Beneath the hum of ship traffic and the chatter of marine life , another sound is emanating from the Caribbean Sea . It ’s far too downcast pitched for humans to hear , but its signature tune can be detected from space . scientist have never view — or heard — anything like it .
Located southeastward of the Gulf of Mexico , the Caribbean Sea features a prominent basin bounded by South America , Central America , and the Caribbean Islands . It ’s a vital cog in the global circulation belt , forming currents that feed now into the Gulf Stream . But when researchers at the University of Liverpool decided to consider the moral force of the Caribbean Sea , they noticed something peculiar .
“ We were count at ocean pressure through model for quite different reasons , and this region just did n’t work , ” Chris Hughes of the University of Liverpool told Gizmodo , explain how his theoretical account kept yielding large , inexplicable pressure oscillations across the basin . “ It felt like a sore thumb . ”
After spotting the weird oscillations in models , Hughes and his colleagues decided to see if they could keep the phenomenon in the ocean . Sure enough , they did . Combining insistence version collected from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea between 1958 and 2013 with tide gauge record and datum from NASA ’s Grace satellite , the investigator key out that the basin of Caribbean Sea acts like a giant whistling .
“ You have a stream that flows east to west through the Caribbean Sea , ” Hughes explained . “ It ’s very narrow and quite strong . Just like a narrow jet of air , it becomes unstable and creates eddies . ”
When those wave scratch the westerly boundary of the drainage area , they fail out and re-emerge at the eastern edge . This phenomenon , flashily distinguish the “ Rossy wormhole , ” was first discover several years back . scientist now know that moving ridge of certain shapes and sizes will resonate when they gain that western wall , just as certain frequence resonate when you blow into a tin whistle . In both case , the resonant frequency produces a speech sound .
But because the basin of the Caribbean Sea is so vast compared with an literal whistling , the resonant relative frequency is extremely low . It take 120 day for undulation to propagate east to west in the washstand , yield an A - flat tone that ’s roughly 30 octaves below the bottom of a pianoforte . A huckster - up version of that to a fault eerie sound can be heard in the clip above .
Dubbed the “ Rossby Whistle ” in a newspaper take for publication inGeophysical Research Letters , the phenomenon can be detected from space owing to fluctuations in Earth ’s gravity field as pressure changes diffuse across the total basin . The researchers project to keep monitoring the Rossby Whistle , with the hope that the signaling might be used to predict multiplication of the year when coastal implosion therapy is more likely .
So , if you ever regain yourself out alone at night on the Caribbean , and the universe sense completely still , just remember : it is n’t . The ocean is always speaking to you .
PhysicsScience
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