Tag: unexplained phenomena

A MYSTERIOUS NOISE IS AGGRAVATING SOUTH FLORIDA RESIDENTS. HERE’S HOW ONE WOMAN IS WORKING TO FIND OUT WHAT’S CAUSING IT.

The cause behind a mysterious noise that has perplexed residents of South Tampa, Florida, could soon be revealed, with help from a crowdfunded effort to support scientific investigations into its cause.

Since as early as 2021, many residents in South Tampa have complained about the noise, which is often likened to a deep throbbing bass sound, the source of which remains to be identified.

Now, area residents have united behind a citizen action campaign to fund a scientific investigation into the strange, low-frequency sonic phenomenon.

Sara Healy is an administrator in a group of approximately 5.5k mothers in the South Tampa area, some of whom began complaining about the noise more than a year ago.

“The noise was first noted in the group in late 2022,” Healy told The Debrief in an email. “It’s always a hot topic of discussion any time it’s heard.”

Healy says that on January 13, 2024, many members reported hearing the noise louder and more intense than at any time before. Healy says she also experienced the low bass vibration associated with the noise for the first time, prompting her to create a separate community chat within the group to help bring a resolution to the strange sonic disturbance.

“I created a community chat within the Facebook group and people were still talking about it the next day, many of them saying we MUST get to the bottom of this noise,” Healy told The Debrief.

Enter Dr. James Locascio, Program Manager of Fisheries Habitat Ecology and Acoustics at the MOTE Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida. In the past, Locascio has worked on using passive acoustic recording devices to study the sounds produced by fish that occur primarily while they are spawning.

“I had read the previous media coverage in which Dr. James Locascio said he believed it was drum fish mating noise,” Healy explained, “which he had written his dissertation on after studying the same mystery noise in Punta Gorda and Cape Coral in 2005.”

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From the boy with sonar vision to a man who hasn’t slept for over 50 years – meet the people with real-life superpowers that scientists just can’t explain

We have all wondered what superpower we would like to have given the chance.

It is a classic icebreaker question – flying, pausing time or going invisible – but we never expect our answers to come true.

However, a smattering of unique individuals across the globe have powers which seem impossible to explain.

Whether it is using sonar to work around blindness, living for 50 years on no sleep or surviving with no food or water to the age of 91, the human race is capable of more than you might think.

Learn more about them and other superhumans below.

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THE VANISHING STAR ENIGMA AND THE 1952 WASHINGTON D.C. UFO WAVE

As we look up at the starry sky, countless celestial bodies silently peer down upon us. Most of these have been there for billions of years as stellar processes slowly unfold, starting from their birth until their final demise. Light from other celestial objects, though long vanished, has only recently reached us. In other instances, swift changes in the sky occur at timescales as short as seconds or minutes, like when a dwarf star momentarily flares up or when a human satellite crosses the field of view.

My team has been searching for objects that may have vanished. As an unexpected result of our searches, we found cases where multiple star-like objects (transients) appeared and vanished in a small image within an hour, and even more peculiarly, two of our brightest cases happened in July 1952, coinciding in time with the 1952 Washington D.C. UFO flyovers. But what have we actually found, and how do these two events potentially link to one another?

In the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project, our team has been dedicated to the search for celestial objects that vanished over the span of 70 years. In the grand scheme of cosmic time and the billions of years needed for a low-mass star to turn into a white dwarf, seventy years is only a fleeting moment in cosmic time. But 70 years is also much longer than the time needed for a satellite to pass through the telescope’s field of view. Our original objective was to search for a star that had vanished, with the hope of detecting instances where a star directly collapses into a black hole (failed supernova), an event predicted by supernova theoreticians. Alternatively, we were intrigued by the prospect of finding a star that vanishes entirely without a trace or explanation; a signature of a highly advanced civilization.

However, this task was far from straightforward. My colleague spent two years developing powerful methods [5] for sifting through the vast terabytes of image data involved. In parallel, we were (and still are) running a citizen science project together with scientists, amateur astronomers, and students primarily in Algeria and Nigeria, to search for these vanishing stars.

For our searches, we employed an object catalog sourced from the US Naval Observatory (USNO) together with archival images dating back to the early 1950s, captured at the Palomar Observatory in California. The images from Palomar predate the dawn of human space exploration. This night sky was pristine, and a far cry from today’s sky that is littered with tens of thousands of debris pieces from human satellites in orbits around the Earth, many producing flashes lasting fractions of a second as they reflect sunlight and tumble through space. These images we compared to the modern databases from Palomar Sky Survey, PanSTARRS, and the Gaia satellite in our quest to find disappearing objects.

We still haven’t found a single failed supernova candidate. However, our exploration has led us to a more intriguing discovery: several images where multiple star-like objects appear in a single snapshot of the sky, never to be seen again. In a specific instance [1], nine faint objects looking like stars were visible in an image captured on April 12, 1950, during a 50-minute exposure. However, they were absent in the image taken just 30 minutes earlier and in another image from six days later. We searched through all available archives in an attempt to locate the nine objects. We directed the world’s largest optical telescope, the Gran Telescopio Canarias, with its 10.4-meter aperture, to the locations where the transients had been. Nothing was found. The objects had simply vanished.

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ASTRONOMERS BAFFLED BY A MYSTERIOUS OBJECT IN THE “MASS GAP” BETWEEN NEUTRON STARS AND BLACK HOLES

Astronomers using a telescope array in South Africa have spotted a mysterious yet massive object within what astronomers term the “mass gap” between neutron stars and black holes, that also shares a binary orbit with a neutron star.

The fact that the mysterious object lies in this mass gap leads them to believe it is either the largest neutron star ever observed, the least massive black hole, or something else entirely. The discovery could have significant applications for understanding the “uncertain physics” underlying a range of massive cosmic objects.

Objects of this size are typically categorized as “astrophysical compact objects,” and they generally come in one of two varieties: black holes or neutron stars. Still, there is an enormous mass gap between the smallest black hole and the largest neutron star. For example, the largest neutron stars range between 2.2 to 2.5 solar masses, while black holes smaller than 5 solar masses are considered extremely rare. The result is a mass gap where these objects simply should not be.

As a result, discovering a compact astronomical object situated within this gap is a major event. Astronomers Ewan Barr and Arunima Dutta from the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, who made the discovery, say that previous objects in this mass gap have also been spotted, but “the nature of these objects and the mechanisms through which they formed remain unknown.”

The astronomers made the discovery while scanning a globular cluster known as NGC 1851 using the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) in South Africa. There, they spotted a pulsar in a binary orbit with an unknown compact object with a mass that landed in the lower range of the mass gap.

“The nature of these mass gap objects is unknown, as is the formation of their host binary systems,” the researchers write in the study detailing their findings. They also point out that the companion’s mass of 2.09 to 2.71 (solar masses) is in the mass gap, “indicating either a very massive NS (Neutron Star) or a low-mass BH (Black Hole).”

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JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE DETECTS ANOMALOUS EMISSIONS COMING FROM MYSTERIOUS ISOLATED SPACE OBJECT

The James Webb Space Telescope has detected a massive object larger than Jupiter that appears to be producing infrared emission from methane, in an unexpected discovery by astronomers that could represent evidence of atmospheric heating resulting from auroral processes.

The discovery has baffled astronomers because the object, an isolated brown dwarf called W1935, is cold and lacks any host star to provide its upper atmosphere with the energy that usually drives such methane emissions. According to new research, it is believed the source of the object’s mysterious emissions could arise from processes generating its aurora.

Methane emission is commonly associated with gas giants like Jupiter. Heating that occurs in the planet’s upper atmosphere is the driving force behind this, and astronomers believe it is also linked to the vivid aurora that Jupiter and other gas giants often display.

The closest observations of aurorae occur when they are visible here on our own planet, as energetic particles emanating from the Sun collide with Earth’s magnetic field. Hence, the mystery of W1935, which, unlike planets in our solar system, receives no stellar wind to power its apparent methane emissions.

The discovery raises questions about what process could account for the brown dwarf’s eerie glow, which could result from the presence of interstellar plasmas or some underlying internal process, or even the presence of an active moon nearby, similar to how moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn can also influence their auroral activity.

The discovery of W1935’s odd emissions occurred as part of a research effort led by astronomer Jackie Faherty with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. However, the brown dwarf’s discovery was made beforehand by Dan Caselden, a citizen scientist responsible for the discovery of other similar objects, with help from NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Viewed through the James Webb Space Telescope’s powerful eye, W1935 appeared almost identical to another of Caselden’s discoveries, a brown dwarf with the designation W2220, except for W1935’s curious methane emissions, which were quickly evident in the infrared wavelengths observed by Webb.

Faherty said the observation initially confused her team.

“My first thought was, what the heck? Why is methane emission coming out of this object?” Faherty said in a statement.

Based on computer models, W1935 differed significantly from W2220 in that its atmosphere appeared to grow warmer in proportion to altitude, an apparent temperature inversion.

Ben Burningham, who led the models used in the research and a co-author of the team’s recent study, said this phenomenon has been observed before, but not on planets as isolated as W1935, which receive no heat from a nearby star.

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12 Unsolved Mysteries from 2023

This past year featured an array of peculiar events and curious cases that defied explanation. From a wondrous piece of artwork (seen above) found near Las Vegas that was visible from space and an eerie black vertical line seen in the sky over a British town to an exhumed nun’s body that was found to be intact four years after her death and a series of drone incursions that left a Maryland family unsettled, 2023 saw a slew of inexplicable incidents emerge and leave us scratching our heads. With that in mind, here are 12 unsolved mysteries from 2023 that remain truly confounding…

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Mysterious cosmic ray observed in Utah came from beyond our galaxy, scientists say

Space scientists seeking to understand the enigmatic origins of powerful cosmic rays have detected an extremely rare, ultra-high-energy particle that they believe traveled to Earth from beyond the Milky Way galaxy.

The energy of this subatomic particle, invisible to the naked eye, is equivalent to dropping a brick on your toe from waist height, according to the authors of new research published Thursday in the journal Science. It rivals the single most energetic cosmic ray ever observed, the “Oh-My-God” particle that was detected in 1991, the study found.

Cosmic rays are charged particles that travel through space and rain down on Earth constantly. Low-energy cosmic rays can emanate from the sun, but extremely high-energy ones are exceptional. They are thought to travel to Earth from other galaxies and extragalactic sources.

“If you hold out your hand, one (cosmic ray) goes through the palm of your hand every second, but those are really low-energy things,” said study coauthor John Matthews, a research professor at the University of Utah.

“When you get out to these really high-energy (cosmic rays), it’s more like one per square kilometer per century. It’s never going through your hand.”

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Omagh’s mystery hum keeps Tyrone residents awake

Council officials are looking at calling in noise specialists in an attempt to locate a mystery hum disturbing residents of a Co Tyrone town.

People in Omagh have been reporting a persistent low level hum or buzz in the town for several weeks.

Noise officers have been sent out to investigate it and have heard it, but have so far been unable to identify the source.

Senior official at Fermanagh and Omagh council John Boyle told a recent meeting the issue would “not be an easy one to crack”.

He said existing equipment was not sensitive enough to find the source and they would either have to buy new equipment or employ a specialist contractor.

Among the potential culprits being investigated are air-conditioning units or power lines.

The council has been in contact with the company responsible for electricity distribution.

The issue was first raised by Alliance councillor Stephen Donnelly. He said he has received multiple reports from a wide area of the town.

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EUROPEAN SATELLITE SPOTS MYSTERIOUS GLOW COMING FROM MARS

A European Space Agency satellite has detected a mysterious glow coming from Mars. Measured in the visible spectrum with the NOMAD-UVIS instrument on board the European Space Agency (ESA) Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) satellite, the unexpected glow emanates from the night side of Mars and was observed in the planet’s upper atmosphere.

A similar glow was witnessed by the same research team using a satellite orbiting Venus. Like that visible light signal, the researchers believed the mysterious glow coming from Mars resulted from oxygen interacting with the planet’s upper atmosphere. That’s mainly because they also saw a similar mysterious glow coming from Mars, only in the daytime.

“Back in 2020, we were already able to detect the presence of a green emission between 40 and 150 km in altitude, present during the Martian day,” explained Jean-Claude Gérard, a planetologist at the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics (LPAP) at the University of Liège (BE), where the research team was headquartered. “This was due to the dissociation of the CO2 molecule, the main constituent of the atmosphere, by ultraviolet solar radiation”.

However, the researchers soon discovered that this unexpected mysterious glow coming from Mars was originating from the nighttime side. They also figured out it was caused by something else entirely.

“This emission is due to the recombination of oxygen atoms created in the summer atmosphere and carried by the winds towards the high winter latitudes,” explained Lauriane Soret, a researcher at LPAP.

Once at higher altitudes, the atoms recombine with CO2 molecules when they come in contact. This reaction, the researcher explains, produces an oxygen molecule “in an excited state” that relaxes, causing it to emit light “in the visible range.”

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The Mystery of the World’s Largest and Deepest Gravity Hole

DEAR INDIAN OCEAN, PLEASE DON’T take offense, but: Why is your gravity hole so big? That question had been baffling scientists ever since the hole was discovered back in 1948. Now a team from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) thinks they have found the answer: The “hole” in the Indian Ocean is caused by fragments from the sunken floor of another, much older ocean.

In a mysterious part of the Indian Ocean, the pull of gravity is much weaker than anywhere else on Earth. This gravity hole, the world’s largest (and deepest) gravitational anomaly, is officially known as the Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL). (A geoid is a theoretical model of sea levels worldwide, with its irregularities corresponding to variations in the Earth’s gravity.)

There’s nothing mysterious per se about gravitational variation, which corresponds to differences in the density of the subsurface (and submarine) layers of rock. What was unexplained, was the size and amplitude of the anomaly in the Indian Ocean.

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