The annual Leonid meteor shower is probably raining down the most meteors before dawn today and Tuesday, but unfortunately, the waning gibbous moon is spoiling this year's Leonid show.
During the 2001 Leonid meteor storm, a number of people reported hearing meteors. Some exceptionally bright meteors were said to have been accompanied by a low hissing sound - like bacon sizzling.
These meteors are called ‘electrophonic' meteors by astronomers , they're seen and heard simultaneously. Many astronomers tend to dismiss these reports as fiction. Typically, a meteor burns up about 100 kilometers - or 60 miles - above the Earth's surface. Because sound travels so much more slowly than light does, the rumblings of a particularly large meteor shouldn't be heard for several minutes after the meteor's sighting.
But according to Dr. Colin Kaey at the University of Newcastle in Australia, electrophonic meteors are real. Kaey explains that meteors give off very low frequency radio which travel at the speed of light. Even though you can't directly hear radio waves, these waves can cause physical objects on the Earth's surface to vibrate. The radio waves cause a sound - which our ears might interpret as the sizzle of a meteor shooting by. |
