He also heard the Hum
April 13, 2016 2:34 PM   Subscribe

From Zug Island to Bristol to British Columbia, interest in a mysterious humming sound continues. Colin Dickey investigates The World Hum Map and Database Project, its creator, and some recent experiments, including the first Deming box. Stops along the way include TACAMO, tin foil hats, school shootings, Jesse Ventura's tv show, and noise-abatement laws.

Also includes some hum-based art by Louivere+Vanessa.

Previously on the blue.
posted by doctornemo (34 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hmm.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:47 PM on April 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


"The Hum" makes for an entertainingly mysterious story a la SCP Foundation, but it seems like people are making a pretty big leap of credulity from "various people heard humming sounds that they couldn't identify" to "those people all heard the same, mysterious phenomenon, which is obvs somehow spooky or sinister or supernatural".

The world is full of humming sounds. Some percentage of them will be heard but not identified—especially low-frequency sounds, which are harder for the human ear to locate directionally. None of this is surprising or unexpected. Lacking, say, spectrographic analyses which suggest that these various hums actually arise from similar causes, there is nothing to explain.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:52 PM on April 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Reminds me of a mysterious AskMefi Question that was unfortunately never resolved, something about sonic weapons and an creepy neighbor.
posted by kittensofthenight at 3:09 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


When I moved to Sherbrooke, QC in 2009, my husband's house was situated on a mountain in town--it was a residential neighbourhood--and for the first few months, I kept hearing a low hum with variations in tone, but only at night. I got so used to it that when it disappeared at some point, I didn't realize how soothing and familiar it was. I have no idea what caused it but, eh.
posted by Kitteh at 3:09 PM on April 13, 2016


Cthulhu is calling.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:10 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


DOMINANT HAND OF HUM HEARERS well that's my next sockpuppet sorted.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:10 PM on April 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


soups, there are THREE entries for Kingston on the Hum map. THREE.
posted by Kitteh at 3:13 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Good - finally some real-scientists involved - they are considering ELF/VLF frequencies. Before I left Calgary, there was one neighbourhood in the NW where many people experienced this at night, including myself on a couple occasions.
posted by jkaczor at 3:13 PM on April 13, 2016


Wait... so far, we have 3 locations in Canada being reported in this thread... And, supposedly Canada tops the list for UFO sightings...

And we just had an X-Files mini-season... Coincidence? I think not...
posted by jkaczor at 3:15 PM on April 13, 2016


Kitteh I think those dates are more or less from around the time they were building the ARC and construction noise went on all the time, as well as the blasting/excavation they had to do to dig out that much limestone.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:24 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


♪ I heard the hum
and it opened up my bum
I heard the hum ♫

posted by fleetmouse at 3:40 PM on April 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Oddly enough I started hearing a mysterious hum at night recently but only when trying to sleep in our bed. I would get up and investigate but the sound would disappear as soon as I'd step away from the bed. Same anywhere else in the house except the bathroom which is right next to the bedroom. I'd go outside and hear nothing at all anywhere in the area, not even right out side the bedroom wall.

Turns out it's my neighbor's recently repaired AC compressor.
Which is located on the far side of the house from my bedroom and you can barely hear it through the walls if you're standing right there.

The hum of the compressor appears to enter my crawlspace through an opening in the foundation on that side and it appears to hit the harmonics of that space precisely. This results in a stable, standing wave pattern where the volume is extremely low everywhere and significantly amplified right below where our bed is located.

It took me a while to figure out because that compressor really isn't all that loud overall even when you're near it. I started thinking that I was losing my mind but then my wife confirmed that she was hearing it, too.

In conclusion: sounds and acoustics are weird
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:43 PM on April 13, 2016 [17 favorites]


In their house at R'lyeh, dead Crash Test Dummies wait dreaming
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:50 PM on April 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


I was reading about this recently because of the recent XKCD comic about talk pages for individual towns. I looked up some places I've lived and places near where I live now, and as it turns out, Medford, Oregon was a hum hub at some point? The talk page in question...
posted by Tesseractive at 4:10 PM on April 13, 2016


I have super-hearing and yeah, stuff hums. Things I can hear include powerlines (normal ones) traffic from over a mile away, snowplows from miles and miles away through the ground, something the bakery up the street does at 4am that comes through my drains and most phone and computer chargers. Also lights, monitors, the fridge, the tv, the DVD player etc etc. Anything with a power supply pretty much makes a sound I can hear. How annoying is this, you ask? Pretty annoying sometimes. It's why I spend so much time outdoors.

This is a conspiracy theory?
posted by fshgrl at 4:40 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Some forms of tinitis come across as a hum, instead of the typical ringing.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:42 PM on April 13, 2016


I've not just heard the hum, but felt it. Like a riding-on-a-train feeling, but very subtle. It only occurs when laying in bed. Hasn't happened in a long time.
posted by yesster at 5:01 PM on April 13, 2016


I can't get over that guy's reluctance to seal himself into an airtight black metal sarcophagus. It's for science! People perch atop rockets packed full of highly-toxic and violently hypergolic chemicals for science! You'd be like them sort of! The first Humonaut! Get in the box already!
posted by um at 5:01 PM on April 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've not just heard the hum, but felt it. Like a riding-on-a-train feeling, but very subtle. It only occurs when laying in bed. Hasn't happened in a long time.

That's only weird if you are miles and miles from human civilization on a quiet night. Feeling ground vibrations and noise through your house is completely normal in urban and suburban seetings. Especially laying down.
posted by fshgrl at 5:18 PM on April 13, 2016


This is a conspiracy theory?

Only the bakery. You don't want to know what they're up to in there.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:56 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's a Hum in my neighborhood. Took a couple weeks of late night sleuthing, but with the help of my four legged sidekick and a lot of cone shaped joints I managed to triangulate it: the firehall a few blocks away. Still not sure what the noise itself is. Guessing a generator or compressor of sorts doing regular overnight maintenance to the trucks.
posted by mannequito at 5:58 PM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sorry guys, I've had Funky Town stuck in my head for a while now.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:32 PM on April 13, 2016


The hum of the compressor appears to enter my crawlspace through an opening in the foundation on that side and it appears to hit the harmonics of that space precisely. This results in a stable, standing wave pattern where the volume is extremely low everywhere and significantly amplified right below where our bed is located.

My study was designed by ancient philosopher-priests who were really keen on communing with their inner Cummins ISL 280, 280 hp 6 cylinder diesel engine.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:36 PM on April 13, 2016


There's a store where the creatures meet.
I wonder what they do in there.
posted by Bruce H. at 6:42 PM on April 13, 2016


I'm humming mysteriously, right now.

Gettin' funny looks, too.
posted by quinndexter at 7:25 PM on April 13, 2016


I'd go for the VLF radio signal theory, but with a twist.... if you dig deep into Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, you'll find that the main measurement of magnetism is A, the electromagnetic potential, which can't normally be detected by coils, or antennas... but it CAN be detected by SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices)... which would make a hell of a covert signalling system, if the power were ramped up....

A VLF A (Electromagnetic Potential) signal would slice right through a Faraday cage, as it induces no no current, and thus no counter-signal.... but could possibly be detected by quantum effects in people. There are some existing quantum biological effects such as the way birds navigate using entangled electrons in their visual system.

You can read more about this type of communication system, one version of which was patented by McMaster University, and they want to license it to the public. Here's a PDF about it.
posted by MikeWarot at 7:26 PM on April 13, 2016


On visiting me in New York City for the first time, my mother declared that it played a chord. I think she said it was D major.
posted by gusandrews at 9:02 PM on April 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


In conclusion: sounds and acoustics are weird

Lots of people make fools of themselves by blaming the wrong apartment neighbors for noise problems. It can indeed be very hard to tell where the source of a sound is.
posted by thelonius at 12:55 AM on April 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


MikeWarot - that patent doesn't require esoteric quantum detectors, rather it seems to depend on neon light bulbs!

The effect also hasn't been unambiguously demonstrated - Zimmerman and Nikolova's experiments and results have been replicated but alternative entirely conventional EM physics can also explain the observations.

I don't fully understand the maths, but I'd be very skeptical of the claims. Maxwell's equations describe propagating waves generated by interdependent fields; you can't snip one or more out and expect the other effects to continue independently. QED describes EM by way of energy and information transfer mediated by the interaction of charges and photons; this idea seems to say that the same thing can be accomplished without energy transfer, and information transfer without energy transfer would (I think) violate causality because it wouldn't be limited by c.

Whatever, it seems unlikely to be the thing keeping people up at night.
posted by Devonian at 4:10 AM on April 14, 2016


She think she missed the train to Mars, she's out back counting stars
posted by tehjoel at 5:42 AM on April 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


There's one where I live, and I can hear it clearly one town over at my folk's house. I can't hear it in quiet locations at the office across the bridges, or at the in-laws out of state, so it's not tinnitus or my imagination, tho my wife can't hear it. I think it's just super low frequency noise from the nearby natural gas power plant or the wind turbine halfway between my place and my parent's, and it probably indicates maintenance is required. Not certain who to complain to, or how to measure/prove it/locate the source.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:50 AM on April 14, 2016


Had a hum in my old neighborhood that drove me crazy for weeks. Finally spent an afternoon tracking it down. It originated at a factory about two miles away. I told a manager there, "It's driving me crazy!" Unexpectedly, he looked very sad and said he would take care of it. Next day, gone. Never heard it again.
posted by jabah at 7:17 AM on April 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


jabah pls.
pls you have to tell more of this story.
posted by closetphilosopher at 11:11 AM on April 14, 2016


A friend of mine and I used to hear a hum. It started when the first gulf war was happening. We assumed we were hearing the ELF system in the UP of Michigan.
I haven't heard it for a long time, but my tinnitus is so bad now I play music all day (quietly) to mask it.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:22 PM on April 14, 2016


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