Goat farts may have grounded a plane last week.

On Oct. 26, a Singapore Airlines cargo plane en route from Adelaide, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, received a signal that there was smoke in the cargo bay. The plane descended and diverted to Bali's Denpasar airport.

But when the Boeing 747 was inspected, no evidence of fire or smoke was found. The plane, carrying four crew members and 2,186 goats, took off and completed its route to Kuala Lumpur with no further incidents.

Before long, rumors swirled through the internet: Aviation Herald reported that "the smoke indication was identified to be the result of exhaust gasses and manure produced by the sheep."

Singapore Airlines fired back: “That is an assumption being made by media, which we are unable to confirm,” an airline spokesperson told Singapore's TODAY.

The possibility of farts setting off a smoke detector has long been debated.

A goat (like a sheep or a cow) is a ruminant, which means it has four stomachs — which means it produces some very smelly fumes. A sheep produces, on average, 7.92 kg of methane a year. If we assume that a goat and a sheep produce roughly the same amount of methane, that means that 2,186 goats would produce 1.97 kg of methane per hour. These goats were in cargo for about five hours, meaning they probably produced about 9.88 kg of methane.

"Almost all cargo compartment smoke detectors are based on photoelectric sensing," according to Boeing's safety information. "Smoke particles interfere with a light beam inside the detector, causing the light to scatter onto a photosensitive diode, which increases the photodiode’s current output and generates an alarm."

It doesn't appear that goat flatulence is a deadly threat to aviation, just a silent but deadly threat to our noses.

Mashable is continuing to investigate the possible effect of goat farts on airplane smoke detectors and will update this story when additional information is available.