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Loud boom from IAF test flight startles Bengaluru
Residents of several parts of Bengaluru heard a loud sound around 1.25pm, leading to some residents rushing out of their homes to find the source.
Residents of several parts of Bengaluru heard a loud sound around 1.25pm, leading to some residents rushing out of their homes to find the source. Such was the intensity of the sound that some doors, windows and even buildings rattled as if an earthquake had shaken the earth.
Nischal Prasad, a resident of Old Airport Road, said, “I sat down for lunch when I heard the deafening sound. I immediately rushed out to my balcony, thinking it was an earthquake. While the sound was really loud, it lasted less than a minute,” he added.
However, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNMDC) denied that any earthquake had taken place. GS Srinivas Reddy, the director of KSNMDC, clarified, “The activity reported in Bengaluru is not because of an earthquake. The seismometers did not capture any ground vibration as generally happens during a mild tremor. The activity is purely a loud unknown noise.”
Residents reported the sound from Whitefield, Koramangala, HSR Layout, Attibele, Chandapura and several other localities of Bengaluru. The officials of KSNMDC said that seismometers would have captured some readings even if it was a mild earthquake.
Dispelling speculation of the sound being a sonic boom caused by a Sukhoi aircraft breaking the sound barrier, Air Force officials and HAL authorities clarified that it was not either of their planes that caused the sound. A sonic boom is caused when an object travels farther than the speed of sound, creating shock waves in the atmosphere.
The most likely cause, according to KSNMDC officials, is that it is some kind of geological phenomenon and its cause, in this case, is being studied both by mining and geology experts.
