NASA Records ‘Alien Sounds’ From Edge Of Space, It’s ‘Like The X-Files’

NASA recently recorded mysterious noises, what the Telegraph called “alien sounds,” using infrasound microphones on a student balloon project. Scientists don’t know what is making the noises, or who.

According to Live Science, NASA recorded the strange hissing and buzzing noises from an altitude of 22 miles (36 kilometers). The helium balloon flew over Arizona and New Mexico last year. It was equipped with a microphone designed to pick up on infrasound, noises below 20 Hertz that cannot be heard by human ears.

The experiment was part of an annual project put on by NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium to get students interested in space research, but the scientists may have gotten more than they bargained for.

What the balloon picked up still has researchers scratching their heads.

Daniel Bowman, a graduate student who set up the equipment, explained it “It sounds kind of like ‘The X-Files.'”

“I was surprised by the sheer complexity of the signal. I expected to see a few little stripes.”

Although no one is quite sure where the noises are coming from, they can be pretty confident they’re not coming from deep space, since there’s no air to carry sound waves.

The Telegraph explained, infrasound can still travel for long distances. Natural phenomenon like storms or earthquakes often produce noises at that frequency, but maybe not with the same complexity.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, NASA did get some other strange “sounds” from a meteor called 67P. The researchers received data showing variations in the meteor’s magnetic field, which were then translated into sound. In the end, it turned out to be similar to the noises made by aliens in the Schwarzenegger film Predator.

As for the infrasound from the upper atmosphere, some of the current theories about the origin include wind farms, crashing ocean waves, gravity waves, air turbulence, and vibrations caused by the balloon’s cable. NASA will send up another balloon some time this year that will hopefully collect more information about the mysterious noises.

In the meantime, Bowman hopes the experiment will reignite interest in recording infrasounds.

“There haven’t been acoustic recordings in the stratosphere for 50 years. Surely, if we place instruments up there, we will find things we haven’t seen before.”

Infrasound interest peaked in the 1960s when researchers thought they could use it to detect nuclear explosions, but died out as scientists switched to ground-based detectors.

The full NASA recording of the alien sounds can be heard below.

[Image Credit: Getty Images]