Scientists love mysteries, and the world's oceans - massive, deep, dark, and inherently mysterious places - are literally overflowing with them. The latest mystery was discovered in the Caribbean. Here you could hear a very low pitch sound that goes far beyond the hearing range of people. In fact, a truly huge and mobile object must have been in the Caribbean Sea that could generate waves in the Earth's gravitational field.
An unexpected find
A team of researchers from the University of Liverpool conducted research in the Atlantic Ocean based on the Caribbean Sea, which covers an area of 2,754,000 square kilometers. Their initial goal was to study the dynamic sea currents within the basin, which belong to the Gulf Stream, and are crucial for the delivery of heat, including to Western Europe.
The study authors say their instruments recorded what they describe as whistles. Something very significant made it possible to know about its presence, although it was initially unclear whether this noise was coming from something alive, or from another natural process.
Promotional video:
Conducted research
The researchers checked sea level and basin bottom pressures, estimated the frequency and magnitude of regional high and low tides, used satellites to measure small changes in local gravity, and tested several models of current ocean activity based on data from 1958 to 2013. All this data suggested that the noise, unfortunately, did not come from the giant sea monster.
Who was the culprit?
It is noteworthy that the waves were the culprits of this whistle. Sometimes large waves move westward and inevitably interact with the seabed. This deflects them slightly, forcing them to disappear at the western border and reappear in the eastern part of the basin.
Over time, these slow waves interact in a constructive manner. The end result of this is that water is distributed en masse in and out of the pool every 120 days. This waveform, like the sonic one, produces a clear sound, albeit many octaves below the range of human hearing. The tremendous amount of water that moves back and forth changes the local gravitational field, which can be found outside the Earth's upper atmosphere.
Ocean activity in the Caribbean is like a whistle. When you blow into it, the air stream becomes unstable and excites a resonant sound wave that fits into the cavity of the whistle. As the whistle works, there is a sound that you can hear.
Since the waves traveling westward are called Rossby waves, scientists decided to call this noise the same.
More recently, scientists have heard another low-frequency hum emanating from the ocean's shadowy region known as the twilight zone. However, in this case, it came from a living organism. As it turned out, the fish, moving towards the light to feed themselves, produced this sound, which the researchers called the "dinner ring."
