8 ms·

They make this point themselves in the article: they can account for the unusual recording from Cuba, but not for people's symptoms. >> While the math leads us

They make this point themselves in the article: they can account for the unusual recording from Cuba, but not for people's symptoms. >> While the math leads us to believe that intermodulation distortion is a likely culprit in the Cuban case, we haven’t ruled out other null hypotheses that may account for the discomfort that diplomats felt. For example, maybe the tones people heard didn’t cause their symptoms but were just another symptom, a clue to the real cause.

mehrdadn 9y ago
> While the math leads us to believe that intermodulation distortion is a likely culprit in the Cuban case, we haven’t ruled out other null hypotheses that may account for the discomfort that diplomats felt. For example, maybe the tones people heard didn’t cause their symptoms but were just another symptom, a clue to the real cause. Unless what I read was just plain lies, I don't see how this is plausible. Just reading The Guardian's article [1] I see no room for other plausible explanations in every case... remember there were at least 21 US victims (!!): The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top US diplomat has called them “health attacks”. New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-son...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 9y ago
  Sounds a lot like some sort of constructive interference. Or highly directional microwaves of course.
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    Microwaves carry sound now?
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 9y ago
      Modulated microwaves could. There are reports of random metal items suddenly playing local high-powered radio stations, and modulated/pulsed microwaves can cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect Note that the purpose of the microwaves doesn't have to be frying someone's brain or creating sound; it can be some unrelated attempt to e.g. try to intercept data think about possible attempts to use preexisting materials in a way similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
    - steve19 9y ago
      Electricity does not carry light, but stick an electrical probe into someone's brain in the right spot and they can "see" light. Maybe they perceived sound because the right nerves or neurons were stimulated.
  - Erlangolem 9y ago
    Constructive interference of microwaves is the most likely candidate I think. Each beam would be essentially harmless, but at their intersection you’d have a bad time. This could be used by adversaries to power bugs as you reference in another post, but also by friendlies sweeping for bugs. As a bonus the emitters could be compact compared to some monstrous speaker systems, and probably mobile.
jessaustin 9y ago
When the title and the bulk of the article imply that they actually did reverse engineer whatever hurt the diplomats, a few weasel words don't make TFA true, they make it clickbait.
- smogcutter 9y ago
  What? The weasel words at the end are good science, not weasel words. They're explicit about what they have and haven't determined. They've done impressive work figuring out why the "ultrasonic" attack would have an audible component. They can now reproduce the tones heard in Cuba using an ultrasonic source, something that didn't make sense before. Responsibly, they never claim that the "ultrasonic attack" is conclusively responsible for the actual harm, although it appears likely.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I remember reading about audible sound produced from interference of ultrasound decades ago. As TFA indicates it's just math, which math has certainly been done before now. After reading TFA, I'm not convinced there was an attack, that if an attack occurred it had anything to do with ultrasound, or that if an ultrasound attack occurred it had any of the qualities discussed in TFA. It's interesting to compare this credulous hypothesizing with the article by the same author in the sidebar that is super-skeptical about the pacemaker hacks, which hacks have since been confirmed by FDA.
  - SiempreViernes 9y ago
    The "ultrasonic attack" really deserves a few dozen scare quotes at this point, people with experience of using ultrasound on humans deem it unlikely to actually cause harm in any covert way, and I do trust the medical profession to find pretty robust limits on how dangerous ultrasonic devices are. So given that there is no convincing reason to believe ultrasound has anything to do with it, they've now demonstrated a way to make audible noise as a consequence of interaction between two ultrasonic sources. They chose this particular (obscure) way of getting audible sound from an ultrasound emitter because a journalist sent a video of a sound whose relevance is that it was recorded on Cuba. And the great result is that now you need at least two ultrasound emitters, one of which is a bulky 155 dB emitter just lying around undetected in the homes of American diplomats. I don't see how the explanation of a minor problem with the ultrasound theory is any great advance.
valuearb 9y ago
I thought the sounds were identified as Cicadas?

mehrdadn 9y ago

> While the math leads us to believe that intermodulation distortion is a likely culprit in the Cuban case, we haven’t ruled out other null hypotheses that may account for the discomfort that diplomats felt. For example, maybe the tones people heard didn’t cause their symptoms but were just another symptom, a clue to the real cause. Unless what I read was just plain lies, I don't see how this is plausible. Just reading The Guardian's article [1] I see no room for other plausible explanations in every case... remember there were at least 21 US victims (!!): The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top US diplomat has called them “health attacks”. New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-son...

tgsovlerkhgsel 9y ago
Sounds a lot like some sort of constructive interference. Or highly directional microwaves of course.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  Microwaves carry sound now?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 9y ago
    Modulated microwaves could. There are reports of random metal items suddenly playing local high-powered radio stations, and modulated/pulsed microwaves can cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect Note that the purpose of the microwaves doesn't have to be frying someone's brain or creating sound; it can be some unrelated attempt to e.g. try to intercept data think about possible attempts to use preexisting materials in a way similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
  - steve19 9y ago
    Electricity does not carry light, but stick an electrical probe into someone's brain in the right spot and they can "see" light. Maybe they perceived sound because the right nerves or neurons were stimulated.
- Erlangolem 9y ago
  Constructive interference of microwaves is the most likely candidate I think. Each beam would be essentially harmless, but at their intersection you’d have a bad time. This could be used by adversaries to power bugs as you reference in another post, but also by friendlies sweeping for bugs. As a bonus the emitters could be compact compared to some monstrous speaker systems, and probably mobile.

jessaustin 9y ago

When the title and the bulk of the article imply that they actually did reverse engineer whatever hurt the diplomats, a few weasel words don't make TFA true, they make it clickbait.

smogcutter 9y ago
What? The weasel words at the end are good science, not weasel words. They're explicit about what they have and haven't determined. They've done impressive work figuring out why the "ultrasonic" attack would have an audible component. They can now reproduce the tones heard in Cuba using an ultrasonic source, something that didn't make sense before. Responsibly, they never claim that the "ultrasonic attack" is conclusively responsible for the actual harm, although it appears likely.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I remember reading about audible sound produced from interference of ultrasound decades ago. As TFA indicates it's just math, which math has certainly been done before now. After reading TFA, I'm not convinced there was an attack, that if an attack occurred it had anything to do with ultrasound, or that if an ultrasound attack occurred it had any of the qualities discussed in TFA. It's interesting to compare this credulous hypothesizing with the article by the same author in the sidebar that is super-skeptical about the pacemaker hacks, which hacks have since been confirmed by FDA.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  The "ultrasonic attack" really deserves a few dozen scare quotes at this point, people with experience of using ultrasound on humans deem it unlikely to actually cause harm in any covert way, and I do trust the medical profession to find pretty robust limits on how dangerous ultrasonic devices are. So given that there is no convincing reason to believe ultrasound has anything to do with it, they've now demonstrated a way to make audible noise as a consequence of interaction between two ultrasonic sources. They chose this particular (obscure) way of getting audible sound from an ultrasound emitter because a journalist sent a video of a sound whose relevance is that it was recorded on Cuba. And the great result is that now you need at least two ultrasound emitters, one of which is a bulky 155 dB emitter just lying around undetected in the homes of American diplomats. I don't see how the explanation of a minor problem with the ultrasound theory is any great advance.

valuearb 9y ago

I thought the sounds were identified as Cicadas?