I'm glad this subject has cropped up, even if off topic of LF. Two years
ago, when the Leonids shower was going to be particularly good in the UK,
with clear skies, I went out meteor spotting in the early hours of the
morning to a local hilltop site in the dark countryside. There was one
particularly large meteor that flashed right across the sky - a very
spectacular streak of green/blue light with a visible aftertrace that lasted
nearly 15 minutes. I was very convinced I heard it "swoosh" by at the time,
but being a level headed skeptical sort of person, knew it wasn't possible
to have heard the actual meteor entry itself. I put the apparant sound down
to phychological effects (quiet, lonely environment, cold, late at night etc
etc.)
Now it appears that others have heard similar sounds, and more to the point
come up with a reasonable explanation, I presumably did actually hear
something then.
Now the question remains, what is the mechanism that turns low frequency RF
fields into audible sounds ? And is the energy contained in a larger meteor
flash enough to produce sound at 100km distance considering that the EM
field to sound conversion efficiency cannot be particularly high ?
Andy G4JNT
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sound by the mechanism hypothesized to explain the phenomenon, these
electrophonic meteors should have produced very strong noise bursts on
whistler receivers. Still no reports of such reception from this side of
the
pond, alas! Anyone on the other side encounter anything like it?
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