A mysterious hum that was heard by millions around the world has been solved.
In a recent paper, scientists said it was the sound of the rumblings of a magma-filled lake in the Indian Ocean that people have been hearing.
The strange sound had been heard far and wide a few months ago and was baffling to those who heard it.
And it is now said that a new underwater volcano appearing between Madagascar and Mozambique, off the coast of the island of Mayotte, was behind it.
The study said that magma from a reservoir approximately 20 miles beneath the ocean floor travelled upwards to form the new volcano – something that was very loud.
Simone Cesca, a seismologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, who authored the study, told LiveScience: "It took only [a] few weeks for the magma to propagate from the upper mantle to the seafloor, where a new submarine volcano was born."
The humming began six months after thousands of earthquakes were recorded near the island in May 2018.
In November 2018, seismologists then began hearing a bizarre hum, with some bouts of it lasting over 30 minutes – something that "triggered curiosity" in experts.
It later became apparent a new volcano had formed near Mayotte that was over three miles long and nearly half a mile high.
The study explains: "Since May 2018, a seismically quiet area offshore of Mayotte in the western Indian Ocean has been affected by complex seismic activity, including long-duration, very-long-period signals detected globally.
"Global Navigation Satellite System stations on Mayotte have also recorded a large surface deflation offshore. Here we analyse regional and global seismic and deformation data to provide a one-year-long detailed picture of a deep, rare magmatic process.
"We identify about 7,000 volcano-tectonic earthquakes and 407 very-long-period seismic signals. Early earthquakes migrated upward in response to a magmatic dyke propagating from Moho depth to the surface, whereas later events marked the progressive failure of the roof of a magma reservoir, triggering its resonance."
Conspiracy theorists initially went wild when the hum was first heard and pinpointed to the Indian Ocean.
One YouTube conspiracist even called the then-unexplained seismic event to an earthquake in Alaska, saying something "strange" was happening.
Another person linked it to events happening in outer space.
- Earthquake
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