Uploaded September 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A trio of satellites called Swarm in Earth orbit measures the Earth's magnetic field. Strong lightning storms can generate bursts of radio waves that interact with the layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere, and that in turn affects the magnetic field. In this case, the burst starts off with high frequency and quickly drops; if you translate that into sound it's like a whistle. You can hear that in this video. It's... weird.
Credit: Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
Original video: http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2018/04/Whistlers
A trio of satellites called Swarm in Earth orbit measures the Earth's magnetic field. Strong lightning storms can generate bursts of radio waves that interact with the layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere, and that in turn affects the magnetic field. In this case, the burst starts off with high frequency and quickly drops; if you translate that into sound it's like a whistle. You can hear that in this video. It's... weird.
Credit: Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
Original video: http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2018/04/Whistlers
