
There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why - fmihaila
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/world/canada/windsor-hum.html
======
blunte
As one who can hear these sounds, I can attest to how maddening it is. It's
even worse when (most of) the people around you can't hear it, and they don't
believe you.

Earplugs only make it worse, because they filter out ambient noise that
otherwise helps distract you from the incessant hum. Daytime is not as bad as
night because of the natural activity sounds of a city.

I have read that waves and underwater currents hitting the shore (or below the
shore) can cause vibrations that will translate through the earth. That could
be a cause of such sounds in some parts of the world.

When I lived in the mountains of Colorado, with few people around and no
industrial equipment anywhere, this hum would come and go and drive me nuts at
night. I finally came to the theory that it was certain wind conditions going
over the mountain ridge (across the valley), creating a pressure differential
on the other side of the ridge. After the differential would reach a certain
threshold, the air pattern would break up and create a _pooof_. This is sort
of like if you are sitting in front of a campfire and the flame is going
mostly on just one side of a log, but every second or so it breaks around both
sides. The sound is identical, but singular. Although if it happens at a fast
enough rhythm, it becomes a frequency that sounds very similar to a "hum". Of
course the fire burns the wood and the conditions that make that happen change
soon.

I have wondered what kind of measurement equipment it would take to try to
identify the source... triangulate it somehow. I really wish I knew the
definitive answers to some of these hums.

~~~
Johnythree
I was plagued by the Hum for years. At times it became astonishingly loud. But
I was able (eventually) to figure it out.

Short version: I made many attempts to track it down. Used low frequency
Microphones, filters, amplifiers, etc, as well as PC Spectrogram programs to
try and and visualise and record it. Visited many nearby industries etc to try
and find it. But none of my attempts did any good.

As I'm a Radio Engineer I spent ages experimenting with VLF Receivers,
Spectrum Analysers, etc.

One thing I noticed however was that the Hum was much worse when I was living
in a quiet rural area.

One night however, I noticed that I could affect the hum by doing the swallow
maneuver that divers use to equalise ear pressure. I slowly came to understand
that my Hum was an internally generated sound.

Apparently there are various possible mechanisms: The simplest is blood flow
near the ear. But also the tiny hairs in the ear canal actually have tiny
muscles which cause feed-back or "regeneration" to make our ears more
sensitive, and the frequency response of each hair cell much sharper. However
at times, this regeneration can slip over into actual Oscillation.

This ability of the ear to actually generate sounds is well documented. It can
actually be loud enough for a Doctor or a partner to hear. It's called
Objective tinnitus.

In my case, the Hum eventually disappeared and has never returned. I suspect
that it coincided with a change in blood pressure medication, but I can't be
sure.

Looking back, I would suggest that it may be worth trying to amplify the
sounds via a set of high-quality earphones and appropriate filters, etc, using
the headphones as microphones.

~~~
Double_a_92
I can produce noise in my ears on command. It sounds like loud, low-pitched
white noise.

I'm not sure what exactly im doing, but it feels like im contracting some
muscle inside my head near the temples.

Is this normal and could this be something similar?

~~~
MzHN
I don't know the correct terms here, but there is a path from your throat to
your ears that is normally closed. When you swallow or yawn the paths usually
open, but some people can voluntarily open them.

When you do it, you can hear a low humming, but also sounds through your
mouth. Maybe this is what you mean?

It's clearer if you're wearing for example hearing protection, and open your
mouth and the paths.

~~~
gebeeson
The path from your throat to your ears is called the Eustachian tube.

------
blattimwind
A few years ago they drilled for gas a few kilometers outside the city (about
3 km from my house) — this caused a faint humming noise that seemed to come
from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Stand still in a room, hear the
noise. Lie down, cover your ears, hear the noise. Put earplugs in, hear the
noise. Hugely annoying if you're the kind of person that doesn't sleep well
with such nuisances.

Boy was I happy when they were done drilling.

Most interestingly, just a month ago they finished drilling for gas much more
closely, right at the edge of the city, not even a kilometer from my house. I
didn't hear anything.

My working theory here is that in the former case it was a drilling at a new
location, so they must have induced vibrations into the bedrock layers that
all the houses here are built on. While in the latter case there was an
abandoned operation at the same spot - perhaps they re-used the hole and just
drilled it deeper.

~~~
EGreg
How does one eliminate the noise?

One of those sensory deprivation chambers?

Audio insulation?

~~~
blunte
There is nothing to insulate against these large, low frequency waves. They
penetrate solid rock. Perhaps enough water could absorb the waves and
dissipate them, but that's not really an option.

~~~
astrodust
When doing laser holography the standard practice is to build a large, heavy
bed, like a sturdy wooden frame filled with dry sand, and lay that on top of
something that absorbs vibrations like a series of tires and inner tubes.

That usually does a good job of sponging up any low-frequency vibrations so
long as you don't have any harmonic issues.

If you were battling a persistent hum you'd have to engineer the floors in
your house to be floating in this fashion, if not the entire house.

------
Waterluvian
Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to:
comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you
can't really do that.

I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

~~~
vlasev
Replace "comment out" by "turn off the electricity for" and maybe we can
binary search it.

~~~
asaph
Your implicit assumption is that the hum is caused by something electrical;
i.e. not a diesel engine or some natural cause.

~~~
Untit1ed
Then we can turn off the electricity for the whole town and see if it stops!
:D

~~~
incompatible
"The University of Windsor report said the hum’s likely source was blast
furnace operations on Zug Island" ... which is over the border in the United
States.

Cutting off the power to that island would be a good thing to try, but
apparently the US is uncooperative.

------
schlowmo
We can put Hamburg (Germany) on the list of "humming cities" too. When I moved
close to the harbour I started hearing a humming sound, espececially at night,
almost exclusively indoors.

None of my flatmates heard that sound, so I started questioning my perception
until I found another person living in the same building hearing that sound.
Our bedrooms are located one below the other and the sound is most perceivable
in that rooms, but we can hear that sound at other places inside the building
too while others can not.

Some time later, articles in various local newspapers about that hum appeared
(search for "Brummen Hamburg" if you're interested, unfortunately only
articles in german), telling stories about various people along the river
"Elbe" hearing that hum. I started reading about the Windsor and Bristol hum
that time too.

A local politician started investigating that issue together with scientist
from a technical university but - besides some theories (e.g. a big power
plant) which couldn't be proven - with no success. The acousticians where
cited that some of them could hear the hum at various places too, but in terms
of sound level they couldn't measure it distincly from the "general"
background noises of the city (with harbour, industry and much highway
traffic).

In the last few years there wasn't much news about it but the hum is still
there in varying intensity and duration.

~~~
asclepi
Is a hum not more or less expected in the vicinity of busy harbors, even more
so than in general industrial areas? Harbors attract a lot of possible sources
that could cause a hum: maritime equipment, ship engines, generators,
industrial equipment, large refrigerators (in containers or in warehouses),
...

You may want to read about the Kokomo, IN "hum" investigation which was traced
back to an industrial source [1].

[1] [http://www.le-bruit.com/easy-media/kokomo_hum_report.pdf](http://www.le-
bruit.com/easy-media/kokomo_hum_report.pdf)

~~~
schlowmo
> Is a hum not more or less expected in the vicinity of busy harbors, even
> more so than in general industrial areas?

You're absolutely right, but there are different types of hums and many of
them you can directly be linked to a source. Just to name the two loudest in
my direct neighbourhood:

* Some kind of ships at slow speeds make very loud humming sounds. The loudest in my expirience are big car carriers (to be specific: Grimaldi carriers in Hamburg). The sound is very unsettling since it's at such a low frequency, that it's more "feeling" than "hearing". But the good thing is that it's over after the ship passes by.

* Some procedures in the nearby ship repair dock are very unsettling too. Especially sandblasting ship hulls is very annoying and for some reasons they mainly do it at night.

But the most distracting hum of which I was talking about in my parent comment
has yet to be linked to a specific source. And it lasts much longer than my
other examples, typically for days. So it has to be something which is
produced only in specific conditions. This doesn't mean that this is ruling
out all of your examples (e.g. large refrigerators could only be in use when
the storage capacity is needed, it could be specific vessels etc.).

------
trowway21
I take prescription stimulants for APD, audio processing disorder; whatever
that actually is.. For me, I have difficulty hearing people talk and focusing
when exposed to multiple or dynamic background noises.. Basically it's a
failure of autonomous filtering or prioritizing of sounds.

I was on Belle Isle last year, two times, which is a few hundred meters from
Windsor, and the sound was extremely soothing for whatever reason.. I spent
days on end thinking and reaearching. I finally attributed the sound to some
sort of tunnel boring machinery. There are a handful of salt mines in windsor,
which i discovered after seeing more than the two tunnels I was aware of,
between Detroit and Windsor, in the river, on Google Earth.

I am in the habit of identifying every sound that I am exposed to
consistently, which I noticed when I bought a new house. After moving I
diligently inspected my HVAC system, computer fans, appliances, which
neighbors parked where, and how hard they slammed their doors, etc. Not only
do I identify every sound, but I also actively recognize and consider every
combination of sounds.(neighbor1.carDoorSlam sounds different when my furnace
is on, or furnace+fridge compressor, for example.) Once I know for certain
what a sound is, I can identify it immediately, and continue with my current
activity knowing that it was just some irrelevant, petty routine happening.

I can't imagine enduring a sound like that for long, while knowing I am unable
to identify it; I was able to convince myself that it was due to tunnel
boring; but I seldom am reminded of the sound and never disturbed by it, since
I don't live in the area..

~~~
kbart
Were there any ships around? Last year I had vacation in Malta and I could
barely sleep due to constant, low, barely noticeable noise. I have attributed
it to the ship engines, as there were many of them around and couldn't find
better explanation (tried to turn off every appliance and sleep in different
room with no avail).

------
throwaway613834
I'm listening to this right now [1] and (for those of you who don't have a
chance to hear it right now) it definitely isn't what I would call a "hum"...
that's way too gentle and not bass enough to describe this sound. I'd call it
more like low-frequency rumbling (though that's probably not a perfect word
for it either).

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDILKQjJW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDILKQjJW8)

~~~
blfr
It's actually a not unpleasant brown noise-like sound. At least that's how it
comes out of my hifi. Over bluetooth and after YouTube compression so perhaps
high fidelity isn't the right term.

~~~
throwaway613834
I'm not sure... for me the unfiltered version was annoying but bearable for a
bit... but I could see getting driven mad by it after a while. The filtered
version was so bad that it almost made me wonder if I'm going to damage my
ears, so I stopped listening to it halfway. I was using decent BT headphones
so I'm not sure if that makes any difference... it may depend on how decent
your speakers are at playing 30-40 Hz.

(Side note: Does BT audio do some kind of lossy compression? Why is it
relevant that you mentioned it here?)

~~~
blfr
Exactly, BT audio uses lossy compression. There are several codecs available
but I'm on Linux and the receiver is pretty old so it's probably the weakest
of them: SBC.

The filtered sound is pretty bad, yes, dread inducing.

~~~
throwaway613834
Thanks! I had no idea.

~~~
throwaway613834
Update: For what it's worth, I just tried it with wired headphones (again, a
decent pair) and they don't sound different as far as I can tell, so BT
compression doesn't seem to be having any observable effects.

------
danans
As a kid I remember going past the area around Zug Island on a boat.

I have a distinct memory of the huge stacks billowing yellow smoke, and the
twists of ductwork forming structures that look like hellish versions of the
buildings from a Dr Seuss story [1][2]. It was simultaneously amazing and
terrifying, and I couldn't take my eyes off it until it passed out of view.

Years later I'd learn about how poorer neighborhoods were in the shadows of
and downwind of such places.

I don't know if this place is uniquely terrible or this is the invariable cost
of steel production. But I imagine this sort of thing is common in the
industrializing world today, where a lot of steel is produced. Is there an
example of a "better" way to make steel?

[1]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsgeorge/3705474769](https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsgeorge/3705474769)

[2] [http://rebelmetropolis.org/a-hellscape-among-the-ruins-
zug-i...](http://rebelmetropolis.org/a-hellscape-among-the-ruins-zug-island/)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
A friend of mine showed me this book:

\- [https://smile.amazon.com/Blast-Furnaces-Bernd-
Becher/dp/0262...](https://smile.amazon.com/Blast-Furnaces-Bernd-
Becher/dp/0262023113/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_g3499214182?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&ie=UTF8)

The photos are 'impeccable' art, but the subjects are definitely 'awful'.
Along with looking at a series of photos of mills, I gained a much better
appreciation for the visceral disgust people have (historically) had about
'industry'. They truly look like outposts of Evil.

------
acomjean
We had a "hum" sound in cambridge MA. Its one of those sounds when you walk
through you don't think anything of it, but if you live near it.... (I was one
of the lucky as I couldn't hear it from my bedroom). Incredibly hard to track
down, it was determined to be Fans on top of a building. And it was fixed.

The sound bounces around so much, just walking around I couldn't pinpoint it
on a couple nights of trying. Its wierd to hear it, but not be able to
determine direction. The city figured it out.

~~~
throwaway613834
How did they figure it out?

~~~
acomjean
I think the city inspector had a sound meter and an idea of what changed..

------
Steve44
I'm not sure it's related to these humming reports but there is a lot more
ambient noise than most people appreciate.

I live about five miles from Heathrow airport. Occasionally I will have planes
taking off over our house which is fairly loud and sometimes I can hear them
powering up and taking off - that's quiet and distant and I can't always hear
it.

When the Icelandic volcano closed the airspace a few years ago I was stuck by
how quiet it was outside. Not just the lack of identifiable take-off noises
but I became aware there had been an imperceptible continuous rumble. This
came back when the airspace opened.

There are always aircraft in the skies, I presume this low level noise is the
culmination of many distant jet engines.

~~~
asclepi
Would "the hum" not be noticed in a lot more areas if it were caused by jet
engines?

Note that there is some variance in the volume of air traffic: weekend nights
tend to be a lot slower than weeknights. Same for Christmas Day (and the night
before and after). If "the hum" was caused by jet engines, this variance
should be noticed too. The risk of misattribution is considerable, however, as
industrial and other activities also tend to wind down during weekends and
holidays.

~~~
Steve44
> Would "the hum" not be noticed in a lot more areas if it were caused by jet
> engines?

Yes, I agree hence the way I worded the starting of the comment. It was more
an observation that there is a lot more noise going on than is immediately
obvious and noticeable.

Regarding these hums some people are reporting, given that they say ear plugs
if anything increase the effect I think it is likely internally generated like
the various causes of tinnitus. Possibly some infra-sound/vibration is
directly detectable by some people in a similar way to magmatism is by some
animals and supposedly some people. A second thought is it could be triggering
/ resonating something in the ear so you are physically hearing the sounds,
like when you rub your eyes you see flashes. Thirdly perhaps it is purely
psychological.

I've not read much about the hum phenomena and not knowingly personally
experienced it my thoughts are just that, thoughts.

------
ocdtrekkie
Three people so far have suggested in the comments here it should be "easy" to
triangulate it. Note that according to Zug Island's Wikipedia page, "As of
April 2013, a Canadian scientist is using sound-level meters and a portable
"pentangular array" of cameras and microphones to try to precisely identify
the source of the sound, in order to know whom exactly to ask to fix it" and
that "the City Council had already spent over $1 million to help Windsor and
Ontario find the source of the noise".

I think there's a bit of armchairing going on here, in that people are
definitely trying the obvious already.

~~~
narrator
They can triangulate it unless... (puts on tinfoil hat) ... the hum is coming
from under the city.

~~~
pixl97
No tinfoil hat needed. It is very possible for some machine at the steel
factory to have foundations in a slab of deeper bedrock that becomes more
shallow where the noise is more prevalent. The noise would just come from
'everywhere'

------
loorinm
I don't buy it at all. The article takes a very strangely sympathetic tone
toward the whole situation.

The noise has been narrowed down to one island that has "a few blasting
operations". So stop the operations and see if the hum goes away. Then have
each one restart one at a time. Or bo binary search, whatever. It doesn't
matter.

The obvious takeaway here is that the city/state/province does not care. They
are too deep in the pockets of those industries to make any waves at all.

Government has so little power to do anything. They are just the paid
legitimizers of the corporations.

~~~
mcbutterbunz
It's complicated by the fact that United States Steel is in the US, whereas
Windsor is in Canada. It's not just a local government issue, it's an
international issue.

~~~
loorinm
I am sure there are tons of examples of cross-border nuisances. Probably since
the beginning of borders. This is not a new issue.

------
vonzep
And trust me it's damn annoying, it's nothing ear plugs can't take care of but
damn if it isn't enough to slowly drive you insane

~~~
racl101
Wonder if you can train yourself to ignore it.

The same way some fucked up people train themselves to ignore smoke detector
chirps. I've known a couple of these people in my life. They managed to live
with a chirping detector for weeks on end and when you bring it up they think
you're making mountains out of molehills.

~~~
egypturnash
My experience is that it’s pretty damn hard. SOMETHING is generating a low
frequency hum that I can hear in my bedroom in Seattle; in fact I’m in there’s
hearing it right now. It’s been going since somewhere last summer. I hear it
every night and it’s still maddening.

~~~
hbosch
The West Seattle Hum is what I heard it called, but it seems to reach all
around Seattle[0]. I can't hear it, but many people do.

0\. [http://knkx.org/post/mysterious-hum-keeping-west-seattle-
nig...](http://knkx.org/post/mysterious-hum-keeping-west-seattle-night)

~~~
egypturnash
The one from 2012 was found and fixed:
[http://westseattleblog.com/2012/12/the-hum-followup-
calportl...](http://westseattleblog.com/2012/12/the-hum-followup-calportland-
installs-second-silencer-hopes-thats-the-fix/)

This one started in Summer 2016 and is going 24-7. The only times I've stopped
hearing it is when I've gone on vacation; I really need to move. But finding a
new place in Seattle is kind of a nightmare right now, and moving to a new
city is not without its own complications!

------
subroutine
The World Hum Map and Database Project

[http://www.thehum.info](http://www.thehum.info)

------
tachyoff
Now I am deeply curious! I’m a Detroiter and Zug Island is a quick drive
south. Is it audible from the US side? I have a passport, but “I want to hear
the Windsor hum” might not, unfortunately, fly at the border anymore.

~~~
perlgeek
Now _I_ am curious: do you really need to state a reason to pass a border? In
Europe, when you don't need a visa, you simply cross the border, no questions
asked.

And if somebody asked me anyway, I'd just say "I want to visit the town. I'm
curious."

~~~
tachyoff
Welcome to the lovely United States. ;) Since 9-11, border security,
especially returning to the US, has gotten extremely paranoid. At all three
spots between Michigan and Canada (the Ambassador Bridge, the tunnel, and the
crossing in Sarnia), everyone is stopped and questioned by border agents if
they don’t have some kind of automatic pass that requires clearance ahead of
time. You’re asked a lot of questions, like where you’re going, whom you
expect to see, how much money you have, how long you expect to be there (in
Canada; probably similar for visiting the US), etc. Going into Canada seems to
be easier, although it really depends on how that border agent is feeling that
day. All of my times so far have been relatively painless: “Why are you
visiting?” <I state reason> “Oh, okay. Enjoy Canada!” It’s a crapshoot.
Sometimes they search your car.

I have to say, I do miss the Schengen area. Going from the Netherlands to
Germany was a breeze.

~~~
KSS42
Time to get a Nexus pass. It really is worth it.

------
hawktheslayer
One of my favorite podcasts, _Twenty Thousand Hertz_ , did a whole episode on
this:

[https://www.20k.org/episodes/mystery](https://www.20k.org/episodes/mystery)

~~~
Odenwaelder
I just listened to the podcast, really great, thanks for the recommendation!

------
jedberg
It seems like a sensor array across the city of just a few sensors could help
detect the source. Using microsecond differences in the arrival of the sound,
you could at least tell what direction it is coming from.

~~~
lokopodium
Sometimes it's not that easy. Imagine a swimming pool right after a lot of
people got out. Where are the waves coming from?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
The pool.

And yeah, we're vastly over simplifying. Imagine all the reflections and
refractions that an urban center would introduce.

------
chicob
I witnessed something similar some years ago, in Lisbon.

Our living room had a window facing the street, and sometimes one could hear a
low pitch humming noise that made that window shake. The first time it
happened I remember wondering who would leave a delivery truck in neutral for
so long.

It was really annoying, especially because when I opened the window, there
wasn't a car parked outside - everything was silent. Until you listened
carefully, only to confirm the hum was still there, seemingly at a distance.

So the window was reverberating to the hum. But where did it come from? Across
the street there is a military academy, so I guessed the obvious guess:
military experiments, of course!

The problem with that guess was that under closer inspection, the noise didn't
really seem to come from that direction. Usually, one could only hear it in
the afternoon, but the hum was present all week round - and around there only
the military worked weekends. But it just looked it came from in between some
trees far away. So I guessed differently: a big air conditioning system, some
large boat, a generator in some construction yard, a concrete mixer...

The hum's amplitude would slightly vary, and the window would just hum along
or even rattle annoyingly sometimes. So I guessed that if wind was a factor in
modulating the hum's intensity, it would be relatively far away. Either that
or it was coming from a moving source.

One day the hum simply stopped. I never found out was was behind it.

------
sideshowb
Out of interest, how do we know it's not a common but undocumented form of
tinnitus? Perhaps one that is more likely to present in certain weather
conditions, so people's complaints will correlate?

I live near Bristol, which also has a hum, and I may have heard it but my own
presumption would be hearing damage, as I don't think I've looked after my
ears as well as I should have. And that would go for a lot of Bristol
residents too... good music scene there!

~~~
perlgeek
> Out of interest, how do we know it's not a common but undocumented form of
> tinnitus?

I get the impression you can measure the sounds waves just fine, the folks
investigating it just have a problem locating it. Which can happen if the
noise doesn't come from a point source, and/or its wave form features aren't
well suitable for tracking.

------
fab1an
Sound is such a context-dependent experience. I vividly remember taking a walk
with my parents in the Alps through the most pristine landscape. It was
beautiful, except for the annoying sounds of a nearby highway. A few minutes
later, we expected to see that highway across one hill, but were astonished to
find a glorious waterfall. The instant we saw the water, the experience of the
sound was transformed to something entirely beautiful.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
The similar experience but with taste, or the tactile sensations of food, is
even worse for me. I've never noticed this with sound that I can remember.

------
trophycase
Related?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

~~~
jwilk
Non-mobile link:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

------
ficklepickle
Is it possible that what people are hearing is a resonant frequency from the
low-frequency vibrations?

It could even be causing the bones in their heads to resonate, like how those
kids toothbrushes that make you hear music[1] work.

That would explain the difficulty in locating the source.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_Tunes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_Tunes)

------
darrenf
A few years ago there was reportedly a persistent hum where I live in
Surbiton, Surrey, UK. There was a thread on a residents message board[0] that
escalated only as far as the local rag, and the council issuing noise
diaries[1]. What disappointed me the most is that despite living in almost the
epicentre of where the complaints were made, I never heard a damn thing.

[0] [https://surbiton.com/forum/surbiton-background-
hummmmmmmm](https://surbiton.com/forum/surbiton-background-hummmmmmmm) [1]
[http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10999038.Mysterious_...](http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10999038.Mysterious_humming_sound_leaves_residents_baffled___council_issues_noise_diaries/)

------
peter303
Seismologists now have some tricks for locating hum sources. Standard
earthquakes have an impulsive start. So with four or more seismograms you can
triangulate for the unknowns x, y, z and t0. Hum noises dont have an
definitive starting time. But a version of seismology called inferometry can
find the origin. You basically cross correlate all pairs of seismograms with
signals. The peak lags define a hyperbolic wavefront you can invert for the
origin. This method has been used to find submarines. To look volcanic tremors
which have now clear start. And Earth hum which often seems associated with
large oceanic storms.

A seismologist would probably deploy seismomters in a wide distribution near
the hum area. Then record continuously for about a week. And finally use
inferometry to locate the source(s).

~~~
Johnythree
Interferometry can't handle reflected sounds from more than a wavelength away.

------
stealthefocus
I lived through this when i went to the University of Windsor, it's hard to
describe to people it doesn't bother. The hum would keep me up and my
girlfriend at the time almost never noticed. It was like being at a loud
concert where you can feel the vibrations in your chest.

------
Uplink
Did everybody get a takeaway shop's fan duct stuck to their wall like at my
last rented flat?

It took me ages to understand why I was so stressed out until one evening I
noticed things going peaceful all of a sudden. After that I became aware that
the fan was running continuously from early morning to late evening, so I set
to move out as soon as my term was over. Now I'm noticing that the building AC
at the office is making the exact same low frequency, low amplitude hum when
it's on and I get the exact same sensation of relief when it goes off.

Now, when I look at property, I also look for fan ducts on the walls. I also
just realised that I should be looking for fan ducts inside walls if there's
AC too...

------
ggm
I used to live close to a factory district here in Brisbane which had a
persisting hum. One night, I apparently half woke up, swore, put on underpants
and rode out on my bike to find it. I remember coming back to bed, I don't
remember what drove me to try and track this stuff down. I kind of wish I had
found it because having a guy in his jocks knock on the factory door at 3am
shouting about the noise would have been good free entertainment.

I now live in an Apt complex built over where I was riding. The hum has gone.
Its been replaced by another one, but I know what it is: the freezer truck
supplying the 7-11 downstairs has a noisy motor and they keep it running doing
the milk delivery. No underpants rides at night for me.

------
vvdcect
Protomartyr wrote a song called Windsor Hum, it finally makes sense.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a74pRtvFKeU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a74pRtvFKeU)

------
manaskarekar
Stuff you should know covered this in one of their episodes:
[https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-hum-
work...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-hum-works.htm)

Transcript: [https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-hum-
work...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-hum-works-
transcript.htm)

------
hmd_imputer
To those who are affected by the incessant hum, have you ever tried to
actually measure it by some technical equipment? I am pretty sure there are
devices that can detect and register sounds of almost all frequency levels.
What about the noise canceling headphones? Sony, Bose and Sennheiser have some
top-notch headphones that cancel out static noise. Being very sensitive to
noise, I use one of those and am totally satisfied.

------
DoofusOfDeath
From my time working for the U.S. Navy, I find this very reminiscent of the
problem of finding a submerged submarine at a distance, based on its low-
frequency sound emissions.

Their solution is to use a very long array (i.e., a towed array) of
microphones (i.e., transducers), and perform algorithmic beam-forming to
narrow down the possible points of origin for the sound.

This seems like a pretty obvious approach, but I haven't noticed anyone
proposing it.

~~~
tsomctl
The ocean has a lot fewer objects for sound to reflect off of than a town full
of buildings.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I didn't mean to imply that it's a good technique for pinning down a
particular building or even block of the city, but the technique would work (I
imagine) for large-scale localization of the sound source.

------
gooseus
Is it wrong to suggest this as an opportunity for a business?

Some acoustic expert and hospitality expert should team up to create a hotel
and/or spa that can dampen or eliminate the hum in some significant way in
order to provide an oasis of relief for those severely affected... either
through inverse cancellation waves (as suggested in a comment) or by air/water
buffers around the property.

------
newnewpdro
Vice covered this as well [1], with a youtube video also. [2]

[1] [https://news.vice.com/article/a-mysterious-hum-is-
plaguing-w...](https://news.vice.com/article/a-mysterious-hum-is-plaguing-
windsor)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXaM_r80_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXaM_r80_c)

------
davesque
Sometimes I've wondered if this couldn't be caused by turbulence in magma or
some other fluid under the Earth's surface.

------
ishankhare07
Well I found this video by vice
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXaM_r80_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXaM_r80_c)
which claims that they found the source in zug island across the river, but
were not allowed to investigate further due to cross-border politics.

------
hyperpallium
> The Hum is a phenomenon, or collection of phenomena, involving widespread
> reports of a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or
> droning noise not audible to all people.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

------
dmckeon
_“It’s as if you had a fire hose moving back and forth and the people who have
the water falling on them hear the noise, and if you’re outside that stream,
you don’t hear the noise,”_

This suggests overlapping interference patterns from multiple sources or
multiple sound pathways. Is that a reasonable idea for infra-sound?

------
gravypod
Could an algorithm, like the one used in shazam, be fed a sample set of noises
from many different machines/industrial equipment so that we could hopefully
be able to take the noises/sound profiles of the things being posted in the
comments here and check to see what the most likely source is.

------
thomasdd
Fish? Could be this real? The Hum sounds-exactly like couple of diesel trucks.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/seattle-hum-
fish-m...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/seattle-hum-fish-
midshipman_n_1865742.html)

------
ajwin
Has constructive interference of multiple low frequency sound sources been
considered? It could be that they are all undetectable on their own but cause
localized areas to have a much higher amplitude sound? I guess reflections of
the sounds in the right areas could have a similar effect?

------
m3kw9
Wild guess:Maybe a constant seismic vibration that is coming from deep under
that is of a certain frequency

~~~
blunte
If that were the case, you would think that seismologists would already have
answered this.

------
hamitron
Could it be an aeolian sound?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_sound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_sound)
Essential a giant flute played by the wind.

I'm looking to make one of these out of bamboo.

------
limaoscarjuliet
These persistent sounds may make you go crazy for sure. For a a few weeks a
few years back I could hear sound of my blood flowing through my head. That
was not funny to say the least. Fortunately, it went away by itself.

------
Digit-Al
Cthulu is slowly emerging. The hum is only the first step on the road to
madness!

~~~
ateesdalejr
Sad to see this has been down-voted. Why do all these not understand the way
to madness first starts with a hum?

------
mar77i
Brainfart ahead: The way the united states are out of hand lately would kind
of get me to no longer rule out the possibility that they might be drilling
across the border for whatever they might find?

~~~
bstamour
This has been going on for a lot longer than the current US government.
Chances are high it's just Zug Island, which contains blasting furnaces for
steel and whatnot. The problem is that Zug Island is a part of Michigan, while
Windsor is a Canadian city, so investigation is pretty difficult.

------
jacquesm
Common causes of such hums: sewage pumps, large transformer stations, roof
mounted AC heat rejectors, hydropower plants, refrigeration installations.
It's surprising how far contact sound will carry.

~~~
ateesdalejr
As well as very large lasers. Maybe those of the xkcd-what-if size.

~~~
jacquesm
Are those common?

~~~
ateesdalejr
I don't have very accurate data on how many xkcd fans in Canada are trying to
recreate what-if articles.

~~~
jacquesm
I built a laser once. Based on the crappy efficiency my conclusion would be
that the chances of this happening are very low, especially in quantity, even
without accurate data.

------
viraptor
Another known case of this is the Bristol Hum:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35344544](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35344544)

------
chmike
I don't understand why such an article does not report any instrumental
recording and analysis to determine its properties. Aren't there any ?

Undrground activity would have very specific signatures.

------
HankB99
Brown note?
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9mB0OGWkYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9mB0OGWkYE))

------
fudged71
We had a hum in Calgary Alberta. It became the subject of an ongoing project
in our embedded systems engineering course to identify and triangulate the
sound.

------
z303
Bristol also has this

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35344544](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35344544)

------
wizardforhire
Here's another Hum

[http://m.newsok.com/article/2875333](http://m.newsok.com/article/2875333)

------
gesman
Install time-synchronized sound detectors/recorders in decent distance from
each other and measure intensity and propagation of sound spike across time.
Correlate data.

This should provide information about the direction of source. Further tests
in the direction of source would eventually solve the mistery.

Of course "secretive" industrial facilities would likely be the culprit.

------
jdmichal
Shouldn't this be "relatively easy" to track down? Just place a few
microphones and triangulate?

EDIT: Thanks to ocdtrekkie for digging in further on this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16424617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16424617)

------
a2tech
And Detroit! Supposedly the sound originates on the Detroit side

~~~
myself248
They've been talking about it since 2011:
[https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?10923-Low-
level...](https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?10923-Low-level-HUM-
Bothering-Anyone-Else-The-Windsor-Hum/page10)

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/mysterious-windsor-
hum...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/mysterious-windsor-hum-traced-
to-zug-island-mich-1.2651783)

------
platz
How does one in fact triangulate a constant sound source?

------
onikolas
The source of the sound is at 47°9′S 126°43′W.

------
unclewaltr
singing?

[https://youtu.be/5WkLoOvm2Yo?t=316](https://youtu.be/5WkLoOvm2Yo?t=316)

------
hammock
@dang why did you delete the "And no one knows why" from the title? Did it
sound clickbaity to you? Seems pretty critical to the article to me. The whole
thing is about the search for what the hum is, not what the hum is.

~~~
ateesdalejr
That sounds clickbaity to me too. If it sounds even clickbaity in the
slightest I'm sure they'd remove it.

~~~
stordoff
It's a debatable one in this case IMO. "There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor,
Ontario, and No One Knows Why" tells me what I need to know -- it's a
mysterious hum akin to what I've read about many times, so there's little need
to click. "There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario" suggests it may be an
article about a known cause/why there is a persistent hum, inducing me to
click to find out the reason.

A better solution might be to rephrase (e.g. "There's a Persistent Hum of
Undetermined Origin in Windsor, Ontario") to avoid the clickbaity style
phrasing, rather than just deleting the clause outright, but then you start
editorialising which brings its own set of problems.

------
zodPod
Sorry for this I am not experiencing it so maybe I'm completely wrong but
these people seem to be overblowing this a lot. Health effects? I mean, it's a
hum. Sure you can't find the source but heaters hum, ACs hum, cars going past
hum, bass hums. Like how is it possible that it's this huge of a problem? When
a humming stops I tend to actually miss it because it becomes too quiet. I
tend to hear the air conditioners or heaters at work all day every day for at
least 8 hours. Is this hum much much louder than that or what?

~~~
joncp
The article addressed that. Infrasound can affect quality of life and
different people respond to it differently.

------
baxtr
I’m sure a combination of advanced AI and Blockchain technology with a voice
interface will solve this puzzle

------
vortico
Garbage, sensationalist title with mentions of "unknown origin". Even the
article says the likely source is Zug island, but of course this wouldn't get
as many clicks.

According to the mentioned University of Windsor report
([http://www.international.gc.ca/department-
ministere/windsor_...](http://www.international.gc.ca/department-
ministere/windsor_hum_results-bourdonnement_windsor_resultats.aspx?lang=eng))
"A previous study confirmed the existence of the low frequency excitation and
estimated the source to be in the vicinity of Zug Island". If this article was
written with the assumption that the source is likely known, it would have
been a reasonable read. Instead, it should have focused on getting the city to
do something about it, by approaching the property with a noise complaint
warrant, discovering the source, fining those responsible, and changing policy
if needed to solve it. If all of the above is impossible for whatever reason,
why doesn't the article mention the reasons instead of making it the issue
seem like sensasionalist "mystery" news.

~~~
tzs
From the bottom of the document that you cite:

> We note that the bearing from Array 1 to the most probable source of the Hum
> points well to the South of Zug Island. The bulk of our observations from
> both stations do not support the hypothesis that the source of the Hum
> emanates from Zug Island.

Even if it is from Zug Island, "unknown origin" is still appropriate until
they know WHAT is causing it.

~~~
vortico
They have it narrowed down to a few thousand feet. To call it "unknown" is
just unfair. They might not know which steel plant is producing it, but they
can narrow it down to a small handful, far from "unknown". They have enough
evidence of which company is producing the sound (United States Steel), so the
only thing stopping them from getting police or lawmakers involved is the fact
that no one on the US side cares enough. The article could have mentioned this
caveat, but after the couple sentences about the likely cause, it's followed
by more "It’s like chasing a ghost" rhetoric.

~~~
stordoff
It's constrained, but it's still unknown. It's not saying there is no clue
about the origin, and narrowing it to a few thousand feet/a few possibilities
still means the source is unknown.

~~~
vortico
The location of my son is _unknown_ , since I don't know which side of the
room he's on right now.

~~~
stordoff
Different case IMO. There you know both the object and the location to some
margin of error. If there was a strange noise in the room, you might know the
location to the same degree of precision (i.e. it's somewhere in the room),
but until you determine the object making it, the source of the noise is still
unknown.

