NEW YORK POST:
Seismic sensors first picked up the event originating near an island between Madagascar and Africa. Then, alarm bells started ringing as far away as Chile, New Zealand and Canada.
Hawaii, almost exactly on the other side of the planet, also picked up the “event.”
Nobody knows what it was.
Meteorite? Submarine volcano? Nuclear test?
“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it,” National Geographic reports Columbia University seismologist Göran Ekström as saying. “It doesn’t mean that, in the end, the cause of them is that exotic.”
At the center of the mystery is the tiny island of Mayotte, positioned about halfway between Africa and Madagascar. It’s been subjected to a swarm of earthquakes since May. Most have been minor, but the biggest — on May 8 — was the largest in the islands recorded history, topping at a magnitude of 5.8.
But the earthquake swarm had been in decline before the mysterious ringing was detected earlier this month.
Ekström, who specializes in unusual earthquakes, points out much about the November 11 event was weird. It was as though the planet rang like a bell, maintaining a low-frequency monotone as it spread.
Earthquakes, by their very nature, usually register as short-sharp “cracks.”
As tensions in the Earth’s crust suddenly release, pulses of clearly identifiable seismic waves radiate outwards from where the slippage occurs.
The first signal is called a Primary wave: high-frequency compression waves that radiate in bunches.
Then comes a Secondary wave: these high-frequency waves tend to “wiggle” more.
Only then comes the surface waves: these slow, deep rumbles tend to linger, and can circle the Earth several times.
