Local media reports indicate that residents living within the Space Coast, which encompasses the region that houses the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, had their homes rattled on Friday evening by an unidentified force.
While many were quick to believe that it was an earthquake, that simply wasn't the case. The earthquake-like incident wasn't even picked up on monitors manned by the US Geological Survey, and was instead reported on by concerned locals via social media.
"I felt my sliding doors vibrating for a solid two-and-a-half minutes," Milenka Smith, a local resident who believed that the shaking was caused by a space launch, wrote on Facebook. "I left my bedroom and I went to the front door to look for a rocket… but I thought I might have missed it."
Paul Earle, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey, told Florida Today on Monday that after conducting an investigation into the suspected quake, officials didn't find any evidence to back up such claims.
"We looked into this, and we didn't see any evidence of a tectonic earthquake," he told the publication. "It could have been something that didn't originate in the ground. It could be something like a hypersonic jet, munitions… or a sonic boom."
"Unfortunately, we can't give a definitive answer on exactly what it was," he added.
As it turns out, the US military was also not the cause of all of the ruckus.
In a statement to the outlet, officials with Patrick Air Force Base, which is situated in the Space Coast region, indicated that no military exercises were being performed at the time.
"We've been informed that there have been reports of a rumbling noise in the Space Coast area this past Friday. Having checked with our local organizations within the 45th Space Wing, it does not appear to have come from us," reads the release.
So if it wasn't an earthquake or a sonic boom caused by US jets, what could've caused the great shake of March 2019? A fireball? Aliens plotting against Earthlings? It's anyone's guess at this point.
Wanting to drive home the point that an earthquake likely wasn't the cause of the phenomenon, Earle stressed that the Sunshine State was "one of the least seismically active states," on account of it sitting on porous limestone and bedrock and not being located near any tectonic plate boundaries.
"These [earthquakes] are very rare for Florida," he said. That said, Floridians living in the town of Jay recently experienced a 2.6-magnitude earthquake. It did not cause any significant damage.
