I’m not talking business here, I’m talking an actual big boom!

Around 6pm last night having just returned home we all jumped as a loud bang went off, the windows shook, the walls shook – even the shed could be seen quaking in it’s cement at the bottom of the garden…

I dashed upstairs to peer out of the window, expecting someone to have hit our car and driven it into the garage or some such other disastrous thing given the level of noise. When I got there nothing was out of the ordinary, cars intact, house intact, street intact…. The only difference was half of our neighbours were outside!

I reached for my phone, it was only 30 seconds after the noise and I knew it was unlikely the news outlets (TV or Internet) would be on the ball that quickly. However, I use Twitter lists quite extensively to keep up with the people I follow, and fortunately I have a Local-Swindon list that I add local people to when I start to follow them.

Loading this list quickly revealed more conspiracy theories than you could shake a stick at:

• Aliens?
• Aircraft Sonic Boom?
• Cement factory explosion in Leamington? (The noise was heard in Coventry, Oxford and Swindon!)
• A giant looking for sweetcorn?
• Chuck Norris popping an inflated packet of crisps?
• Fuel tankers exploding at Asda (that would certainly do nothing for the price of petrol!)

Some 40-50 minutes later (with the conspiracy theories getting wackier by the second) the MOD confirm that a helicopter emitted a distress signal (mistakenly!) and a Typhoon (Eurofighter) aircraft broke the sound barrier over the UK on it’s way to investigate. Full story here.

Not really any story here, other than this happened and Twitter was great for finding out what actually happened (with some amusement on the way).

As I write this all flights over Gatwick are suspended due to a hot air balloon, Twitter is joining in on the act again and there are talks of making it pop with a sonic boom!