Welcome to What The Heck season 4! This podcast explores unexplained phenomena using stories gathered from various sources, then applies an academic research method to find theories and solutions for each one. So far, we've been unsuccessful in finding any concrete answers, but a few of the stories we've covered have been solved. Today, we're listening for echoes in radio transmissions. Sometimes, when sending messages out over the radio, we hear ourselves repeated back after a couple of seconds. Nobody quite knows why this happens. People have conducted studies into it, and there are hypotheses. In a very scientific episode that fried my brain, we look at how it might work. What are the echoes called? What are the leading hypotheses? Are aliens involved somehow? Does it even make sense? Listen in to find out!

Links for other ways to listen are found here: https://linktr.ee/whattheheckpod 

References for the episode:

Goodacre, A. “An Unusual Long Delay Echo.” Nature, 13 Sept. 1990. https://www.nature.com/articles/347131a0.pdf 

“Long Delayed Echoes.” RadCom, 31 Aug. 2007. https://rsgb.org/main/files/2021/03/Long_Delay_Echoes_radcom_oct07.pdf 

“Long Delayed Radio Echoes.” Nature, 27 July 1929, https://www.nature.com/articles/124164a0. 

“The Five Most Likely Explanations for Long Delayed Echoes.” University of Oslo, https://www.mn.uio.no/fysikk/english/people/aca/sverre/articles/lde.html. Accessed 7 Jan. 2025. 

You can email Glen at [email protected] with any of your spooky stories, unexplained events, mysteries that you want him to look at, or anything you'd like him to correct or address. Thanks for listening, and if you enjoy the podcast and think you know others who will like it, share it with them!

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