Inexplicable Seismic Waves Recorded Globally Baffle Geologists
On Nov. 11, a strange series of seismic waves rocked an area in the Mozambique channel near the French island territory of Mayotte. The waves were picked up by seismic instruments as far as 11,000 miles away in such places as Canada and Chile, reverberating for more than 20 minutes – except, no one actually felt them.
Geologists are at a loss to explain these bizarre wave clusters, which may have gone entirely undetected, had it not been for an amateur earthquake aficionado on Twitter who noticed the anomalies on the U.S. Geological Survey’s real-time seismogram displays.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it,” Göran Ekström, a seismologist who specializes in unusual earthquakes at Columbia University, told National Geographic.
Twitter user @matarikipax, picked up on the epicenter of the tremors off the coast of Madagascar, before noticing subsequent recordings from seismograms in Kenya, Spain, and New Zealand.
According to geologists, one of the most confounding factors observed in these waves was their monotonous, low-frequency ring – possibly the reason they went undetected by anyone in the direct vicinity.
Typically, following an earthquake, there are several types of follow-up reverberations that resonate in varied oscillations. These, on the other hand, are what scientists call monochromatic – a singular zigzag on a 17-second loop.
The epicenter of the waves has seen significant seismic activity in the past, it is after all, a volcanic island in a volcanic archipelago. And typically, one would expect waves of this nature to follow a large earthquake, but scientists say there was no major seismic activity in the area leading to this particular event.
Geologists are still struggling to figure out the cause, with the most agreed upon possibility being that it may have been a magma reservoir below the Earth’s crust shaken by small earthquakes. But the precise intervals of the waves make it difficult to say anything for certain. And as Gizmodo pointed out, this type of regularity is typically caused by artificial means.
Unsurprisingly, this led to wild speculation in the conspiracy world, as well as some far-out responses from scientists themselves, including speculation about mythological monsters such as Cthulhu, or a previously undiscovered prehistoric creature.
“Submarine volcanism sounds most likely. However, isn’t that where the coelacanth was first found to be alive? I’m rooting for the event to be a giant prehistoric sea monster…” said one Twitter user.
But while most of the sea monster theories have been tongue-in-cheek, another interesting conspiracy has resurfaced related to a WikiLeaks article released in 2013, which alleged that a mysterious vortex opened over the Gulf of Aden just off the horn of Africa, creating catastrophic weather in the early aughts.
Now, the Gulf of Aden is in the same area of the world, though it’s not necessarily close to the Mozambique channel. If one were to fly from Djibouti to Madagascar it would be about a seven-hour flight. But we digress.
According to the report, allegedly prepared for Vladimir Putin by Russian Northern Fleet Admiral Nikolay Maksimov, the anomalous disturbance was reported in the Gulf of Aden in late 2000. This was supposedly when the U.S. established a base in the area in response to the report, before it issued a warning to other major powers. The response was reportedly covered up in the media with stories that naval forces were sent to the region to deal with Somali pirates terrorizing important shipping lanes.
The report goes on to claim the mysterious vortex posed an extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional threat to the planet and that opposing superpowers, including Russia and the United States, were set to join forces to defend humanity. Others have speculated that the portal could be the result of machinations at CERN or another particle collider, as a similar vortex was allegedly reported above Norway in 2009.
TL;DR: some conspiracy theorists believe the latest unexplained seismic waves may have something to do with the alleged Gulf of Aden Vortex.
Surely, this sounds absurd and the sources provided in the document to corroborate its claims are equally as sketchy. Many have also pointed out that it could be a piece written by a highly dubious and often fraudulent conspiracy theory site, before being widely disseminated under other aliases. But there are also some questions as to why it was published by WikiLeaks, which wouldn’t normally release something so fantastic.
As it turns out, the documents come from a private American intelligence firm called Stratfor, which provides global intel for large corporations, aerospace contractors, and even certain branches of the U.S. government.
This particular article, once possessed by Stratfor before being published by WikiLeaks, closes with a line that states, “to what is contained in the United States secret ‘Gulf of Aden Vortex’ file WikiLeaks has in its possession and is threatening to release, it is not in our knowing.”
Could WikiLeaks have more on the Gulf of Aden Vortex? Moreover, could there be any relation between the latest seismic waves and the Gulf of Aden Vortex? Or equally as conspiratorial, is the private intelligence firm Stratfor intentionally spreading disinformation? Could this all be explained by natural seismic phenomena? Quite possibly. We’ll need to do more serious digging.
Could Julian Assange and WikiLeaks hold the key to the Gulf of Aden Vortex files? Learn more about his tribulations in the documentary, Digital Dissidents:
About the Author
Final Words Project: The Dying's Final Words Hint at Afterlife
What can the final words, spoken by the dying, tell us about life’s greatest mystery? According to the findings of a long-term research project, a great deal.
Lisa Smartt is a linguist who, in 2012, became interested in the words spoken by the dying when she noticed peculiar changes in her father’s speech as he was passing.
“So one of the things I noticed when I was sitting bedside with my father, well the first thing was he started talking about angels in the room, and my dad was a hardcore scientist. So when I heard my tough, gruff, cigar-smoking Papa talking about angels in the room, I took notice. Being a linguist, I pulled out my pencil and pad and started taking notes. Three days before he died, he shared that the angels say ‘only, three days left,’ and indeed three days later he was gone. And what began to emerge in my notes intrigued me, and led me to the language of the dying, but there wasn’t much written. So I attended a workshop with Dr. Raymond Moody and together we established the Final Words Project.”
Since the project began, Lisa has collected 200 accounts of the last words of the dying from those at their bedsides. Throughout more than a decade of analysis of 2,000 final utterances, Lisa has come to see many universal patterns and recurring themes.
“Specifically you see patterns about a big event coming, someone might say, ‘oh, the big dance is coming’ or ‘the big art show is coming,'” Smartt said. “And then people also talk about traveling, some say ‘the ship is ready’ or ‘the boat is ready,’ feeling that something is kind of moving them along that’s bigger than they are. And then another way that this hybrid language appears is someone may say ‘get me my checkbook, I need to pay at the gate,’ as if they’re referring to Heaven’s gate, so they’re bringing pieces of this world and beginning to talk with the other.”
“People might start talking about things that some family members or loved ones might think are nonsense like ‘my husband (who had died 10 years ago) is standing at the edge of my bed.’ Now to some people they may think that’s nonsense, but it seems from our research and others that there actually are visitors standing at the bedside with those who are dying and that’s not nonsense,” she said.
One particularly fascinating implication is the glimpse these final words seem to provide of what may come after physical death.
“There’s a lot of repetition, you know one well-known example of this is Steve Jobs ‘wow, wow, wow’ before he died, I think those were actually his very final words, and you can only imagine, what did he see? What did that exclamation refer to? People definitely start talking about how beautiful it is over there. I’ve come in contact with so many people who have had near-death experiences and there’s such a sense of peace, and you can see this in some people even before they die. There is this energy that seems to be moving toward some kind of new emergence or a new state of being,” Smartt said.
