Another explanation for mysterious incidents at sea is provided by postgraduate students of the Leningrad Hydrometeorological Institute V. Psalomshchikov, I. Stepanyuk, and engineer T. Bolshakova.
All the cases described by L. Skryagin point to the presence of some unified phenomenon characterized by the following circumstances: from a ship still capable of sailing, the entire crew and passengers suddenly vanish without exception. None of the disappeared individuals survive. "Something" forces people to disappear within a few, literally counted minutes, as all were previously engaged in their activities, unaware of any danger. Even the limited facts available allow us to identify the following three patterns:
1) The phenomenon's action is strictly localized to a maritime basin;
2) Almost all incidents occurred in clear, relatively calm weather;
3) Most incidents took place during the winter (for the respective hemisphere).
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In the early 1930s, a theater staged a play in which the action suddenly shifted back 300 years in the middle of the performance. To enhance the psychological impact on the audience and depict the "heavy tread of centuries," the director sought the help of renowned physicist Robert Wood.
Wood proposed using an ordinary organ pipe, but of such a size that it emitted inaudible infrasound to the human ear. The effect exceeded all expectations. When the pipe started, the audience was gripped by panic and rushed out of the theater. They thought an earthquake had started, and the building was about to collapse. Panic also spread to residents of nearby houses.
It is well known that during the onset of a storm in the ocean, the condition of patients onshore deteriorates sharply, the number of suicides increases, and traffic accidents rise. The culprit is infrasound.
In a 1935 report to the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician Shuleikin presented a theory on the generation of infrasound vibrations in the ocean. During storms and strong winds, airflow shears off at the crests of ocean waves over the wavy surface of the sea. This produces not only transverse oscillations but also longitudinal ones. The intensity of the resulting infrasound is proportional to the square of the waves. At wind speeds of 20 m/s, the "voice of the sea" can reach 3 watts per meter of wavefront. A relatively small storm generates infrasound power in the tens of kilowatts! The main infrasound emission occurs roughly in the 6 Hz range. Experiments have shown that infrasound dissipates very little with distance. In principle, it can propagate over hundreds and thousands of kilometers without significant attenuation, both in the air and water, with the speed of the water wave being several times greater than that of the air wave.
Recently, reports about experiments by Professor Gavreau have appeared in the press. New facts about the biological activity of infrasound were presented. Professor Gavreau hypothesized that this phenomenon is caused by the coincidence of infrasound frequencies with the alpha rhythm of the brain. Infrasounds of certain frequencies can cause fatigue, melancholy, seasickness, loss of vision, and even death.
"...Infrasound at a frequency of 7 Hz is fatal to humans... it is possible to stop the heart by appropriately tuning the phase of the infrasound..."
So, the ocean generates powerful infrasound vibrations averaging 6 Hz, but a frequency of 7 Hz is lethal to humans. Could there be conditions under which the "voice of the sea" slightly deviates from its usual frequency, with all the resulting consequences? A ship could be caught by an infrasound wave in an entirely calm area, and if the incoming frequency is 7 Hz, the entire crew might die suddenly, with no visible cause of death—their hearts simply stop. At other frequencies, different from 7 Hz, effects similar to bouts of insanity may occur. Mechanical resonance with the ship's hull or masts is also possible, placing the crew as though on a giant vibration stand. It's no wonder that on many ships with disappeared crews, broken masts are often found, despite weather reports indicating no strong winds in the area.
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Dozens of ships with missing crews or corpses on board have now been discovered. Perhaps this list should include submarines that disappeared under mysterious circumstances, as they are even more susceptible to infrasound waves, given that infrasound travels greater distances in water. Infrasound is ubiquitous. It propagates almost equally well through solid, liquid, and gaseous media. A vacuum might seem like the only barrier to infrasound, suggesting such a danger would not threaten spacecraft.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. During liftoff or when a returning spacecraft enters the Earth's dense atmosphere, astronauts (and the spacecraft) are subjected to significant low-frequency vibrations. The size of modern spacecraft is such that they may experience resonant vibrations at biologically dangerous frequencies. This factor must be considered during spacecraft design and testing; otherwise, silent ships might appear even in space.
Today, infrasound detection stations already exist, monitoring waves generated by storms and undersea earthquakes. Even in the case of a tsunami, which travels at jet speeds (700–800 km/h), the infrasound wave in water travels the same distance seven times faster.
Such stations could warn ships about infrasound at life-threatening frequencies. In any case, if such phenomena occur in the ocean, they require thorough and urgent investigation.