A strange sound dubbed “biotwang” was first heard bouncing around the Mariana Trench 10 years ago, and scientists have finally figured out

Mystery of Deep-Ocean ‘Biotwang’ Sound Has Finally Been Solved

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2024-09-22 17:00:04

A strange sound dubbed “biotwang” was first heard bouncing around the Mariana Trench 10 years ago, and scientists have finally figured out where it comes from

Recorded by microphones deep in the ocean, the unexplained sound—a low, sonorous grunting followed by a squeaky, mechanical echo, like a frog burping in space—first rumbled through a computer speaker about a decade ago. Baffled researchers called it the “biotwang.”

“You’ve got this low-frequency portion, like a moan,” says Lauren Harrell, a data scientist at Google Research’s AI for Social Good, adding her own impression of a hearty groan. “Then you have the higher-frequency component that sounds, to me, like the original Star Trek Enterprise ship—the ‘bip boo, bip boo’ sound.”

Autonomous underwater gliders first recorded the odd noise echoing through the miles-deep Mariana Trench in 2014. Researchers couldn’t identify a source, but they had some theories. “There’s enough other artificial, Star Wars–sounding whale calls that they guessed it was made by a baleen whale,” says Ann Allen, a research oceanographer at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But she notes that “anybody who’s not familiar with whales would never think this was made by an animal.”