Mysterious Hum Driving People Around the World Crazy

[The Straight Story]

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away.

It's known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that's heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.

But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations.

Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.

The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it's louder at night than during the day. It's also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities.

http://news.yahoo.com/mysterious-hum-driving-people-around-world-crazy-115259328.html

It is the sound of drones.....

[darkangel218]

1. drones or haarp?

[Katashi_itto]

48. It causes normal people to suddenly go Conservative, becoming rabid Teabaggers. It's "WORLD WAR T"

[Berlum]

2. Snoring proles?

[Electric Monk]

3. It is the sound of drones? That's just dumb, and a little annoying too, actually. nt

[darkangel218]

5. How can you be positive is not what the OP said?

Your assumption is just as annoying.

[jazzimov]

8. 1950's? Drones?

[ohheckyeah]

27. Maybe not as funny as you think.

On 20/20 there was a show about spying and they had a dragonfly sized drone from 40 years ago.

[Electric Monk]

9. Try again, Yoda. I have no idea what your post has to do with mine.

[darkangel218]

10. Are you looking in the mirror when youre calling me " Yoda"??

[The Straight Story]

13. lol. I'm the joker here:

[Electric Monk]

24. Don't quit your day job

[Igel]

43. Ah, bagpipes.

They have drones, and boy does the sound carry.

And carry.

And carry.

[get the red out]

4. Hearing

Would certain people be more sensitive to increasing background noise in these areas?

[Rex]

6. I know!

It is the sound of existence.

[Skidmore]

7. It is the sound of the technology that drives our culture.

God, people are just so ready to pursue zebras. Sound travels and can travel long distances. I'll bet if we shut down all of the machinery of civilization and turned off the power grid and the information technology it supports and I will bet the silence would be just as deafening to people.

[darkangel218]

12. It would be deafning, but at least we wouldnt be killing the planet

And its inhabitants in the process.

[snooper2]

17. I thought the spirit world is waiting for us....

That's a better place to be anyway right? You don't have to worry about death anymore!

[Skidmore]

21. True.

My grandchildren are visiting and they are between the ages of 6 and 12. We had a long discussion yesterday about what technology would probably not be available in a world without electricity. That lead to recounting the technologies available when I was a small girl. I live in one of the villages of a group of historical colonies. Today we went over to see some of the museums containing the tools of everyday life in the house and outside. It was also a lesson in how people really needed to cooperate to create a working community using tools that are not run by power.

[Hekate]

32. 60-cycle hum. Yes it is technology, and like neon lights in stores, some people can hear it.

While neon lights may be a different thing than this, I can hear their high-pitched whine. It's there, even if most people can't hear it.

We have a neighbor, widely acknowledged as an obsessive-compulsive, who can hear what is probably the 60-cycle hum. It drove her crazy and in turn she drove the electric company crazy until they finally changed out a neighborhood terminus (I don't know, it was a huge huge box in someone's back yard that had to be removed with a crane) just to shut her up. She was convinced the cycles she could hear were damaging her appliances. (That victory in hand, she moved on to something else.)

So yes, the sound of technology. The background noise in cities is so great that it doesn't stand out. I'm not surprised that the places where some people can detect it are all in the suburbs and countryside.

No zebras.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Baked beans ?

[Politicalboi]

16. LOL!

I was just going to say Stop eating beans. I like how they say the noise is louder at night. Yeah because the 62 inch TV isn't on at 3 am.

[snooper2]

14. It's the NSA spy satellites

They are able to collect all your data by sending electromagnetic waves toward all terrestrial based fiber systems and based on reflected nano-light are capturing and re-assembling packets using time sensitive beacons located every five square kilometers so there are no re-assembly issues.

[Brother Buzz]

15. Years ago, we had mysterious hum but it finally solved: Toadfish sex

Toadfish's steamy love life is revealed / Singing fish sometimes let meek males join a menage a trois

Most Sausalito residents know the humming toadfish, whose loud and incessant underwater droning all summer long keeps angry shore dwellers and houseboat residents awake for nights.

The sound -- a perfect A-flat -- was a mystery for years, blamed by some conspiracy theorists in the 1980s on secret experiments by the Army Corps of Engineers lab on the city's waterfront, on the local water treatment plant or even on extraterrestrials.

Then, a San Francisco marine biologist recognized it as the annoying sound that he'd heard as a graduate student studying fish and trying to sleep on the beach in Baja California: It was the sex call of a species known as the plainfin midshipman.

Now scientists are studying the homely toadfish, known scientifically as Porichthys notatus, for clues to evolutionary biology and acoustics and even for insights into several rare muscular diseases. In the process, they are discovering more details about the toadfish's sex life. (Think menage a trois.)

<snip>

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Toadfish-s-steamy-love-life-is-revealed-Singing-2525265.php

[MineralMan]

18. Yah, it must be drones. Fer shure.

[zappaman]

19. Could it be wind farms?

We already know they cause cancer and I could imagine how they could deafen the populace...

[darkangel218]

22. wind mills cause cancer.

[dionysus]

28. FYI it was sarcasm

[darkangel218]

30. How do you know? youre not the poster who posted that message

[dionysus]

35. it was in reference to a thread where he was making fun of someone who claimed

wind turbines cause cancer.

[Recursion]

37. No, but TheStraightStory jokes like that a lot

I didn't think he was being serious about that for a second, personally.

[The Straight Story]

46. I think we need a laugh track for some folks to tell them when to laugh

Found one on youtube that fits


Wow, if people always need a sarcasm thing/etc they are more jaded than I thought....

[Recursion]

47. There used to be more of an assumption of good faith on DU

Even among posters who disagreed about stuff.

Sigh.

[zappaman]

57. Because he has a sense of humor? n/t

[cyberswede]

72. Oh FFS.

[krispos42]

63. And hermaphoditism

I heard it on World Nut Daily, so it must be truuuuuue

[Apophis]

44. And the wind turbine blades can fall and travel a mile before they land on houses!

[Arugula Latte]

69. Also, wind farms are going to cause massive fires that may incinerate the planet.

You've been warned.

[Dash87]

20. I still think that "The Hum" is a hoax / an urban legend.

I don't doubt the existence of the sound, but it's probably idling vehicles, industrial machinery, or some other plausible explanation.

The fact that it began in the 1950's points to it probably being a machine of some sort.

[RebelOne]

23. That is what I would call tinnitus.

I always have humming, buzzing and clicking in my ears.

[sagat]

25. Tinnitus.

[Jenoch]

26. My father was the GM of an AM radio

station many years ago. The station was at 1600 kHz. The tower crew came by to tighten up the guy wires and the transmitter was also tuned up to increase the efficiency of the transmissions (that high up the dial is not the best for a large coverage area). A couple days later, the farmer who lived across the road came to the station and asked my dad to come over to his place. The farmer walked over to one of his sheds with a downspout on it coming from the rain gutters. Coming from that metal downspout was clear audio from the radio station's transmitter. Not quite the same as Gilligan hearing radio broadcasts from his fillings, but still a bit strange.

[dionysus]

29. it's NSA nanomites!

[ohheckyeah]

31. Now, if I could just figure out what the

vibration is that I feel. The vibration lasts for 48 hours, then 48 hours without it, and then the process repeats. It's been going on for almost 2 years.

[MineralMan]

33. Most likely the "Hum" sounds roughly a Bb in the US.

In much of Europe, it's probably Ab. 60 Hz and 50 Hz, roughly. Many things hum at those frequencies, depending on the frequency of the power system where you are.

There was such a hum near my home here in Minnesota. It took me 5 minutes to trace it to the power transformer on the power pole in my backyard. The transformer was humming at 60 Hz, approximately a Bb. and it was being carried into the ground by the wooden pole the transformer was mounted on. It was fairly loud for me and my neighbors, so we called the power company. They replaced the transformer and the sound disappeared.

Transformer stations hum pretty loudly, as you'll notice if you go stand next to one. If power has been undergrounded, the transformers underground can transmit humming noises through the soil for surprising distances. You can hear that by putting your ear to the ground somewhere nearby.

When you hear a low-pitched hum, think electrical power grid. That's probably the source.

[The Straight Story]

39. Well, damn. I was so sure it was drones ya know

[MineralMan]

45. Yah...the drones are everywhere.

Must be it.

Many, many years ago, in about 1957, I read an article about voice communication using parallel electrodes in the ground. I'm sure I read about it in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, favorite reading matter for me at the time.

Anyhow, my best friend, also an avid experimenter with things electronic, and I concocted an experiment. He lived about a block from me, and we set up electrodes in our yards, aligning them so they were parallel, the same distance apart, and oriented so they corresponded to each other in both yards.

We connected a hi-fi amplifier's output to one pair and earphones to the other and played music loudly into the circuit. It worked! However, there was a very strong 60 Hz hum underlying the transmitted sound, so we never managed to get a voice communication system put together that wasn't almost drowned out by that hum. We were about to work on a filter system to get rid of the 60 Hz signal, but we discovered girls about that time and abandoned our efforts. We were not blinded by science, but by hormones, it seemed.

[Recursion]

34. There's a background 60 Hz hum everywhere that there's power

That's towards the low end of human hearing, but harmonics on it are well within the range.

[dipsydoodle]

36. UK is only 50 cycles which is even lower

Even that is audible

[tridim]

38. No, it's not fucking drones.

OMFG.

[The Straight Story]

41. Good lord, does no one have a sense of humor, like on family guy and such

[TrogL]

40. Probably 60-cycle hum resonating something

Anything that runs on AC power hums at the frequency of the alternation of the current. In North America it's 60 cycles per second. If you turn on a motor or a fluorescent light, you'll hear the hum. If there's something else tuned to resonate to that frequency it will amplify it.

[kentauros]

42. Product going through pipelines.

Plus, low-frequency noise travels over surfaces, not simply through the air. That's why you'll hear the thrum of a diesel train engine long before you'll see it or hear the wheels. Locally, those sub-sonics drive me nuts, especially when I'm up late and the air-temps/humidity are just right to make the whole apartment throb (not to mention my chest.)

[surrealAmerican]

49. If only I could hear it ...

... but the noise from my refrigerator, ceiling fans, and florescent lights drowns it out.

[cthulu2016]

50. I hear my inside, The mechanized hum of another world

[MineralMan]

51. Another possibility is wind blowing across some structure that

resonates under certain conditions. A smokestack can do that, and will generate a very low frequency sound, with the complete spectrum of harmonics. Frankly, anyone with a fireplace and chimney has heard this effect under certain wind conditions.

Even the air flow within a tall smokestack can generate a sound at the resonant frequency of the smokestack, much like an organ pipe sounds. Depending on the height of the stack, the fundamental frequency may be well below the human range of hearing, but the harmonics of that very low pitch can be heard by the human ear.

We've all heard the wind whistle through trees, making all sorts of pitches. Almost any structure will have a resonant frequency and can make sounds under exactly the right conditions. Taos is near mountains. What's being heard could well be wind-created very low frequencies, and people are hearing harmonics of those frequencies.

There are many possible explanations, and any acoustical engineer would probably be able to figure out the source of such a sound by determining the fundamental pitch from the harmonic series of the sound.

As usual, the stories don't have any information from anyone capable of doing that. Such stuff is almost always treated as some sort of weird mystery with weird causes. In reality, the explanation is probably quite simple in every case, but nobody asks the right person to analyze the situation.

[sigmasix]

52. isnt this a Robyn Hitchcock song? NT

[MerryBlooms]

53. I could not stand to be in a room with Magnavox TVs or monitors

They emitted a high pitched whine that drove me nuts and then shortly a splitting headache- it didn't matter if the sound was on or off, it was horrible.

[MineralMan]

62. That is a 15.734 kHz sound, which is the

frequency that the TV or monitor's flyback transformer operates at. It's a frequency that's just within the hearing range for the human ear. Younger people can often hear it, and I remember hearing it from TV sets. All it would take is a loose winding on the flyback transformer or an untightened screw and the sound would be audible to people who could hear that frequency.

It was a common issue, and TV repairmen had ways to dampen the sound. I don't remember if it was worse on Magnavox equipment, but it could be heard on just about every TV if you were close enough.

I stopped being able to hear the sound about the time I turned 35, in 1980. Old ears can't hear those high pitches in most cases.

Anyhow, that's the explanation.

[thelordofhell]

54. Are you sure it wasn't just a Sunn O))) concert??

[zappaman]

59. I love those guys!

But the whole stage show with the smoke and those robes is a bit silly...

[Bluenorthwest]

55. Sausalito CA had a mystery hum which now looks to be frogs...

Of course they have water involved...but still.

http://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0812/ahum.html

[Brother Buzz]

60. Toadfish, toadfish sex!

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Toadfish-s-steamy-love-life-is-revealed-Singing-2525265.php

[Bluenorthwest]

70. Sequal to Muskrat Love?

nt

[Eddie Haskell]

56. Earth's rotation is slowing, but the core is still spinning at nearly the old rate.

As the poles melt, water weight is redistributed toward the equator. Like a figure skater who puts their arms out to slow a spin, the earth's rotation slows. We've only lost 0.006 sec. in a day, but the frictional forces between core and crust are not uniform. Eddies and vortexes are formed and these create sounds as they swirl against the stable crust.

[okieinpain]

58. it television signals. n/t.

[Lint Head]

64. It's probably just Mother Nature hanging out, smoking a dobie, relaxing and humming.

Our, it's Mother nature driving her solar powered Hummer.

[okieinpain]

65. it's Cthulhu, he's preparing for his return. no seriously it's him

CTHULHU, the great is preparing to take back his rightful title as master of mankind. Silly humans, you will know his wrath.

[zappaman]

66. Remember the "bloop"?

Many thought it was Cthulhu...



Unfortunately...
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-11/29/bloop-mystery-not-solved-sort-of

[greytdemocrat]

67. It's obvious

[Buns_of_Fire]

68. Sure, the world is humming. Why? Because it doesn't know the words. QED.

All together, now:

I'd like to teach the world to sing...

[newdack]

71. I hear the Hum

I have lived in Wilmington, NY since 2002 and have heard the hum since I moved here. It is not just at night, it can be at any quiet time of the day. This is a very rural area. The noise has changed since I started hearing it. It used to come in short bursts but now it is constant. When I lay my head down in bed it is the loudest. I have learned to sleep with it. I have gone to the town officials, they advised me to call the electric company as the electric is underground in this area. I have turned the power off completely in my house and still hear it! Once I was sleeping at a friends house in Queensbury, NY, which is about 100 miles south of here and I heard it there! Other people who come to my home have heard it too. My neighbor across the street never heard the hum in her house, one night she stayed at my house and heard it. Now she knows I am not imagining it. My son hears it too. I can hear it in every room in my house, daytime, nighttime, anytime really. At times I hear booms in my home, like explosions from outside. That is fairly new but disturbing to say the least. I have tried to find out if it is all connected to fracking but cannot get any results on that. Also in 2002 there was an earthquake here, it came thru the ground and passed right under my house, it literally felt like it lifted the house and dropped it, so I wonder if it is due to a fault line. It drives me nuts trying to figure it out!!