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(meteorobs) Electrophonic sounds (was: Seattle Fireball)
At 01:52 PM 2/6/97 -0500, THOMAS T WOJACK wrote:
>You could hear through closed windows! It must of been very loud!
The interesting thing about electrophonic sounds is that they MIGHT be heard in closed areas, even where a sonic boom couldn't be. Assuming that they are in fact due to emissions from the trail at radio (and microwave?) wavelengths, they could conceivably be heard by anyone who happened to be near a "receiver": a chain-link fence, a complex of ferrous pipes in a wall, even a guard-rail...
Of course, some people suggest that "electrophonic sounds" are not real physical effects at all, but rather simply psychosensory phenomena: essentially (I guess) we *expect* to hear a crackling sound when we witness a very bright light - and so our brains DO hear the sound, whether it's there or not...
I guess the real answer to this won't come until some determined amateur (or lucky professional) manages to correlate an electrophonic sound with a long-wavelength emission - or confirms that there is no correlation.
Lew