5 ms·

A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Knows What's Causing It

72 points by ctoth 12y ago

devindotcom 12y ago
A Mysterious Sound that can't even be isolated or really called a "sound," since reports differ so greatly Is Driving People Insane the article itself does not make or substantiate this claim Nobody Knows What's Causing It because "it" may or may not be a new thing, a single thing, or even a thing
- opendais 12y ago
  Ya this seems like hyperbole. I clicked on it thinking it was that annoying sound from older TVs when they are just 'on' but nothing is play [no static, etc].
- DanBC 12y ago
  I'm not sure why you're so hostile to this. Perhaps I'm just misreading your words. Various "mysterious" noises are heard across the workd and cause problems for inhabitants. The noises are mysterious because it can be hard to work out what is causing the noise. Noise is used as a tool by torturers. Tinnitus can sometimes lead people to attempt suicide. It seems fair to suggest that an unstopping unexplained noise can cause extreme distress. I dislike the wording "driving people insane" because I work in de-stigmatising MH problems, but the meaning is clear. Here's an example of a mysterious noise from England. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/HUM-KNOW/story-20347005-detail/story.html http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/HUM-KNOW/story-20347005-detail/... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum EDIT -- I'd be interested to know what happens if they build a chamber that is provably isolated from "The Hum" and put sufferers inside it. Do those people still experience it? Even better if there's some kind of double blind way of isolating / not isolating the chamber from the Hum.
  - revelation 12y ago
    I think we can all agree on what you said. But I will not agree that there is one universal, external common cause for all these things, an elusive mystery. But this is what the article claims.
- personZ 12y ago
  My take away from the article is "environmental pollution is no fun": Noise pollution, particularly low frequencies that travel huge distances and through most materials, can be infuriating, especially if other people aren't as sensitive to it, making you seem overly sensitive. I can actually appreciate that it could test people's sanity over long periods of time. That part seems obvious and a given. The whole bit about radio waves... The article tries to bridge the two by claiming that the suspect furnace near Windsor is producing "VLF waves" (maybe they're adopting it to audio frequency, but given the other parts it seems like they're trying to bridge the radio thing), only it's actually creating low frequency acoustic waves, measured seismically. Just normal noise, carrying enormous distances and irritating people. Just as irritating as the guy in the Honda Civic with the giant subs playing rap music.
- dang 12y ago
  It's a linkbaity title, but I can't think of a better one. If someone else can, we're always happy to change things. (That offer holds for any story, btw. The best way to criticize a bad title is to suggest a better one.) The article itself seems fine for HN.
- cratermoon 12y ago
  12 reasons clickbaity headlines must die. You'll be shocked by this one trick that Obama hates!
anon4 12y ago
That map looks just like a population map of the USA and UK, plus assorted English speakers from western Europe. Combined with the fact that the sound seems to grow stronger indoors, I think the source is inside their own heads. Not in the sense that they're crazy, though. Maybe as people get older and their inner ear changes slightly, the signals that are being sent when everything is silent also change, but the brain doesn't. So they interpret the "silent" signal as "the hum". My first test would be stuffing their ears and putting them in a perfectly isolated acoustic chamber to see if they still hear it. I'm pretty sure they would.
- VikingCoder 12y ago
  Relevant XKCD ("Heatmap"): http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Yes, exactly. Every time I see one of these I wish they would plot the per-capita occurrences as a heat-map instead, which would actually be useful. (A bit more work sure, but certainly doable.)
    - VikingCoder 12y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=cartogram&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cartogram&tbm=isch
      - tempestn 12y ago
        Those are neat, but from what I can tell a cartogram is something different from what I'm describing. From wikipedia: "A cartogram is a map in which some thematic mapping variable – such as travel time, population, or Gross National Product – is substituted for land area or distance." So they're basically distorted maps, where the distortions are proportional to a variable. (It might help to include some explanation in your comment.)
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Hmmm, inner ear problems? Aren't VLF radio waves supposed to be very very weak energy-wise? Why would your body pick those.
- lutorm 12y ago
  No, the transmitters are extremely powerful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF_Transmitter_Cutler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF_Transmitter_Cutler says it was at some point the world's most powerful radio transmitter at 1.8MW. Actual field strength will of course depend in a complicated way on distance from the site and the propagation, but you'd think that if these sites were the source, there should be a strong concentration of cases around the transmitters.
  - Torgo 12y ago
    Presumably you could delocalize it with something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_... I realize that this is entering conspiracy theory territory, but generating VLF from a distance is one of the things this thing does.
    - lutorm 12y ago
      Ah, interesting. I hadn't heard about that before.
tempestn 12y ago
It's not clear to me why it's not straightforward to test these hypotheses. There are apparently plenty of hum sufferers out there, and it sounds like many would be happy to help with any testing that might isolate the source. There are also plenty of anechoic chambers and Faraday cages available. Seems like it would be relatively easy to test the two prevalent theories. You may not be able to pinpoint the exact source, but you could at least tell whether the hum in a given region was acoustic or electromagnetic in origin.
- dthunt 12y ago
  I wonder if you could get subjects who travel a lot to record, before going to sleep each night, in a secret journal they do not share with each other, about whether or not they experience a hum in any given location. If those journals substantially agreed, you might be able to get a clearer picture of what, if anything, is going on. If there is any sort of community built around a potentially hard to observe phenomenon, it's likely going to be a mess sorting out true stuff from false stuff.
  - boatzart 12y ago
    Why not just make a web site for this? If this really affects 2%-10% of the population, then it should be pretty easy to determine if the source is internal or external with enough data.
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Here's a start, just to see if that 2-10% figure looks reasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918694
graeme 12y ago
Is the Hum constant or sporadic? I've had an occasional rumbling in my left ear. It increases when on a cellphone or skype. Certain voices can also trigger it. I had assumed it was musculo-skeletal; it developed after a bike accident where I hurt the left part of my jaw. But if their hum is constant, it's definitely not what I'm hearing.
panarky 12y ago
Maybe the mysterious noise is from one's own living body, like what you hear when you put your fingers in your ears. In 1951, Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University... "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Background_and_influences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Backgrou...
- coldtea 12y ago
  That needa an anechoic chamber because it's so small, it would get drowned in normal noisy environment. Plus, allegedly they've been able to record the Hum in some cases.
mbell 12y ago
This article heavily confuses sound waves and EM waves in places. Just because they are both described in Hertz doesn't make them equivalent.
- lutorm 12y ago
  It's not very clearly stated, but they say the ELF radio waves may be able to excite nerves and hence be "sensed" by the body.
  - mbell 12y ago
    The author follows the intro to that topic (which says nothing about EM waves causing 'sound' I might add) by saying: Finally, there's a body of empirical evidence that makes this theory more appealing. A study funded by the Canadian government and led by University of Windsor mechanical engineering professor Dr. Colin Novak spent the last year listening to the "Windsor Hum" that's been torturing residents in the Windsor area of Ontario since 2011. If you read the intro to that paper, it's very clear that it was acoustical noise that was measured and likely to be caused by a blast furnace. So that study provides no evidence at all that EM waves are causing 'noise'. The author continues with: The study concluded that not only does the Windsor Hum actually exist, but its likely source was a blast furnace at the U.S. Steel plant on Zug Island, which reportedly generates a high volume of VLF waves during its hours of operation. The study did not find that the blast furnace was radiating VLF waves (VLF being a term limited to EM waves) but rather that it was emitting sound waves in the 30-35Hz range. 30-35Hz is the SLF EM range, so even if the author conflated the types of 'waves', I'm not sure where they got VLF from. And then: Dr. Novak's study caps off decades of Hum theories No, it really doesn't, it just found a loud blast furnace. Not to take anything away from the work needed, locating a sound source at frequencies that low in a complex environment isn't trivial.
    - lutorm 12y ago
      Ok, can't argue with that.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
logicallee 12y ago
The article was really hard for me to read, because the author just thinks so much differently from me. i.e. if an area is driving you mad, do you get instant relief if you leave the area? It could still be chemical / something in the air that makes you hallucinate, but not talking about such basic questions is just so different from how I think. the next most basic question is whether there are actually any physical sounds at any frequency - if microphones aren't sensitive enough at certain frequencies to tell us, then I would lead with that. If they're sensitive enough, but show nothing, then I would lead with that and then show a differential as to why it's not psychosomatic, or a chemical poison that gives you this effect, etc. I just found this article too different from how I think to read through.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >The article was really hard for me to read, because the author just thinks so much differently from me. i.e. if an area is driving you mad, do you get instant relief if you leave the area? It could still be chemical / something in the air that makes you hallucinate, but not talking about such basic questions is just so different from how I think. I asked that too, but some people like/love their cities, houses, relatives and friends and jobs. They don't just move on the first issue that happens.
vanderZwan 12y ago
While living in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands I experienced a Hum during some nights (I doubt that there is such a thing as the Hum - there's too many possible sources for low-frequency sounds). I have not had that issue before or after. However, in my case the most likely case is easy to pinpoint: the control centre for the Groningen gas field[0] was just a few blocks away from where I lived, and I expect that if they open or close a valve, that can cause some low-frequency whistling sounds that propagate through the ground. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field
asdkl234890 12y ago
Couldn't it just be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus As I get older, I hear some sounds I am certain are like tinnitus. It terrifies me because I love and need quiet. But so far I've been able to move around, create some other sounds, and the fake sound stops. But tinnitus is a disease of old age.
- andrey-p 12y ago
  That was my first thought too. I've got permanent tinnitus even though I'm in my mid-twenties (brought on due to headphone abuse when I was a teenager). It sounds more like a high-pitched tweee sound than a hum, but I've heard different people hear different sounds. Sorta OT, but I've actually been able to get some use out of my tinnitus. If there's background noise that's preventing me from falling asleep (but nothing too loud), I can purposefully focus on the sound of my tinnitus. It becomes more prominent and effectively drowns out the sound that keeps me awake.
  - ogig 12y ago
    I relate to the paradoxical utility of the tinnitus sound. For sleeping and meditation! it's like a never ending chant you can focus back whenever. I've also tried to use the hum as reference point to get perfect pitch earing, that is been able to tell if a note is a C, a F or whatever. Unfortunatly my tinnitus seems to be composed of several frequencies and out of tune. I can't make any use of it for musical purposes (yet).
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Just carry a pitchfork with you. Or a mobile app that can make any pitch at will!
  - flomo 12y ago
    I have the opposite problem. When I was young, I could hear all sorts of hums and whines (including one which came from a nearby Ford factory). But headphones and loud rock shows seemed have killed my low-end hearing.
jotux 12y ago
This is pretty interesting because I've been hearing a low-frequency hum for the last few years -- since moving into my current home. I only notice it at night, lying in bed when it is quiet. To me, it sounds like an idling car sitting within a few hundred feet of my house. At first, I suspected cops were sitting near my house (on a corner, near a stop sign) waiting for people to run the stop sign, but I never found any idling cars when I went to investigate. Fortunately I'm not bothered by it.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Freezer, airco or refrigerator. Probably contact sound from a pump or compressor in one of those. Don't be surprised if it ends up being very far away from where you're located, sound waves travel very well through solids.
BritishScifi 12y ago
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series) Soon people will start destroying all the machines!
joshu 12y ago
I hear this. I just assumed it was some internal thing that I could only hear when it's sufficiently quiet.
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
Around 50Hz... They're not hearing the hum of AC electricity, are they?
disputin 12y ago
I've experienced this. It's not tinnitus which is high pitched - this is low pitched. I could hear it best in a certain room, but not when I stuck my head out the window. It occurred over a period when the nearby overground tube line was being worked on. So I concluded it's industrial machinery causing low frequency vibrations which reverberate in certain acoustic configurations. And it's very, very annoying.
- personZ 12y ago
  reverberate in certain acoustic configurations This is a very important point. Low frequency noises can have a wavelength exactly the size of common rooms, yielding an unbearable amplification as the waves gang up with common peaks and troughs. http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm
Xcelerate 12y ago
I don't understand why this is such a big problem. 1) Locate someone suffering from the hum. 2) Take expensive pressure and sound equipment to their location. 3) Record all observable frequencies. 4) a) If nothing shows up, it's a personal biological problem. Direct problem toward medical professionals b) If something shows up on the frequency graph, identify the direction the sound is coming from (again using equipment that, you know, has been designed for this kind of thing and has been around for ages). 5) Follow sound, locate source. 6) Voilà, problem solved. Someone tell me why it's not that simple.
- logn 12y ago
  Items 4b and 5 might be hard. The sound is non-directional.
  - personZ 12y ago
    This caused issues in locating the Windsor hum, as mentioned in the article. It seems like it should be extremely easy to put up a couple of mics and narrow it down, but it ended up being a significant technical challenge involving a number of seismic detectors. Low frequency noise is a bitch.
  - rlx0x 12y ago
    Shouldn't you always be able to triangulate, that hardly sounds like a difficult problem in 2014.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Follow sound, locate source. You missed the part that it's a low frequency noise. Not very locatable those bastards.
- Xcelerate 12y ago
  I know you're not supposed to post about this, but I'm kind of curious if there is a particular user on HN that seems to have a grudge against my posts? Until recently, I have never gotten downvotes, and now it seems that I consistently get one on everything I post. The tone and style of my posts has not changed over the past year, so if I have somehow upset some user who is now revenge downvoting, I apologize.
anonymfus 12y ago
After reading this article I started to pay attention to all background noises and currently can not to sleep because of some strange rhythmic series of tone bursts.
coldtea 12y ago
>"It completely drains energy, causing stress and loss of sleep," a sufferer told a British newspaper in 1992. "I have been on tranquilizers and have lost count of the number of nights I have spent holding my head in my hands, crying and crying." Yeah, if it gets that bad, how about ...well, MOVING elsewhere?
burkeen 12y ago
Air Conditioner? Wind? Water? Heart?
burkeen 12y ago
Blood-pressure + or - sinus-congestion? Maybe some people begin to sub/consciously listen for their phone to buzz, vibrate or make a sound and notice the noise of air, static noise, computer fan hums, blood traveling inner ear? Their utilities run @ 50hz. Maybe there's a conflict with older and newer products manufactured from other countries? Maybe doppler radar. Maybe dead air space. Maybe they're not used to the sound of silence.
teilo 12y ago
They lost me when they tried to blame the Connecticut shootings on the "hum".

72 points by ctoth 12y ago

A Mysterious Sound that can't even be isolated or really called a "sound," since reports differ so greatly Is Driving People Insane the article itself does not make or substantiate this claim Nobody Knows What's Causing It because "it" may or may not be a new thing, a single thing, or even a thing

opendais 12y ago
Ya this seems like hyperbole. I clicked on it thinking it was that annoying sound from older TVs when they are just 'on' but nothing is play [no static, etc].
DanBC 12y ago
I'm not sure why you're so hostile to this. Perhaps I'm just misreading your words. Various "mysterious" noises are heard across the workd and cause problems for inhabitants. The noises are mysterious because it can be hard to work out what is causing the noise. Noise is used as a tool by torturers. Tinnitus can sometimes lead people to attempt suicide. It seems fair to suggest that an unstopping unexplained noise can cause extreme distress. I dislike the wording "driving people insane" because I work in de-stigmatising MH problems, but the meaning is clear. Here's an example of a mysterious noise from England. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/HUM-KNOW/story-20347005-detail/story.html http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/HUM-KNOW/story-20347005-detail/... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum EDIT -- I'd be interested to know what happens if they build a chamber that is provably isolated from "The Hum" and put sufferers inside it. Do those people still experience it? Even better if there's some kind of double blind way of isolating / not isolating the chamber from the Hum.
- revelation 12y ago
  I think we can all agree on what you said. But I will not agree that there is one universal, external common cause for all these things, an elusive mystery. But this is what the article claims.
personZ 12y ago
My take away from the article is "environmental pollution is no fun": Noise pollution, particularly low frequencies that travel huge distances and through most materials, can be infuriating, especially if other people aren't as sensitive to it, making you seem overly sensitive. I can actually appreciate that it could test people's sanity over long periods of time. That part seems obvious and a given. The whole bit about radio waves... The article tries to bridge the two by claiming that the suspect furnace near Windsor is producing "VLF waves" (maybe they're adopting it to audio frequency, but given the other parts it seems like they're trying to bridge the radio thing), only it's actually creating low frequency acoustic waves, measured seismically. Just normal noise, carrying enormous distances and irritating people. Just as irritating as the guy in the Honda Civic with the giant subs playing rap music.
dang 12y ago
It's a linkbaity title, but I can't think of a better one. If someone else can, we're always happy to change things. (That offer holds for any story, btw. The best way to criticize a bad title is to suggest a better one.) The article itself seems fine for HN.
cratermoon 12y ago
12 reasons clickbaity headlines must die. You'll be shocked by this one trick that Obama hates!

anon4 12y ago

That map looks just like a population map of the USA and UK, plus assorted English speakers from western Europe. Combined with the fact that the sound seems to grow stronger indoors, I think the source is inside their own heads. Not in the sense that they're crazy, though. Maybe as people get older and their inner ear changes slightly, the signals that are being sent when everything is silent also change, but the brain doesn't. So they interpret the "silent" signal as "the hum". My first test would be stuffing their ears and putting them in a perfectly isolated acoustic chamber to see if they still hear it. I'm pretty sure they would.

VikingCoder 12y ago
Relevant XKCD ("Heatmap"): http://xkcd.com/1138/ http://xkcd.com/1138/
- tempestn 12y ago
  Yes, exactly. Every time I see one of these I wish they would plot the per-capita occurrences as a heat-map instead, which would actually be useful. (A bit more work sure, but certainly doable.)
  - VikingCoder 12y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=cartogram&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cartogram&tbm=isch
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Those are neat, but from what I can tell a cartogram is something different from what I'm describing. From wikipedia: "A cartogram is a map in which some thematic mapping variable – such as travel time, population, or Gross National Product – is substituted for land area or distance." So they're basically distorted maps, where the distortions are proportional to a variable. (It might help to include some explanation in your comment.)

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Hmmm, inner ear problems? Aren't VLF radio waves supposed to be very very weak energy-wise? Why would your body pick those.

lutorm 12y ago
No, the transmitters are extremely powerful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF_Transmitter_Cutler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF_Transmitter_Cutler says it was at some point the world's most powerful radio transmitter at 1.8MW. Actual field strength will of course depend in a complicated way on distance from the site and the propagation, but you'd think that if these sites were the source, there should be a strong concentration of cases around the transmitters.
- Torgo 12y ago
  Presumably you could delocalize it with something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_... I realize that this is entering conspiracy theory territory, but generating VLF from a distance is one of the things this thing does.
  - lutorm 12y ago
    Ah, interesting. I hadn't heard about that before.

tempestn 12y ago

It's not clear to me why it's not straightforward to test these hypotheses. There are apparently plenty of hum sufferers out there, and it sounds like many would be happy to help with any testing that might isolate the source. There are also plenty of anechoic chambers and Faraday cages available. Seems like it would be relatively easy to test the two prevalent theories. You may not be able to pinpoint the exact source, but you could at least tell whether the hum in a given region was acoustic or electromagnetic in origin.

dthunt 12y ago
I wonder if you could get subjects who travel a lot to record, before going to sleep each night, in a secret journal they do not share with each other, about whether or not they experience a hum in any given location. If those journals substantially agreed, you might be able to get a clearer picture of what, if anything, is going on. If there is any sort of community built around a potentially hard to observe phenomenon, it's likely going to be a mess sorting out true stuff from false stuff.
- boatzart 12y ago
  Why not just make a web site for this? If this really affects 2%-10% of the population, then it should be pretty easy to determine if the source is internal or external with enough data.
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Here's a start, just to see if that 2-10% figure looks reasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918694

graeme 12y ago

Is the Hum constant or sporadic? I've had an occasional rumbling in my left ear. It increases when on a cellphone or skype. Certain voices can also trigger it. I had assumed it was musculo-skeletal; it developed after a bike accident where I hurt the left part of my jaw. But if their hum is constant, it's definitely not what I'm hearing.

panarky 12y ago

Maybe the mysterious noise is from one's own living body, like what you hear when you put your fingers in your ears. In 1951, Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University... "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Background_and_influences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Backgrou...

coldtea 12y ago
That needa an anechoic chamber because it's so small, it would get drowned in normal noisy environment. Plus, allegedly they've been able to record the Hum in some cases.

mbell 12y ago

This article heavily confuses sound waves and EM waves in places. Just because they are both described in Hertz doesn't make them equivalent.

lutorm 12y ago
It's not very clearly stated, but they say the ELF radio waves may be able to excite nerves and hence be "sensed" by the body.
- mbell 12y ago
  The author follows the intro to that topic (which says nothing about EM waves causing 'sound' I might add) by saying: Finally, there's a body of empirical evidence that makes this theory more appealing. A study funded by the Canadian government and led by University of Windsor mechanical engineering professor Dr. Colin Novak spent the last year listening to the "Windsor Hum" that's been torturing residents in the Windsor area of Ontario since 2011. If you read the intro to that paper, it's very clear that it was acoustical noise that was measured and likely to be caused by a blast furnace. So that study provides no evidence at all that EM waves are causing 'noise'. The author continues with: The study concluded that not only does the Windsor Hum actually exist, but its likely source was a blast furnace at the U.S. Steel plant on Zug Island, which reportedly generates a high volume of VLF waves during its hours of operation. The study did not find that the blast furnace was radiating VLF waves (VLF being a term limited to EM waves) but rather that it was emitting sound waves in the 30-35Hz range. 30-35Hz is the SLF EM range, so even if the author conflated the types of 'waves', I'm not sure where they got VLF from. And then: Dr. Novak's study caps off decades of Hum theories No, it really doesn't, it just found a loud blast furnace. Not to take anything away from the work needed, locating a sound source at frequencies that low in a complex environment isn't trivial.
  - lutorm 12y ago
    Ok, can't argue with that.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago

logicallee 12y ago

The article was really hard for me to read, because the author just thinks so much differently from me. i.e. if an area is driving you mad, do you get instant relief if you leave the area? It could still be chemical / something in the air that makes you hallucinate, but not talking about such basic questions is just so different from how I think. the next most basic question is whether there are actually any physical sounds at any frequency - if microphones aren't sensitive enough at certain frequencies to tell us, then I would lead with that. If they're sensitive enough, but show nothing, then I would lead with that and then show a differential as to why it's not psychosomatic, or a chemical poison that gives you this effect, etc. I just found this article too different from how I think to read through.

coldtea 12y ago
>The article was really hard for me to read, because the author just thinks so much differently from me. i.e. if an area is driving you mad, do you get instant relief if you leave the area? It could still be chemical / something in the air that makes you hallucinate, but not talking about such basic questions is just so different from how I think. I asked that too, but some people like/love their cities, houses, relatives and friends and jobs. They don't just move on the first issue that happens.

vanderZwan 12y ago

While living in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands I experienced a Hum during some nights (I doubt that there is such a thing as the Hum - there's too many possible sources for low-frequency sounds). I have not had that issue before or after. However, in my case the most likely case is easy to pinpoint: the control centre for the Groningen gas field[0] was just a few blocks away from where I lived, and I expect that if they open or close a valve, that can cause some low-frequency whistling sounds that propagate through the ground. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field

asdkl234890 12y ago

Couldn't it just be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus As I get older, I hear some sounds I am certain are like tinnitus. It terrifies me because I love and need quiet. But so far I've been able to move around, create some other sounds, and the fake sound stops. But tinnitus is a disease of old age.

andrey-p 12y ago
That was my first thought too. I've got permanent tinnitus even though I'm in my mid-twenties (brought on due to headphone abuse when I was a teenager). It sounds more like a high-pitched tweee sound than a hum, but I've heard different people hear different sounds. Sorta OT, but I've actually been able to get some use out of my tinnitus. If there's background noise that's preventing me from falling asleep (but nothing too loud), I can purposefully focus on the sound of my tinnitus. It becomes more prominent and effectively drowns out the sound that keeps me awake.
- ogig 12y ago
  I relate to the paradoxical utility of the tinnitus sound. For sleeping and meditation! it's like a never ending chant you can focus back whenever. I've also tried to use the hum as reference point to get perfect pitch earing, that is been able to tell if a note is a C, a F or whatever. Unfortunatly my tinnitus seems to be composed of several frequencies and out of tune. I can't make any use of it for musical purposes (yet).
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Just carry a pitchfork with you. Or a mobile app that can make any pitch at will!
- flomo 12y ago
  I have the opposite problem. When I was young, I could hear all sorts of hums and whines (including one which came from a nearby Ford factory). But headphones and loud rock shows seemed have killed my low-end hearing.

jotux 12y ago

This is pretty interesting because I've been hearing a low-frequency hum for the last few years -- since moving into my current home. I only notice it at night, lying in bed when it is quiet. To me, it sounds like an idling car sitting within a few hundred feet of my house. At first, I suspected cops were sitting near my house (on a corner, near a stop sign) waiting for people to run the stop sign, but I never found any idling cars when I went to investigate. Fortunately I'm not bothered by it.

jacquesm 12y ago
Freezer, airco or refrigerator. Probably contact sound from a pump or compressor in one of those. Don't be surprised if it ends up being very far away from where you're located, sound waves travel very well through solids.

BritishScifi 12y ago

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changes_(TV_series) Soon people will start destroying all the machines!

joshu 12y ago

I hear this. I just assumed it was some internal thing that I could only hear when it's sufficiently quiet.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

Around 50Hz... They're not hearing the hum of AC electricity, are they?

disputin 12y ago

I've experienced this. It's not tinnitus which is high pitched - this is low pitched. I could hear it best in a certain room, but not when I stuck my head out the window. It occurred over a period when the nearby overground tube line was being worked on. So I concluded it's industrial machinery causing low frequency vibrations which reverberate in certain acoustic configurations. And it's very, very annoying.

personZ 12y ago
reverberate in certain acoustic configurations This is a very important point. Low frequency noises can have a wavelength exactly the size of common rooms, yielding an unbearable amplification as the waves gang up with common peaks and troughs. http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

Xcelerate 12y ago

I don't understand why this is such a big problem. 1) Locate someone suffering from the hum. 2) Take expensive pressure and sound equipment to their location. 3) Record all observable frequencies. 4) a) If nothing shows up, it's a personal biological problem. Direct problem toward medical professionals b) If something shows up on the frequency graph, identify the direction the sound is coming from (again using equipment that, you know, has been designed for this kind of thing and has been around for ages). 5) Follow sound, locate source. 6) Voilà, problem solved. Someone tell me why it's not that simple.

logn 12y ago
Items 4b and 5 might be hard. The sound is non-directional.
- personZ 12y ago
  This caused issues in locating the Windsor hum, as mentioned in the article. It seems like it should be extremely easy to put up a couple of mics and narrow it down, but it ended up being a significant technical challenge involving a number of seismic detectors. Low frequency noise is a bitch.
- rlx0x 12y ago
  Shouldn't you always be able to triangulate, that hardly sounds like a difficult problem in 2014.
coldtea 12y ago
>Follow sound, locate source. You missed the part that it's a low frequency noise. Not very locatable those bastards.
Xcelerate 12y ago
I know you're not supposed to post about this, but I'm kind of curious if there is a particular user on HN that seems to have a grudge against my posts? Until recently, I have never gotten downvotes, and now it seems that I consistently get one on everything I post. The tone and style of my posts has not changed over the past year, so if I have somehow upset some user who is now revenge downvoting, I apologize.

anonymfus 12y ago

After reading this article I started to pay attention to all background noises and currently can not to sleep because of some strange rhythmic series of tone bursts.

coldtea 12y ago

>"It completely drains energy, causing stress and loss of sleep," a sufferer told a British newspaper in 1992. "I have been on tranquilizers and have lost count of the number of nights I have spent holding my head in my hands, crying and crying." Yeah, if it gets that bad, how about ...well, MOVING elsewhere?

burkeen 12y ago

Air Conditioner? Wind? Water? Heart?

burkeen 12y ago

Blood-pressure + or - sinus-congestion? Maybe some people begin to sub/consciously listen for their phone to buzz, vibrate or make a sound and notice the noise of air, static noise, computer fan hums, blood traveling inner ear? Their utilities run @ 50hz. Maybe there's a conflict with older and newer products manufactured from other countries? Maybe doppler radar. Maybe dead air space. Maybe they're not used to the sound of silence.

teilo 12y ago

They lost me when they tried to blame the Connecticut shootings on the "hum".