In 1962, during the height of the Cold War, the race for technological supremacy over air and space was fierce, with NASA’s engineers leading the charge. This was a time of early high-speed, high-altitude flights, and NASA’s forerunner, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, commissioned the X-15, a rocket-powered supersonic plane, to reach the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Major Robert White was the chief test pilot for the X-15 program and a veteran of three wars, holding the record for the fastest manned flight ever recorded, over 4,000 miles per hour. While flying at more than five times the speed of sound, White saw multiple unidentified objects, one of which seemed to shadow his X-15, and he reported his sighting to engineers upon landing.

The objects were small, tumbling and moving with him at a distance of about 30-40 feet away. The official explanation from NASA suggests that the phenomenon was caused by ice crystals and flakes forming on the outside of the aircraft as a byproduct of the X-15’s experimental propulsion system. However, many remain skeptical of this explanation, including Major White himself.

In more recent years, strange sounds from the skies drew people out of their homes in 2012. These noises, recorded by camera phones and home video witnesses, were heard across the globe and could not be explained by any known weather phenomena.

Upon analysis of meteorological data, scientists discovered that the phenomenon seemed to coincide with the Aurora Borealis. NASA launched a fleet of five probes, called FAMOUS, to investigate the Aurora and discovered that violent solar bombardments can snap the invisible lines of the Earth’s protective magnetic field and slingshot powerful bursts of cosmic energy toward Earth, causing what scientists call a spacequake.

These quakes create waves in the audible frequency, but they are electromagnetic. Thus, space is full of pulsations that create sound waves if played. It’s a strange phenomenon that almost makes space seem alive.