The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during the summer of 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown.

Analysis

The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (South American southwest coast), was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines. According to the NOAA description, it "rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km." An oft repeated claim is that it matches the audio profile of a living creature though this view is primarily held by cryptozoologists and is not popular among mainstream scientists. If the sound did come from an animal, it would reportedly have to be several times the size of the largest known animal on Earth, the Blue Whale. There are at least five other recorded cases of unknown sounds like the Bloop being picked up by NOAA: Julia, Train, Slowdown, Whistle, and Upsweep, and thus the Bloop is not a unique phenomenon.

In Popular Culture

• Because the Bloop noise originated near the location of the sunken city of R'lyeh from H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu", the Bloop has been linked to Cthulhu by Lovecraft fans.
• In the alternate reality game promoting the movie, the Bloop was also linked to the monster from Cloverfield.
• The Bloop was seen in The Loch by Steve Alten as the call of an undiscovered species of giant eel, as well as in Frank Schätzing's novel The Swarm as the speech of the intelligent species, the Yrr.

See also

• Slow Down, a similar unidentified underwater sound.
• The Hum, a phenomenon of unexplained sound.

References

1. Howstuffworks: "The Cthulhu Mythos"
2. Cloverfield Movie Blog
3. The Loch by Steve Alten
4. The Swarm

External links

• Skeptoid #177 on the Bloop

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