The Navy issued a noise advisory for the Chesapeake region of Virginia this week, and the best explanation is that they're testing railguns again. You know railguns, the straight-up sci-fi weapons?

Man, this is cool.

The U.S. Navy didn't come right out and say what exactly was going to make all the ruckus, but the advisory is for the same location where they previously tested railgun prototypes.

For the uninitiated, a railgun is just about the coolest weapon in the world. Here's what Popular Mechanics had to say about them:

The main suspect in this case is, of course, a railgun. Long the dream of science fiction, railguns use electricity to generate very strong electromagnetic fields between two rails. A conductive metal device called an armature picks up a projectile and accelerates down the path between the rails, sending the projectile whizzing downrange.

The railgun spits out the projectile at a speed of 4,474 miles per hour, or 1.2 miles per second. According to NASA, the railgun can fire kinetic energy projectiles against aerial targets and high-explosive projectiles against "water surface targets," a.k.a. ships.

Personally, my experience with railguns is limited to the Quake games. But maybe if the Navy watched some of my highlights, they'd let me try shooting it?

At any rate, if you're in the Chesapeake area, you might want to keep the earplugs handy this week.