also been reported and recorded. Sometimes these phenomena are called skyquakes, although the origin of the boom is likely quite different from that of the other eerie noises.
Whatever the cause, all I know is that they hurt my ears and scare the little tadpoles have to death!
I invite you all back tomorrow and until then, I wish you                                                                                                                                    Peace.

​Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "Are Skyquakes Real? Science of the Mystery Boom." ThoughtCo, Feb. 12, 2018, thoughtco.com/science-of-skyquakes-4158737.