Anomalous Meteor Phenomena
Now slides the silent meteor
on wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), and for the most part he
was perfectly correct: meteors do slide silently through the upper atmosphere.
But every now and then a report comes to light of a meteor emitting sound
which is variously described as "hissing", "crackling" and "humming". Furthermore,
audible meteors are only one of a whole range of anomalous meteor phenomena
(AMP) recorded by observers throughout the world.
By and large, AMP have been
ignored or dismissed by writers on meteor astronomy: as far back as 1719
Edmund Halley regarded sounds as "the effect of pure fantasy." Scientists
have always had difficulty with phenomena that do not conform with generally
accepted theory, and where the science is dominated by amateurs - as with
meteor astronomy - the observational methods and analytical techniques
employed are often questionable, to say the least. As a result, most AMP
have not received the thorough investigation afforded to other unusual
astronomical and meteorological phenomena.
In these pages we take a
look at some of the phenomena that have been reported - and at some of
the possible explanations.
Copyright 1996 Philip
M. Bagnall
Audible
Meteors and Fireballs
Curved,
Kinked, Spiral and Wavy Meteors
Nebulous
Meteors
Dark
and Daylight Meteors
Disk
and Point-Source Meteors
Multi-Tailed
Meteors
Long
Duration Trains
Reporting
AMP
Meteorite
Information
Meteorite
Links
Meteors
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