Students from an Eltham school have identified sounds caused by a solar storm as part of a research project.

The findings, by a group of Year 12 pupils from Eltham Hill School, have now been published in the scientific journal Space Weather.

The students' work was part of a Queen Mary University of London research project encouraging schools in London to take part in university research.

The Earth's magnetic shield, which protects us against harmful radiation from the Sun and more distant sources, is rife with ultra-low frequency sounds.

These sounds, or waves, are too low-pitch for us to hear but a researcher at Queen Mary University made satellite recordings of them audible by dramatically speeding up their playback.

The group of students identified a series of waves where the pitch decreased over the course of several days.

Isobel Currie, one of the students from Eltham Hill School involved in the project, added: “It was truly amazing to hear how significant the event we found was and that it will be forming the basis of a proper scientific paper.

“We gained so much experience and developed many skills during our research that will be useful during our time at university, and it gave us a great insight into the work conducted at that level.”

By taking advantage of the audible data’s sped-up playback and the abilities of the human ear, the study reveals many similar patterns present in the data showing them to be far more common than previously thought.

Dr Martin Archer, space physicist at Queen Mary's School of Physics and Astronomy, and academic lead on the project, said: "The findings could transform the field, enabling more members of the public to contribute to research just by listening to data and finding things that scientists might have missed. We hope that this becomes more widespread since we are living in the age of 'big data'."