Researchers at the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage have managed to record the speech sound of volcanic roaring for the first time , Smithsonianmagazine andThe Guardianreport . It ’s extremely unmanageable to specialise the sound of thunder from the sounds of the eruption itself , which has made once and for all identifying the transonic phenomenon on tape impossible until now .
" It ’s something that people who ’ve been at eruptions have certainly consider and learn before , but this is the first fourth dimension we ’ve definitively capture it and identified it in scientific data , " Alaska Volcano Observatory seismologist Matt Haney explained in apress release . He and his workfellow published theirobservationsin the journalGeophysical Research Letters .
Using a microphone raiment almost 40 international mile away , Haney ’s squad clean up the sounds of volcanic thunder in March and June 2017 in the midst of two volatile outbreak of theBogoslofvolcano , a mostly grinder vent in Alaska ’s Aleutian Islands . ( Only about 300 foot of the approximately 6000 - foot - tall volcano is above sea stratum . ) The eruptions resulted in huge plume of ash , a prime environment forvolcanic lightningto occur . The vent continued to sire ash tree plumage long after the eruptions ended , so the researchers could equate the post - eruption lightning with the timing and volume of the sound they picked up on the microphones , and positively place the volcanic nose drops . They found that the loudness of the lightning was about the same as the intensity of the roaring ’s interference .
The technique could allow scientist to study volcanic lightning more easily by using the speech sound of big H as an approximation , which may signal how big the ash feather could develop . That data could reveal dangers for nearby aircraft .
you may hear the thunder for yourself in the audio track below . The recordings are sped up , and the thunder sounds suction stop and tonic . The whiz sounds in the first recording are the eruption themselves .
[ h / tSmithsonian ]
