Mystery loud bangs were heard across the world over the weekend, including in Devon.
The noises were heard in North Devon and across the UK on Saturday night, while 3,000 miles away in New York a loud boom was also reported by a number of people.
Residents in locations including Buffalo, Clarence and as far north as Niagara Falls took to social media to report the unusual noise at around 4:45 p.m. EST.
People described it as loud enough to shake their homes and rattle windows.
The noises have been described as sounding like a loud aircraft or fireworks - and some people have suggested it could have been a sonic boom.
However the Ministry of Defence has been reported as saying it does not know what could the noises and denied that its own jets were responsible for the strange sounds.
A Met Police spokesman told the Daily Mirror, that apart from a fireworks display in Croydon, it was dealing with no ongoing incidents that could have been responsible for the bangs.
One possible explanation is that the loud noise and ground shaking could have been a meteorite breaking up in the atmosphere, which would result in a sonic boom.
The U.S. Geological Survey did not report any seismic activity or earthquakes in the area at the time of the shaking, although a small earthquake did take place just two hours later.
The magnitude 1.5 quake was centered about four miles west of Lockport and happened at 6:27 p.m. local time.
But Jana Pursley, a geophysicist with the USGS in Colorado, told WGRZ that it would be impossible to attribute the reported noises to the Lockport earthquake hours later.
Any earthquake that registers 2.0 or less on the Richter scale is a microearthquake and no damaged was reported as a result of the quake, according to law enforcement agencies.
Some people in Great Britain have suggested that unusual weather conditions might be the source, but the Exeter based Met Office today dismissed the claims.
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Within minutes of the noises Twitter users had started spreading hashtags from the straightforward (#loudbangs) to the slightly melodramatic (#omgwereallgoingtodie)
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Many of the reports were picked up by Twitter user Virtual Astronomer, who said space debris re-entering the earth's atmosphere could have been responsible.
'Space debris such as old satellites and things can cause sonic booms heard over very large areas,' he said..
'It's the same for big meteors or rocks that come in.
'There are also some rare meteorologic phenomena that can cause rumbling or bangs apart from thunder.
'The only other explanation could be supersonic aircraft. There was very little wind last night so conditions were perfect for sound to travel very long distances.'
