
Have you heard 'the hum'? Mystery of Earth's low droning noise solved? - chippy
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/have-you-heard-the-hum-mystery-of-earths-low-droning-noise-could-now-be-solved-10182111.html
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headShrinker
I have heard 'the hum'. In my house in western Connecticut, at night when
nothing else is on, everything is quiet. I'm far from the ocean. There is no
industry near by. No trucks. Nothing. There is a hum... maybe about 40 - 70Hz.
It's creepy the first time you hear it. It seemed to be coming from the
ground, and the walls. I moved to the bedroom it was there too. It's very
quiet. You can't hear it if anything else is on.

If you say this to people they think you are crazy. I've had my ears checked
for other reasons and they are fine. I'm not on any medications, or anything
like that. The hum is not ocean wave vibration forces. The hum is constant and
consistent. It sounds of mechanical precision. I have little doubt the sound
is from a man made object.

From Wikipedia: "The Hum" History

There has been little mainstream attention. Only a handful of articles have
been published in scientific literature, including: Leventhall, 2004,[15]
2003;[8] Cowan, 2003;[16] Mullins & Kelly, 1998, 1995;[4] Broner, 1978;[17]
Vasudevan & Gordon, 1977.[18] Others publications include: Frosch, 2013,[19]
Deming, 2004;[20] Fox, 1989;[21] Wilson, 1979;[5] Hanlon, 1973.[22]

The Hum has been repo rted worldwide.[12] The World Hum Database and Mapping
Project was launched in December 2012, in order to build detailed mappings of
hum locations and to provide a database of Hum-related data for professional
and independent researchers.[23]

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

~~~
foobarge
I hear the hum as well sometimes, in different locations (my home office,
separate from the house - here I can hear it during the day) or in the house,
at night. When heard, if I move my head a little bit, the sounds goes away and
usually comes back a second later. I thought this was a nearby engine/motor
(there are a lot of houses with installed heat pumps in the neighborhood), but
as I've read the Wikipedia article, my money is now on tinnitus.

I've been running a FFY analyzer when I hear it and it's never been able to
pick anything up actually airborne, nor any vibration through anything solid
that would be picked up by a microphone.

~~~
ronnier
But it doesn't explain why I can't hear it in just as quite places in
different locations. If it was tinnitus wouldn't I here it in other places as
well?

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cshimmin
It's not clear from the article, and I'm curious as to why it took them so
long to figure out? Seismographs (which, as I understand, are able to "hear"
the hum as well) are not a new technology.

~~~
krischer
The newspaper article (not the journal one) got essentially everything
wrong...the journal article does not talk about this hum people claim to hear
at all.

The paper describes a model for seismic noise generated at periods between 3
and 300 seconds (not Hz!) and I strongly doubt any human can hear that
(frequency AND amplitude wise).

Seismometers did indeed record the noise for quite a while but it was mostly
considered an annoyance. Now in the last decade or so we learned that we can
extract useful information from the noise and this caused all kinds of new
studies, some (like this one here) focused on determining the regions and
mechanisms of the origin of the noise in the seismic wavefield.

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__david__
There was a house I lived in at the edge of town, and late at night on the
balcony (midnight, 1 am, etc) when it was _very_ quiet I could hear really
quiet booming sounds. It was quiet enough that if a car drove by on the
nearest road it would drown out the sound. It was not a steady hum—more like a
distant explosion or bass drum. It was frequent but not regular enough to be
music. I would guess it was the 20 to 30hz range. I could never quite figure
out what it was.

~~~
exogen
During a cross country bicycle trip my partner and I were camping just outside
a tiny town in the middle of Colorado. I had trouble sleeping and kept getting
out of the tent to look around due to what sounded like a large flag blowing
in the wind, or a rabbit thumping its foot against the ground. Low, faint,
slightly irregular. But there was nothing around. Lasted all night and
morning. It was driving me nuts!

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thyrsus
Does someone know it's usual frequency? When it's quiet in my house there's a
hum at around 50hz, but its very constant - no 13 to 300 seconds, it's
_always_ there. I first assumed it was someone in the neighborhood running a
motor, or maybe the water plant a couple miles away, but when it was
particularly noticeable during a widespread blackout here (in part, due to the
quiet - and eliminating the likelihood of an electric power effect), my next
ideas were a resonance from traffic on the interstate a couple miles away, or
maybe someone even further doing some drilling (there's been discussion of
fracking starting soon a dozen miles away or so, but it's not supposed to be
happening yet, and I first noticed several years ago).

~~~
genericuser
Keep in mind the black out wouldn't rule out any electric device that had
batteries or capacitors as part of it. I had a smoke detector that made a
slight humming, took me forever to figure out where it was coming from, and
replace that smoke detector.

~~~
dghughes
Such as land line phones which still have power even in a blackout it's
separate from power lines.

The phone line power must be AC I can't see such long runs being DC.

~~~
YupItsAUsername
Actually, it's 48 volts DC
([http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Systems/Telephone...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Systems/Telephone_System#Line_Cards)).
A few years ago I got to tour a central office for a small telephone/cable
company in a suburb of Houston and the phone lines were actually powered
directly by massive banks of lead-acid batteries which were then constantly
kept floating by the mains supply.

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chippy
I've been hearing it, at varying volumes from time to time. I also describe it
as someone leaving a car running a few houses way. Going outside with the
sound of the wind, and faraway cars makes it harder to detect. Once I walked a
miles radius at 5am in the summer trying to find where it is from.

I assumed it was an all night nightclub. The hum was beat like, like the bass
line from some fast dance music. But I've also heard it during the afternoon
at home. Sometimes I thought I could hear higher pitched drum beat instead of
a hum. I've heard this in two locations. Usually indoors is where it seems the
loudest. I like the idea about sea waves, but I think it could be more
mechanical in nature. Perhaps radio waves interacting with quartz crystals in
bricks, cement or (around here) limestone blocks.

Note, I think this "hum" could be different or the same as the Hummadruz which
has been recorded for centuries and is like bees humming. See
[http://www.northernearth.co.uk/permhum.htm](http://www.northernearth.co.uk/permhum.htm)
for some more info.

"In 1878 R.E.Bibby, a local musician and composer, recalled from his 1820s
childhood a low drone or humming noise heard in suburbs to the south and east
of Manchester, especially Gorton, Rusholme and Longsight. It was heard on
calm, clear days, usually in the early morning or at dusk. "

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bulletsvshumans
Quote that explains their finding:

"Researchers claim that microseismic activity from long ocean waves impacting
the sea bed is what makes our planet vibrate and produces the droning sound.

The pressure of the waves on the seafloor generates seismic waves that cause
the Earth to oscillate. [...]

The continuous waves produce sounds lasting from 13 to 300 seconds. They can
be heard by a relatively small proportion of people – who are sensitive to the
hums – and also by seismic instruments."

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aaron695
I'm pretty sure this is what it's always been thought to have been, assuming
it exists?

This was the theory from forever ago.

Unless it's been conclusively proven or the wave type is different.

More newspaper science I guess.

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Apocryphon
My main takeaway from this is that when there's very strange unexplainable
sounds on the Earth, the most likely culprit may be the Earth itself. Also
see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop)

~~~
cpncrunch
Nope. There is no evidence that people are actually hearing the hum described
in the paper. In fact it's highly unlikely. Is there any evidence at all that
the human ear can detect 0.1Hz?

~~~
swamp40
I don't think it would come in thru your ear. Maybe resonating inside your
body cavity?

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derefr
I probably just don't know enough about acoustics, but could vibrations with a
subsonic period travelling through the earth cause resonations in smaller air-
filled cavities (e.g. underground air pockets/caves; the insides of buildings;
bodies of water) that would then result in audible vibrations?

~~~
swamp40
Yes, there have been instances of subsonic standing waves/resonance in
hallways that have caused feelings of fear and reports of "ghost" sightings.

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ronnier
This hum terrorized me for months in Kirkland, WA. I falsely accused my
neighbors over it -- they were completely innocent. Ended up moving a few
miles away and haven't heard it since.

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slashnull
It's no fair, I have none of "the hum" here so I have to play my own drone on
my speakers and I'm running out of bands.

Either way I'm pretty sure the entire phenomenon is just SunnO))) recording
albums.

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slashnull
Actually it's probably Fraa Jad or some other Millenarian signing.

