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Re: (meteorobs) Re: [nhas] Did you hear any Leonids?
>I was wondering if any one thinks that the supposed
>sound is a mental thing. We are conditioned when we
>see a bright flash to anticipate a loud sound (i.e.,
>lightning and thunder, TV explosions).
Rob, before Dr. Keay's proposed geomagnetic mechanism for electrophonic
sound, I think the "psychological" explanation was the one most commonly
used to explain (some might say to "dismiss") these sounds...
I would have happily agreed with that reasoning myself, except that one
of the two occasions when I heard the simultaneous sound from a fireball,
I in fact HEARD the fireball BEFORE I saw it... Luckily, it was a longer
lasting Leonid (low elevation, far from the radiant) and my head was very
quick. Now obviously, mine is just one datapoint - and is in fact what is
usually called anecdotal evidence - so of no value in establishing whether
these sounds are in fact produced mechanically by meteors or not. However,
this experience was certainly enough for me personally, to keep an open
mind on the subject of electrophonics. And that open mind has been some-
what rewarded in recent years, by the spate of what seem to be successful
recordings of electrophonic sounds by various Leonid observing campaigns.
That said, even if Dr. Keay's mechanism does prove to be a valid explan-
ation for some electrophonics, there is always a possibility (and a very
real possibility at that) that SOME instances of observers reporting such
sounds may be attributable to "suggestibility", or to other psychological
or psychoperceptual explanations. It seems like an interesting area for
research, in any case... particularly, if we are privileged to experience
another extraordinary Leonid apparition next year, like that of 2001...
Nothing helps make hypothesis testing easy, like easy reproducibility! :)
PS: One possible explanation for your experience of "hearing" a fireball
which your wife did not hear, is that Dr. Keay's explanation relies on a
"resonator" in your local environment to actually produce a sound from
the radio waves being generated in the upper atmosphere... And in fact,
a commonly proposed resonator is human hair... Another, or so I'd guess,
would be tooth fillings, or other metallic accoutrements near one's ear,
such as a coat zipper. But this latter idea is just my own interpolation!
Clear skies all,
Lew Gramer
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