Eerie Underwater Recording of Deadly Indonesian Earthquake

Yahoo News & LiveScience.com ^ | July 22, 2005 | Robert Roy Britt

[Darksheare]

My cats didn't like it, but the bird merely shrugged and continued on doing bird things.
*snort*

No, the bird only freaks out if I put my hand in her cage.


I got an ad for sildenafil when I played it backwards.
;-)


Just ran it through winamp and used the built in visualizations to look at the sound itself.
(Voiceprint with spectrum analyzer. Had some interesting characteristics. It was all low frequency, all at the low end of the audio spectrum.)

[Slings and Arrows]

I tried it on my younger cat. He looked mildly interested, walked around the speaker, and came to me for head skritchies.

Note to self: Do not depend on younger cat re earthquake warnings.

[martin_fierro]

He looked mildly interested, walked around the speaker, and came to me for head skritchies.

LOL

He must not have gotten the memo.

[Lady Jag]

It shook the floor but my cats slept through it.

They take after me.

[SoDak]

Played it for Elvis, he flopped onto his back for a belly scratch. Good thing we don't live in an earthquake zone, cuz he'd be no help.

[Calvin Locke]

I slowed it down to 18m40s. Reminded me of a Saturn V off in the distance.

[Gondring]

Do you have it posted or could you e-mail it? I'd like to hear that without breaking out the old audio software I had.

[bd476]

Cool! That's an interesting comparison.

[bd476]

You're welcome. It's an awesome sound.

[bd476]

Since I do most of my reading at night, I have to ask: will it produce nightmares? ;-)

[steve86]

Had a fish jump out of the aquarium (gourami; since returned safely).

[bd476]

Thanks for sharing this experiment, Itzlzha. The sound woke my cats up.

They generally start their weird behavior about an hour before a quake. But they also act weird at other times. I don't always check to see if there was a quake so they might be reacting to the smaller ones, too.

[Darksheare]

Again, thanks!
I ran it through Winamps little toys, and the sound is quite odd, and eerily uniform forwards and backwards.
But the wave form of the sound is irregular despite the regular uniformity.
Neat.

[bd476]

OldFriend wrote: "There were divers off the coast and noticed only that they seemed to be 'bounced' up and down as the wave went by. Is it possible to hear sounds underwater while diving?"

Not sure about diving with an oxygen tank, but from trying that in the deep end of a swimming pool, yes, it is possible to hear muffled sounds.

[bd476]

True, it's a mighty force.

[Randy Larsen]

bmp

[bd476]

Darksheare wrote: "...I ran it through Winamps little toys, and the sound is quite odd, and eerily uniform forwards and backwards. But the wave form of the sound is irregular despite the regular uniformity..."

Thanks for confirming that, Darksheare. My computer is not working very well. Not sure if it's possible, but it would be cool to save the file.

[bd476]

Were you in or near Landers during that quake? The freight train noise also precedes a tornado.

The shaking from a large quake usually makes me forget quickly the loud noise which preceded it. It is a terrible sound.