Page Suggestions: Bible Prophecy, Last days people, Persecution in End Times, Population Control

Mysterious Booms

Page 10

Similar inexplicable events have been reported in Pensacola; Cape Fear, N.C.; Dover, Del., and more than 20 other U.S. cities and towns in recent years. In all those places, the source of the startling booms has never been determined. And like those places, officials could only say what they thought the Manatee mystery wasn't. U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy officials dismissed a sonic boom from one of their jets as the source of the noise, saying none of their aircraft were in the skies above Manatee at the time. But that doesn't fly with some area residents, who said they heard two concussions - a loud clap, followed by a fainter one almost immediately afterward - that make it consistent with a sonic boom.

"While I'm not surprised that the Air Force didn't admit to it, I'm quite sure that it was a military plane breaking the sound barrier," said Eric Seibert of Bradenton. "As a kid I used to hear B-58 bombers breaking the sound barrier as they flew out of an Indiana Air Force base. This was the same sound and effect." It might have been a military plane hundreds of miles away, said Dick Cutshall, who manages the airspace above Avon Park bombing range. Sonic booms can travel more than 100 miles under certain atmospheric conditions, bouncing off clouds and zones where cold and warm air meet, he said. No residents reported seeing military planes in the sky at the time of the boom, prompting some to speculate that it was a top-secret military flight of some sort. The Air Force has been rumored to be working on a hypersonic jet, which conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts believe is behind several mysterious booms heard across the country. Air Force officials declined to comment.

Others think Monday's burst was an explosion of some sort, but emergency officials said they would have known about it if there was one. Officials also discounted a reported transformer explosion at Albert Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg as a possible cause, saying it actually was a small electrical panel box that blew at 11:24 a.m. - more than 20 minutes before the booms heard in Manatee. "I would find it hard to believe that caused it because it was such a minor incident," said Lt. Rick Feinberg of St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue, which responded to the incident. "I really doubt it was this." Although Manatee residents also reported feeling the ground tremble along with the boom, it wasn't an earthquake, geologists said. Their sensitive seismic sensors, which have recorded sonic booms caused by space shuttles returning to Earth, detected nothing out of the ordinary anywhere in Florida on Monday. Nor was it weather-related, the National Weather Service in Ruskin said its equipment recorded no unusual weather conditions that could have caused the burst. That has left some Manatee residents to wonder if something more other-worldly is responsible.

"If there is no explanation concerning meteorological events, planes or other possible solutions, could it be extraterrestrial?" asked resident Lori Fullerton-Melton. "Just a thought." Bland Pugh of Gulf Breeze, the Florida state director for the Mutual UFO Network , said he has not received any recent reports of UFO sightings in this part of the state. Residents elsewhere also are grappling with similar mysteries. The unexplained booms, also called sky booms and sky quakes, have occurred from Rhode Island to California in recent years. Residents in the Pensacola area have heard mysterious booms four times since 1989, most recently on Jan. 13 of this year, the Pensacola News Journal reported. Chattanooga, Tenn., citizens heard sky quakes on two successive Sundays earlier this month. Similar cases have been reported in Denver, Narragansett Bay, R.I., Los Angeles and several other cities since 1997, according to the Web site About.com.

August 22, 2002 Sonic Booms Adds To India 'Scarlet Rains' Mystery

Scarlet rains and vanishing wells are the setting for the monsoons this time in Kerala. Yet, the phenomena have sent scientists scurrying around for answers. Ironically, instead of providing an explanation for the curious happenings, scientists have thrown up more questions. After testing the red rainwater in Changanassery and other places, scientists at the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and Botanic Garden Research (TBGRI) labs have sought answers to four questions: Is the explosive sound heard preceding the scarlet showers inter-linked? What produced the huge quantity of spores (believed to have made rainwater reddish)? How were the spores injected into the clouds? If the source is local, how was the mass transported without getting distributed over a large area?

In fact, the CESS scientists have contradicted their earlier explanation that the scarlet rains were caused by a meteor which travelled from "east to west on the morning of July 25 and exploded over Changanassery". They now say that the coloured rains were caused by fungus. "The biological study conducted partly by the CESS and partly by TBGRI detected red coloured cell structures, which tentatively have been identified as the spores of some species of fungus," said CESS Director M Baba. The latest inference is that the coloured rains are a mystery although they have been reports of similar occurrences in other parts of the world. The scientists have also rejected reports that the rain was accompanied by thunder and lightning. "Lightning does not occur during the southwest monsoons. Lightning is produced from large cumulonimbus clouds which develop only when plenty of humid air is available on the earth's surface. The conditions at the time were not suitable for this. Secondly, people over a radius of around only 1.5 km heard the sound. This is highly improbable," said Baba. "Therefore, the only possibility is that the sound was actually a sonic boom produced by some object moving at supersonic speed at a relatively low altitude. Since no aircraft is expected to fly at supersonic speeds close to the ground, it is opined that a meteor had approached the area and possibly exploded to produce red colour rain," the CESS director said, expanding on the earlier "meteor theory". Scientists are also divided on why scores of wells have reportedly been damaged or disappeared and new ones suddenly sprung up. According to one school of thought, these are a warning for impending earthquakes. Others, however, believe that they are a result of underground water pressure and heavy rains. Similarly, the sudden shrivelling up of leaves in some areas is puzzling the scientists. Meanwhile, Kerala chief minister A K Antony has asked people to await the results of the scientific probes.

June 10, 2002 Canberra, Australia

In the past six months, close to 100 earthquakes occurred in areas around a little village just north of the Australian Capital Territory. They didn't cause any damages but bored residents. The Canberra Times quoted Monday a resident living near the village of Sutton as saying that "It doesn't worry me. it's just a novelty. That's not to say it couldn't end up in some gigantic big bang somewhere down the track." The earthquakes were more often heard as a boom rather than felt as a shake, another resident said. The Australian continent seems to be sitting on a solid plate and no big earthquakes have been registered so far. In 1989, a quake hit Newcastle, a coastal city in New South Wales, killing one person. That was registered 5.6 on the Richter scale. Experts just can't explain the numerous small quakes.

January 12, 1999 Light, boom a mystery By Jim Hughes, Denver Post Staff Writer (Colorado)

A mysterious object lit up the night sky up and down the Front Range early Sunday - then startled witnesses with a deafening explosion. There was no official explanation about the object Sunday. Military spokesmen denied the object was a military aircraft. Local scientists speculated it could have been a meteor or an illegal firework. Douglas County resident Gunter Harz witnessed the phenomenon around 12:15 a.m. "All of a sudden, there was an impact that shook our house and then a double explosion immediately after the impact," Harz said.