During an afternoon a few days ago—20 May 2020, to be precise—a loud mysterious sound was heard in a large part of Bangalore, a city that's popularly known as the Indian IT hub.
The sound heard was like that of an explosion and it left windows rattling. This sound created panic among the locals. Some thought it is an earthquake, while the others thought it was an explosion. Then there were a few who had the more likely explanation and it was: A sonic boom.
What's a sonic boom? In simple terms, it's the sound you hear when a jet is traveling at a speed more than the speed of sound. More scientifically, it's the shock waves created by an object which has broken the sound barrier. The sound is often so loud that it shatters the glass used in windows and stuff, if it happens close enough. So windows rattling matches up with this one.
An interesting thing the locals noticed was that they noticed quite a few jets passing by that day after the sound was first heard. Some passed by immediately after it. So was it some kind of drill going on that produced it? The sonic boom explanation fits the bill here too.
Hours passed by and there was still no official explanation. Though, that doesn't mean they didn't recognize it officially. An official statement was indeed given which confirmed the source wasn't an earthquake or an HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) plane.
Finally an explanation was given in the evening that it was an IAF (Indian Air Force) jet. Apparently there was some kind of drill going on, which explains the number of jets that were observed.
But you must be thinking that if it was just a drill, shouldn't this happen on a regular basis? Well the answer is no. When these drills happen, they are careful not to break the sound barrier too near to residential areas. However, this one time it happened due to specific environmental factors. Like, the city was creating much less pollution than usual due to the lockdown. Well, that's what the official explanation said, at least.
However, I haven't mentioned something very crucial yet. It is the fact that this same sound was heard in Gwalior, a city that's around 1700 km north of Bangalore. It was heard around the evening, before the Bangalore event was explained.
The official explanation doesn't account for this one. It is indeed a possibility that the drill was actually going on throughout the nation and not just one part of it.
I have been thinking about this since the past few days and I thought I would write an article here about it to share what I think. There are some odd things around this whole sound thing.
First of all, why take so long to explain it? If it was that simple an explanation I see no point in leaving the public hanging for so long.
If the government takes so long to respond, it starts to smell fishy. At least to me it does. Was there anything they wanted to hide? Some crazy conspiracy theories have risen around this event, they range from aliens to foreign invasion (the sound being a sonic boom from a jet chase).
Another interesting theory is some kind of new tech experiment. That's something any nation's military actively takes part in and definitely hides it from general public. This one is a bit more likely than the insane ones.
Secondly, the Gwalior incident still remains officially unexplained. Why? and thirdly, the government explanation of why the sonic boom specifically happened sounds like bullshit.
An explanation that might explain why the government statement sounds half-fake is because it is half-fake. The sonic boom happened but the cause was that it was just some kind of malfunction and not environmental factors (like seriously, they said it's because of less noise pollution lol). But then again, that doesn't explain a similar occurrence in Gwalior.
We will likely never get a real explanation for this but what do you guys think about it? Do you support the official explanation? or maybe think it was a cover-up for something else? Do share in the comments!
Or maybe... they did it to scare you