Mysterious Bangs: Aurora’s "pulse detonation engine" heard over Britain and New York?
Source: dailymail.co.uk
An expert claims the loud bangs which baffled Britons last night sounded like a type of experimental jet engine - which conspiracy theorists enjoy linking to a rumoured spy plane.
Dr Bhupendra Khandelwal added his comparison to a debate which began when hundreds of Twitter users from Aberdeen to Devon - and even New York - reported ’explosions’ which shook windows and disturbed sleeping children at around 10pm.
One resident in Croydon, South London, recorded the sounds on her phone in a mystery that has left Britons blaming meteors, an ’alien invasion’, ’the end of the world’... or just fireworks.
Dr Khandelwal, an engineering research associate from Sheffield, is among a team of scientists working on the technology behind types of ’pulse detonation engine’.
’It makes the same kind of pulsing sound as the one on this audio,’ he told MailOnline.
‘When we run a test engine it’s a real industrial noise and you can hear it for miles. We have people coming to us asking to make less noise or keep it to the daytime.
The engine works by using the force from a series of explosions, caused by mixing a fuel mist and air intake, to thrust itself forward. It can theoretically power planes at five times the speed of sound.
The technology builds upon ’pulsejet’ principles which first emerged in the early 1900s and were used in German V-1 flying bombs.
Test flights using the most recent forms of the technology have lasted only a few seconds, but it is still listed by conspiracy theorists as a possible way of powering the so-called Aurora spy jet.
The theorists have cited ’Aurora’ – a name which appeared in a Pentagon budget report in the 1980s – as an ongoing spy plane project for several years.
Officials routinely deny it exists. Of course, that has not dampened the spirits of the theorists, who point to a sighting of a mysterious triangular object by a North Sea oil engineer in August 1989.
Last year Lockheed Martin also unveiled plans for a spy plane that could fly at Mach 6, twice as fast as its famed SR-71 Blackbird, and said a missile demonstrating the new technology could fly as early as 2018.
Dr Khandelwal was keen to distance himself from the world of conspiracy theories, though he conceded there could always some things unknown to the public.
‘Of course we can’t know for sure if someone else could have the technology already,’ he said.
Read the rest: dailymail.co.uk
