The author is probably one of those science journalist that has a at best shaky grasp of the material--these people have to write appealing articles (they're ba

The author is probably one of those science journalist that has a at best shaky grasp of the material--these people have to write appealing articles (they're basically advertising the university) for a whole lot of different disciplines, so it's not going to be easy. And I think the point is that this blocks out only certain frequencies, without being a massive structure (you can easily make a serpentine acoustic notch filter but it's gonna be huge)