Rumble over Kota Samarahan no laughing matter

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REVIEWING THE PHOTO: Harith (left) and Ferdauz reviewing the photo.

KUCHING: Authorities on science do not consider the strange sounds in the sky over Kota Samarahan near hear as a laughing matter.

They neither denied it as paranormal nor a hoax. Though explanation over the ‘phenomenon’ is still pending, some people have turned the matter into points for jokes, especially on Facebook.

Deputy Minister of Science Technology and Innovation Datuk Fadillah Yusuf yesterday said he had already assembled a team headed by one Dr Mustafa Subari of Malaysian Space Agency to study the claims.

He said he had also asked the Meteorology Department but they too could not provide any explanation.

“According to its director, they were unable to find an explanation. It is not connected to the very recent earthquake in Sumatra,” he said when contacted yesterday.

Fadillah, who is also Petra Jaya MP, said he had spoken to one of the witnesses whom his team would meet soon.

The strange sounds that teacher Mohd Ferdauz Jemain heard in the morning of Jan 11 has been posted in the blog under ‘Strange Sounds in the Sky’ which is dedicated to unexplained, strange, bizarre, weird and/or eerie sounds or rumble in the sky from all over the globe.

According to the blog, the Malaysian case reported by thesundaypost last Sunday was the latest following the few
last ones in Denmark and Sweden.

According to Mohd Ferdauz, he and several others heard the strange sounds in the sky over Kota Samarahan not only in the morning of Jan 11 but also in the wee hours of Jan 12. Another witness Harith Amin, a staff of a university here, also took the phenomenon on video.

Then early Wednesday morning, a few residents of Taman Stakan Jaya in Kota Samarahan also claimed of hearing the same sounds again.

Before the cases in Samarahan, the blog posted the last incident captured in video by a witness in Aaborg Denmark on Jan 10 and the second last one captured by another in Sweden on Nov 1 2011. Strange sounds in the sky have been heard at various places in the world since March 2011.

Re-titled by the blog as ‘Creepy sky dragon sound in Malaysia,’ The Borneo Post article reported that the strange sounds made many residents in Kampung Meranek perturbed and puzzled on Jan 11. The blog said later on the same day that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale hit Sumatera in Indonesia.

Whether the strange sounds over Kota Samarahan the Indonesian earthquake have any relationship, only scientists can verify.

Apart from the Indonesian earthquake, another theory thrown to explain the phenomenon was the by-product of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (HAARP) undertaken by the United States to study the change in weather pattern and; processing machines hard at work.

The theory that the sound was caused by factory has been dismissed by both Harith and Ferdauz after they checked the place.

Many also believed that the weird sound is the echo of the distant cracking sounds generated by natural activities at the core of the earth. Many others also believed that the earth is now old and therefore it moans.

RELATED NEWS: Article on strange sounds over Samarahan picked up by international blog | Rumble in the sky over Samarahan