Deep dive: Let's never forget the Bloop

This week, Londoners jumped out of their beds to what many described as “three bomb-like booms accompanied by blinding white light”. The booms affected bedrooms across northeast London on Sunday night, on June 5.

It’s been a few days now and residents have started asking questions. The government has been asked to provide explanations: Why were helicopters deployed in the dead of night? What was that light? What was that sound?

So far, no answers. But the longest the world spent without an explanation for a sound was when underwater sensors placed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration detected what’s known as the Bloop — in 1997. Point of origin was some 2,000 km off Chile but the audible was heard over 4,000 km away — making it one of the most powerful sounds ever detected (yes, there are five others). The Bloop instantly made headlines at the time. The origin was just about a 1,000 km from the sunken city of R’yleh, which H.P Lovecraft said was the prison of mythical beast Cthulhu. Fans of horror fiction went nuts! Then came the claim that the Bloop was ‘organic’ in nature which meant only one thing — some animal had made the sound that had crossed the Pacific.

The blue whale is the biggest animal on the planet. They reach lengths of 100 feet and their calls cross 188 decibels. A jet engine is just 140 decibels. Whatever generated the Bloop was much, much larger. For those seeking an illustrated explanation, we’ve attached an early graph (above).

For 15 years, water boffins spent countless days and nights studying the Bloop and its company of unexplained sounds and finally, in 2012, the Bloop was dismissed as just the “sound made by cracking Arctic ice” — no mythical creature, no lost city.

Experts from the NOAA added that most recorded underwater sounds have a credible explanation — from volcanoes on the sea bed, underwater fissures and yes, cracking ice.

The Bloop has been catalogued alongside other weird sounds. They’re Upsweep (heard in 1991 and still on), Slow Down (May 19, 1997), Train (recorded on March 5, 1997) and Julia (first heard on March 1, 1999). Scientists are still silent on what caused Julia — which lasted 15 seconds and was heard by every sensor in equatorial Pacific. Ice calving again? Perhaps.

But here’s the thing. As of 2016, we know just about 90 per cent of the world’s oceans. If there is indeed a leviathan resting in the darkest depths it could be possible that we haven’t found it yet. Because the giant Mangapinna squid was caught on tape only in 1988 after a written record dating back from 1907. It’s a 26-foot long animal with tentacles 20 times its size. How did we miss that?