In northern Sweden, photographer and guide Oliver Wright heard and recorded an unusual sound reminiscent of the blasters from the Star Wars film series. Wright, however, believes that it came from the northern lights.
The whistling sound he heard while touring for his group on Christmas, standing under the bright lights in Abisku National Park. The people around him also heard him. Wright thought it was coming from power lines, so he walked closer to them and recorded a sample using his smartphone. When he approached the power line, the sound increased, and when he moved away, it became weaker. Before that, he had already heard it 3 times - during previous trips, and each time near power lines, but for the first time he managed to record it.
Some experts believe that sound was the result of "electrophonic transduction," which is created by converting electromagnetic energy into mechanical motion. This could lead to the fact that the current flowed along the nearby power lines with sufficient force to make them tremble and make noise. According to astrophysicist Dr. Tony Phillips, during the Christmas aurora, there was an increased activity in the magnetic field around Abisko. Strong low-frequency currents can literally make objects vibrate, causing acoustic vibrations in the air. Netizens offered their own versions of explaining the nature of sound, and someone compared it to the process of creating the sound of Star Wars blasters by sound engineer Ben Bart.
For more than a century, there have been reports of aurora borealis watchers hearing faint hiss or crackling sounds. Most of these reports have been attributed to rumors, but Finnish researcher Unto Laine is confident that the glow may well lead to the appearance of clapping sounds. He noted that there are thousands of reports from observers around the world, but there are also recordings on which you can hear a variety of sounds - crackling, popping, clicking, hum and low-frequency noise.
According to the scientist, the sounds appear during intense auroras, when the weather is cold and clear. They can appear when a layer of relatively warm air is "covered" by a layer of cold air near the earth's surface. Electric charges then accumulate in the warm layer of the air, while the opposite charges are in the cold layer, and when intense auroras begin, this can cause geomagnetic disturbances that discharge electricity and lead to the appearance of sounds.