WHAT WAS THAT?53 POPSCI.COM • WINTER 2019The Seneca Guns
Ghostly detonations have plagued residents near
upstate New York’s Seneca Lake and along North
Carolina’s Outer Banks for more than a century.
Scientists have speculated that earthquakes
might be responsible for the cannon-like sounds,
which rattle windows and can even open closed
doors, but they’ve never found direct evidence of
the connection. Other potential causes include
meteorites, covert military operations, and meth-
ane gas bubbling up from beneath the water to
burst with a pop. Though some geophysicists still
debate the cause of this persistent phenomenon,
they consider the harmless rumbles more of a
curiosity than a pressing scientific problem.
The Buzzer
Numbers stations—shortwave radio trans-
missions of monotone coded messages—are
inherently creepy. But call sign UVB-76 has out-
creeped them all by playing the same jolting tone
from Russia since 1982. Similar broadcasts are
useful for sending messages where snoops might
intercept digital comms, so “the Buzzer” could
simply assist spies. But it plays far fewer words
and digits than confirmed espionage outlets, so
some suspect it’s a science project that bounces
radio waves off the ionosphere to detect solar
flares. The most intriguing theory posits that it’s a
doomsday device that will go silent should Russia
suffer a nuclear attack, thus triggering retaliation.no.
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