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Mysterious Rumbles are not earthquakes

All Acting Regiment

19:10 / 24.04.06

From the link:

Life can serve up a good mystery every once in a while. Weird things happen that defy explanation, that make us wonder how much we really know about the world.

Something of the sort happened in San Diego County shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 4, and so far no one has come forward with an explanation.

“My garage door is double steel and it weighs about 500 lbs. It was rattling back and forth like a leaf in the wind for about 3 or 4 seconds.”

– e-mail from University City resident on April 4 disturbance

Whatever it was, it caused a woman's bed to shake in Lakeside. It created waves in a backyard pool in Carmel Valley. It set off car alarms in Kearny Mesa and rattled windows from Mission Beach to Poway to Vista. At various spots throughout the county, people reported a rumbling sound or a booming noise.

So, what do we think?

MacDara

20:00 / 24.04.06

I read a post on Boing Boing about this earlier. The sonic-boom-slash-secret-test-flight theory seems the most reasonable explanation. Though it does strike me that it's not such a secret if there's a massive fucking sonic boom caused by the thing.

spectre

22:47 / 24.04.06

saw this online somewhere, also, with the addition that similar phenomena were observed in several places. Of course, I can't remember exactly where, now, but they were across the continental US. That, and the fact that no real large-scale damage was obserbeved, leads me to agree with macdara.

yami

04:12 / 25.04.06

I think this is a great chance for the San Diego infrasound group to promote themselves - they're certainly the people I'd call next, if I were a reporter. Their array at Piñon Flat can hear the surf in Malibu (or at least the seasonal variation thereof), so I wouldn't be surprised if this event was recorded there as well.

If the "quakelike tremors" were really happening in the ground, they should show up on seismograms - the seismic net in Southern California is far more sensitive than Ms. Judi Mitchell of Lakeside. So my money's also on an atmospheric source, but I'd be more inclined to believe in a weird thunder clap something something (I've totally been in thunderstorms that rattled the windows), or even an undetected bolide, than a sooper-seekrit sonic boom.

Mistoffelees

14:16 / 25.04.06

We had something similar in Germany a couple of weeks ago. There were earthquakes in areas, where there are not supposed to be earthquakes ever. The explanation is, that the tremors are a result of the gas being exploited. They get it out of pores in the stones deep underground and the changed earth structure caused the effect.

Mirror

22:55 / 05.05.06

Earthquakes like you describe are actually a pretty common side-effect of natural gas and oil exploration. When you drill an oil well, it's necessary to fracture the surrounding rock to give the gas conduits through which it can flow to the well. They use water and massive hydraulic systems to do this, and in the process pump a fair bit of water into the ground.

If the water gets into a fault zone, it can lubricate the fault and allow slippage. Back in the 1960s there were a number of smallish earthquakes around where I live - ordinarily a fairly stable area in the middle of the craton - for this same reason.

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