
The mystery noise driving the world mad [video] - daegloe
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160811-the-mystery-noise-driving-the-world-mad
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Animats
Here's a good article on building low-cost devices to detect infrasound.[1]
Most microphones and sound cards don't go much below 20Hz, so you need special
equipment. It turns out there's lots going on below the human hearing range,
and it can be analyzed.

With multiple microphones, you can direction-find, but you need huge
separation in the infrasound range, because the wavelengths are so long. Human
heads are too small for this. A useful trick would be to build some units that
record a stereo signal - one channel infrasound, one channel a precision time
track such as WWV. Space those round your town, and send back the files for
synchronization and correlation. Good project in an area with hum problems.

The problem in Portland was traced to a bulk ship unloading machine. The
addition of two mufflers fixed it.[2]

[1]
[http://www.techlib.com/area_50/infrasound.htm](http://www.techlib.com/area_50/infrasound.htm)
[2] [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/)

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hoodoof
Do you hear a background hum?

 __Errr, now that you mention it, I guess I do.

It is driving the world mad. Is it driving you mad?

 __Yes I think maybe it is.

Did you hear the background hum before today?

 __No, but I definitely do now you 've mentioned everyone else hears it.

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jamiepenney
This has come up in the local papers a few times here in Wellington, New
Zealand. The prevailing theory is that it's a diesel generator on a ship in
the harbour.

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xlayn
I had to disable every security measure just to get to a "we need flash"
notice.

Anyone with a youtube link?

~~~
catdog
youtube-dl [1] can handle it, you can use it together with mpv [2] to directly
play the video.

[1] [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) [2]
[https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

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dkarapetyan
It's called tinitus. Flagging because pretty useless.

~~~
h_r
Maybe but they address this very point by saying the hum is only in the past
few decades but tinnitus has been reported for very much longer. No idea how
much data there really is either way.

