The Unsolved Mystery of the Bloop

A noise was heard by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1997 and it bewildered researchers for years. The sound was heard in a very remote portion of the Pacific ocean near the southern tip of South America and was detected by several hydrophone arrays.

Hydrophones are essentially underwater microphones and the NOAA had several series of them set up autonomously to capture mysterious sounds just like this. The first autonomous array was used in the cold war to detect Soviet submarines.

Usually, researchers would use the sounds recorded to learn about seismic activity and marine animals, but the mysterious bloop was something different.

The NOAA described the noise as rising rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard at a range of over 5,000 kilometers or 3,000 miles from its origin. If it originated from the central united states, you would be able to hear it at the northern tip of Canada or all the way down in Columbia. This was a massive noise.

NOAA's chief researcher, Dr. Christopher Fox, didn't believe that the origin of the Bloop was man-made, nor that it was a result of a volcano or an earthquake. Fox believed that the audio profile of the bloop resembles a large living creature. A creature that made a deafening bloop sound.

Even with this assumption and the gathered data, Fox stated that the source would remain a mystery primarily because the amplitude of the noise far exceeded the capabilities of any known animal on Earth.

Researchers began speculating that the noise may have been a result of ice calving in Antartica, but many still held onto the idea that it was made by some creature, including the NOAA's lead researcher, Dr. Fox. This lingering hypothesis led to years of speculation by the public and even led to the animal theory coming to a scientific consensus in 2002.

Still, researchers continued to question the noise.

As scientists continued analyzing the spectrogram of the Bloop, they started to match up key points with similar spectrograms of icequakes recorded elsewhere in the world. The idea that the bloop came from animal origin slowly crumbled as researchers matched up much of its spectrographic variability with observances in other ice calving events. Oceanographer Dr. Yunbo Xie noted that the waveforms of the sound's origin could have easily been influenced by "angular frequency dependent radiation patterns associated with antisymmetric mode motion of ice cover." In plain English, the bloop sound could be a result of the original noise being distorted as it propagated through ice cover.

By 2012, the idea of an animal that would've created such a sound faded and the scientific community decided that the Bloop was made by ice calving near Antartica. This ultimate conclusion wasn't accepted by many around the world and continues to be the center of many pop culture conspiracy theories such as the existence of mermaids or top secret nuclear explosions.

What do you think made the bloop?

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Music:

[dn]

I love how people heard this sound, saw an art of a sea monster that an artist made and thought "Yeah, that's what it looks like"

[siaosoongwong]

The bloop sound is actually speeded up by 16 times and it’s actually really eerie if you hear it in normal speed

[andrew]

Real or not, the thought of the existence of a creature that can create such a large noise is absolutely terrifying, especially for people who have thalassophobia.

[Coolest_Username_Ever]

the fact that a single noise gained an entire fanbase is just crazy

[brianscalabrine]

Imagine being crushed by an animal called bloop

[Radman-wwdv]

The weird thing is it was heard in the most empty spot in the ocean called “Point Nemo” that is 1000+ miles away from any civilization with it’s closest civilization is the international space station “Point Nemo” has no life in it except microorganisms and is a graveyard for satellites and spaceships. Crazy right?

[breadhead]

“Alright, captain. We’ve got some sort of marine-godzilla creature terrorizing our oceans. What should we name this monstrosity?”
*”T H E B L O O P”*

[apieceoftoast]

As horrifying and awesome it would be, a creature would doubtfully make a large sound once and never again. So very doubtful it was a cthulu or leviathan.
It kinds reminds me of Krakatoa's explosion, with the sound being so massive that it went over the world several times.
A massive underwater eruption perhaps?

[shadyomo]

Tbh, if the world only heard the bloop once in 23 years, it makes sense that its not an organic noise

[monicasalyer]

" Robert Dziak, from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, told Insider via email that by 2011 – after gathering all the data – the agency was able to definitively explain what the bloop was.

The official ruling: It was the sound of an icequake, created by the cracking of an ice shelf as it broke up from an Antarctic glacier.

The "sounds of ice breaking up and cracking is a dominant source of natural sound in the southern ocean, " Dziak told Wired in 2012. "

[brettgarandza]

The noise couldn't have come from any creature for two reasons. It was only recorded once in history and in order to produce a sound that is loud enough to span 3, 000 miles, it would have to be thousands of times more massive than any whale.

[futuregodkingoftheuniverse]

I love your channel, you go straight to the point without stalling, no clickbait and no sponsors

[cyxnide]

the bloop will be the final boss for 2020 in december

edit: the bloop will be real within 24 hours.

[HAPPY-piuc]

Never thought I could be genuinely terrified by a bloop

[Zumbiee]

that bloop sound was actually adorable

[NiCK-phcn]

Its amazing how sound travels so far like bumping stones to an another stone and creating a sound that can be heard far away.

[PhoenixT]

The fact is, we know more about the far reaches of the universe—more about things we literally cannot even see because the light has not reached it yet—than we do about the depths of our homeworld's oceans.

[jamesmchugo]

I grew up living between two lakes. On really cold nights moving and shrinking ice would make all kinds of noise. Some sounded like the sounds whales make, some noises sounded like background sounds in a Sci-Fi movie. I use to hear something like this bloop noise all the time as the ice moaned and grown.

[lorrainemapper]

As cool as it is to think about the possible existence of a gargantuan sea creature that lives in the depth of the ocean mysteriously, there are millions of reasons it would be impossible

[FuriousAntz]

The fact they called a supposed monsterous creature “bloop” is just hilarious