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Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especial

Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especially in urban environments. It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy. It might sound futuristic, but I expect noise canceling force fields to become an everyday household thing in a few years ;-)

stavros 2y ago
> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy. How is sound weaker than light? Light is stopped by some thin cardboard, whereas sound will just breeze through walls.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Both have huge dynamic ranges, but consider: 1. We evolved to spend 50% of the time in the presence of a 1 kW/m^2 light source. 2. As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity, sound intensity is 10log₁₀(I/I₀) dB, where I₀ = 1 picowatt/m^2, which means 1 kW/m^2 is ~150 dB, which is about what you get from standing 1 meter away from a jet engine (Wikipedia cited a book for that claim, and doesn't itself say which jet engine).
  - stavros 2y ago
    In terms of energy, sure, light is much more energetic, but the problem with sound is that it can reach your ears with orders of magnitude less energy than light can.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    The other side of this is that light (EMR) attenuates exceedingly rapidly in matter. Much (though not all) of it will pass through a few tens or hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere, but a distressingly thin piece of solid matter (or many liquids) will block or scatter it beyond all detection save residual thermal noise. (The fact that we can transmit light through hundreds or thousands of kilometers of solid glass is worth marvelling over.) Sound, being a vibration of matter itself rather than an electromagnetic field, actually often travels better through matter, particularly those low frequencies which are transmitted through structures or the ground itself. But yes, the far more energetically intense electromagnetic radiation is generally far more easily addressed than far weaker sound eminations.
- NKosmatos 2y ago
  Exactly my point, we can easily block the light from the sun (roughly 1400W/m2) but we can't easily block the TV/radio (50dB) from the neighbor living above :-) In my mind I've got this "silly" analogy that noise is like the strong electromagnetic force, very powerful but only in relatively short distances ;-)
  - RogerL 2y ago
    The tiniest amount of vacuum stops sound as abruptly as non transparent matter stops light. furthermore, there was no amount of sound which can overcome the vacuum, whereas enough photons at enough energy will destroy the matter in its path. edit: yes, an explosion will expel matter through a vacuum, so in some sense enough noise will travel through a vacuum, but you are probably not going to be complaining about the "noise" if you are showered with enough matter to hear it from a massive explosion as your sudden disassembly will (briefly) capture your full attention. Whereas light trivially crosses the universe, as well as through some matter.
- keybored 2y ago
  Light doesn’t even have mass! It’s completely puny!
taeric 2y ago
I suspect you don't appreciate how much quieter modern devices are growing to be. The hum of electric lights is mostly a thing of the past. As we move to larger electric motors, the roar of gas motors will become a thing of the past. Obviously, some things are just loud. My kids hate how loud the frogs are next to our house. And blowers will remain loud. As are fast cars. But, I really believe the future will sound vastly different in most cities. Would be neat to hear the differences through the years. Moving from horses to pully based carriages to gas cars. Now to electric cars. We have moved really fast.
- gnz11 2y ago
  With EVs you still have the issues of road noise from the tires.
  - taeric 2y ago
    Right, is why I said fast cars are still loud. Or, thought I said that. Surface streets are still much quieter. Moreso if ebikes are used.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      We have people who deliberately modify their cars, trucks, and motorcycles to make them even louder. If EVs really caught on to the point most people had them, I would not put it past them to mod theirs to play loud vroom-vroom noises over speakers to match the volume level of ICE cars.
      - Lanolderen 2y ago
        Taser exhaust instead of a pops and bangs tune. Gotta patent that real quick.
- luqtas 2y ago
  electric blowers are way quieter than gasoline ones, maybe we'll have neat tech like https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/students-leaf-blower-suppressor-to-hit-retail/ https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/students-leaf-blower-suppres... or a revamp on aesthetics with gardens full of fruit trees and other cute flowers than a bunch o grass dating the time where lawns were a symbol of status [0] [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/lawn-order/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/lawn-order/
jrmg 2y ago
Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especially in urban environments. This feels true to me, but I suspect it’s not. Victorian industry was _loud_, and cars now are quieter than ever.
- lowercased 2y ago
  > and cars now are quieter than ever But no one drives cars any more. They drive trucks. And motorcycles. And anything with engines designed to tell everyone how powerful they are. I appreciate my friends/neighbors with electric cars. They do not offset the neighbors with F150s, Silverados, Tundras and other behemoths with v6/v8 gasoline engines.
  - roywashere 2y ago
    Big and loud cars are antisocial and should be forbidden to drive as a private person. CHANGE MY MIND
    - luqtas 2y ago
      1. it's the closest a private can get of driving a personal spaceship 2. IT'S AMERICA!!! /s
    - chasd00 2y ago
      1. consensus on what is "big" and what is "loud" is politically impossible. 2. In the US at least, all is allowed except for what is explicitly forbidden. 3. So you're going to have to define what is too big and what is too loud to make it forbidden. go back to #1
      - eks391 2y ago
        As long as something is measurable, you can define it, even politically. "Loud" can be defined as dB, perhaps a distance from the source of the sound or from a neighborhood/business etc. Ex. Any sound you produce much have adequate dampening or distance such that school zones and residential zones do not recieve greater than 75dB from any singular source, nor 90dB from the combination of all sources. Then legally concerts must use different venues, planes must take a more difficult path to avoid the nearby airport neighborhoods, etc. Maybe walls erected next to speedways. "Big" would probably need greater specification. One that already exists is lane width, so you can base things off that. Ex. Single-axle vehicles may not have a height greater than its width, where width is measured as the distance between lugnuts in the tightened position of the left and right wheels, the greater distance if the front and back wheels are at different distances.
layer8 2y ago
I tried a couple of noise-cancelling headphones, but they all produce very audible (to me) noise, not anywhere near what I would consider “silence”. Room acoustics is so complex that I doubt that a noise-cancelling force field is physically possible. ;)
- sephamorr 2y ago
  Perhaps consider passive earmuffs? I've used 3M peltor x5, they work wonders on airplanes, a bit more challenging if you wear glasses though.
t-3 2y ago
Silence is unnatural anyway. If you move to a rural area with no neighbors or traffic in sight, you'll still hear plenty of noises inside your house. Rather than rage about distracting noises, just turn on the radio or something to drown it out.
- kot_manul 2y ago
  Complete silence may be unnatural but so is Fall Out Boy played so loud the lyrics can be heard a block or more away, for 24 hours a day. Some sounds are loud enough to be impossible to block out. If police aren't interested in enforcing noise ordinances and your landlord isn't interested either because they're too busy trying not to repair the $12K a month water leak in the basement of the restaurant you live on top of, your only option is to move.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It's all relative, that is, your hearing and brain will adjust to how much ambient noise there is. Up to a point anyway, people go a bit mad if there's too much ambient noise (hence the article). Likewise when ambient noise goes away though. There's a challenge in a sound studio somewhere that blocks out pretty much all sound, challenge being how long you can last in complete silence. Supposedly you can hear your own blood flowing in there. It's also why people experience noise cancelling headphones as applying a 'pressure' when they first put them on; there is no pressure as such, but just the sudden absence of ambient noise their ears/brains are used to.
vessenes 2y ago
I too hate noise. That said, if you've ever spent some time far from human cities, you will notice there's plenty of noise out there, especially at night. There's probably some sort of evolutionary explanation about white noise vs startling noise etc. etc. but the main point is that it's noisy out there! In a very different way than city noise.
- tayo42 2y ago
  I used to go out to the mountains to stargaze, so pretty out there but people still lived there. Frequently there would be something like a dog barking for hours. I realized you really can't escape human bs noise.
morning-coffee 2y ago
> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult Maybe a result of human evolution? If our ears weren't as sensitive to sound as they are, we might not all be here discussing this.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  If you take that into consideration, loads of animals have even more sensitive hearing. Noise pollution is known (suggested?) to have a huge impact on nature as well, although iirc that's more about sudden noises, fireworks and the like.

stavros 2y ago

> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy. How is sound weaker than light? Light is stopped by some thin cardboard, whereas sound will just breeze through walls.

ben_w 2y ago
Both have huge dynamic ranges, but consider: 1. We evolved to spend 50% of the time in the presence of a 1 kW/m^2 light source. 2. As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity, sound intensity is 10log₁₀(I/I₀) dB, where I₀ = 1 picowatt/m^2, which means 1 kW/m^2 is ~150 dB, which is about what you get from standing 1 meter away from a jet engine (Wikipedia cited a book for that claim, and doesn't itself say which jet engine).
- stavros 2y ago
  In terms of energy, sure, light is much more energetic, but the problem with sound is that it can reach your ears with orders of magnitude less energy than light can.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  The other side of this is that light (EMR) attenuates exceedingly rapidly in matter. Much (though not all) of it will pass through a few tens or hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere, but a distressingly thin piece of solid matter (or many liquids) will block or scatter it beyond all detection save residual thermal noise. (The fact that we can transmit light through hundreds or thousands of kilometers of solid glass is worth marvelling over.) Sound, being a vibration of matter itself rather than an electromagnetic field, actually often travels better through matter, particularly those low frequencies which are transmitted through structures or the ground itself. But yes, the far more energetically intense electromagnetic radiation is generally far more easily addressed than far weaker sound eminations.
NKosmatos 2y ago
Exactly my point, we can easily block the light from the sun (roughly 1400W/m2) but we can't easily block the TV/radio (50dB) from the neighbor living above :-) In my mind I've got this "silly" analogy that noise is like the strong electromagnetic force, very powerful but only in relatively short distances ;-)
- RogerL 2y ago
  The tiniest amount of vacuum stops sound as abruptly as non transparent matter stops light. furthermore, there was no amount of sound which can overcome the vacuum, whereas enough photons at enough energy will destroy the matter in its path. edit: yes, an explosion will expel matter through a vacuum, so in some sense enough noise will travel through a vacuum, but you are probably not going to be complaining about the "noise" if you are showered with enough matter to hear it from a massive explosion as your sudden disassembly will (briefly) capture your full attention. Whereas light trivially crosses the universe, as well as through some matter.
keybored 2y ago
Light doesn’t even have mass! It’s completely puny!

taeric 2y ago

I suspect you don't appreciate how much quieter modern devices are growing to be. The hum of electric lights is mostly a thing of the past. As we move to larger electric motors, the roar of gas motors will become a thing of the past. Obviously, some things are just loud. My kids hate how loud the frogs are next to our house. And blowers will remain loud. As are fast cars. But, I really believe the future will sound vastly different in most cities. Would be neat to hear the differences through the years. Moving from horses to pully based carriages to gas cars. Now to electric cars. We have moved really fast.

gnz11 2y ago
With EVs you still have the issues of road noise from the tires.
- taeric 2y ago
  Right, is why I said fast cars are still loud. Or, thought I said that. Surface streets are still much quieter. Moreso if ebikes are used.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    We have people who deliberately modify their cars, trucks, and motorcycles to make them even louder. If EVs really caught on to the point most people had them, I would not put it past them to mod theirs to play loud vroom-vroom noises over speakers to match the volume level of ICE cars.
    - Lanolderen 2y ago
      Taser exhaust instead of a pops and bangs tune. Gotta patent that real quick.
luqtas 2y ago
electric blowers are way quieter than gasoline ones, maybe we'll have neat tech like https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/students-leaf-blower-suppressor-to-hit-retail/ https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/students-leaf-blower-suppres... or a revamp on aesthetics with gardens full of fruit trees and other cute flowers than a bunch o grass dating the time where lawns were a symbol of status [0] [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/lawn-order/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/lawn-order/

jrmg 2y ago

lowercased 2y ago
> and cars now are quieter than ever But no one drives cars any more. They drive trucks. And motorcycles. And anything with engines designed to tell everyone how powerful they are. I appreciate my friends/neighbors with electric cars. They do not offset the neighbors with F150s, Silverados, Tundras and other behemoths with v6/v8 gasoline engines.
- roywashere 2y ago
  Big and loud cars are antisocial and should be forbidden to drive as a private person. CHANGE MY MIND
  - luqtas 2y ago
    1. it's the closest a private can get of driving a personal spaceship 2. IT'S AMERICA!!! /s
  - chasd00 2y ago
    1. consensus on what is "big" and what is "loud" is politically impossible. 2. In the US at least, all is allowed except for what is explicitly forbidden. 3. So you're going to have to define what is too big and what is too loud to make it forbidden. go back to #1
    - eks391 2y ago
      As long as something is measurable, you can define it, even politically. "Loud" can be defined as dB, perhaps a distance from the source of the sound or from a neighborhood/business etc. Ex. Any sound you produce much have adequate dampening or distance such that school zones and residential zones do not recieve greater than 75dB from any singular source, nor 90dB from the combination of all sources. Then legally concerts must use different venues, planes must take a more difficult path to avoid the nearby airport neighborhoods, etc. Maybe walls erected next to speedways. "Big" would probably need greater specification. One that already exists is lane width, so you can base things off that. Ex. Single-axle vehicles may not have a height greater than its width, where width is measured as the distance between lugnuts in the tightened position of the left and right wheels, the greater distance if the front and back wheels are at different distances.

layer8 2y ago

I tried a couple of noise-cancelling headphones, but they all produce very audible (to me) noise, not anywhere near what I would consider “silence”. Room acoustics is so complex that I doubt that a noise-cancelling force field is physically possible. ;)

sephamorr 2y ago
Perhaps consider passive earmuffs? I've used 3M peltor x5, they work wonders on airplanes, a bit more challenging if you wear glasses though.

t-3 2y ago

Silence is unnatural anyway. If you move to a rural area with no neighbors or traffic in sight, you'll still hear plenty of noises inside your house. Rather than rage about distracting noises, just turn on the radio or something to drown it out.

kot_manul 2y ago
Complete silence may be unnatural but so is Fall Out Boy played so loud the lyrics can be heard a block or more away, for 24 hours a day. Some sounds are loud enough to be impossible to block out. If police aren't interested in enforcing noise ordinances and your landlord isn't interested either because they're too busy trying not to repair the $12K a month water leak in the basement of the restaurant you live on top of, your only option is to move.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It's all relative, that is, your hearing and brain will adjust to how much ambient noise there is. Up to a point anyway, people go a bit mad if there's too much ambient noise (hence the article). Likewise when ambient noise goes away though. There's a challenge in a sound studio somewhere that blocks out pretty much all sound, challenge being how long you can last in complete silence. Supposedly you can hear your own blood flowing in there. It's also why people experience noise cancelling headphones as applying a 'pressure' when they first put them on; there is no pressure as such, but just the sudden absence of ambient noise their ears/brains are used to.

vessenes 2y ago

I too hate noise. That said, if you've ever spent some time far from human cities, you will notice there's plenty of noise out there, especially at night. There's probably some sort of evolutionary explanation about white noise vs startling noise etc. etc. but the main point is that it's noisy out there! In a very different way than city noise.

tayo42 2y ago
I used to go out to the mountains to stargaze, so pretty out there but people still lived there. Frequently there would be something like a dog barking for hours. I realized you really can't escape human bs noise.

morning-coffee 2y ago

> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult Maybe a result of human evolution? If our ears weren't as sensitive to sound as they are, we might not all be here discussing this.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
If you take that into consideration, loads of animals have even more sensitive hearing. Noise pollution is known (suggested?) to have a huge impact on nature as well, although iirc that's more about sudden noises, fireworks and the like.