Strange Noises Booms, hums, thumps what do they all mean? There are some places on earth where sounds can be heard all the time, but we are told no one knows where they are coming from. There are also other sounds which come and go. Sounds can be a tricky things mostly because almost everything we do produces one type of sound or another. Just because we hear an unusual sound doesn’t mean there is something strange going on like a UFO blasting off over our heads or secret military devices being used. Some sounds are very annoying and can even drive people to move away from their homes. Over the years I have mentioned hums. There are places where hums are present and yet only about 20% of the population in a given area can hear them, but those that do range from mildly annoyed to desperate to get away. Low frequency humming seems to be heard far too often. Sometimes it is described as a droning or rumbling noise, but more often just a hum, a very annoying hum. There is a hum which is heard in Auckland, New Zealand. Not everyone can hear it, but a man working for a university there claims to have recorded it and it has a frequency of 56 hertz. There is a town in New Mexico called Taos. There is a problem there and it has become famous. There is a hum which is ever present and it has been named the Taos hum. The hum seems to have started around the 1990s. It is heard by about 2% of the population. Scientists have set up special equipment in the homes of some of those who complained about the hum, but strangely the equipment was not able to pick it up. People in Taos who heard the hum were reporting different sounding hums which broadened the mystery even further. Are our brains just different enough from each other to allow some to hear things others can’t or does it have something to do with our hearing? We know some people with mental illness hear voices and some have proposed the hum is nothing more than an auditory hallucination, but it could turn out those who hear it might have a sort of super hearing. A series of loud booms are being heard all over the world and this has puzzled many people. The first thing I think of when I hear this type of sound is a plane breaking the sound barrier. Years ago, Google Earth picked up a series of trails in the sky which looked like a rope with knots ever so often. It was believed to be a secret aircraft which was capable at flying over 8,000 miles per hour and there were loud booms which many thought were associated with it. The speed was calculated by the time it took to cross the United States. The engine in the plane was thought to be a pulse detonation engine. It is like setting off a bomb behind the craft every so often. There had been talk at one time of building a spacecraft which would be powered by releasing small nuclear bombs and exploding them behind the craft to give it a good push which would make it much faster than a rocket engine. Are the booms people hearing just top-secret aircraft? Moaning type sounds have been heard all over the world. They may not last more than a minute or two, but there is no denying they sound very strange. A very strange sound was heard coming from over 30,000 feet down. It was coming from the Mariana trench. It has been claimed the actual depth was over 36,000 feet. There have been all sorts of guesses about what it was. When scientists first heard this sound, they were uneasy. Some think it could be from whales. It is believed whales can only dive down about 10,000 feet, which if true would mean the sound is not coming from them. Could there be other unknown sea creatures in the trench? Anytime there is something mysterious like this we don’t understand someone will say maybe it is aliens. Sorry but we can’t always be saying this. Maybe the sound could even be the result of ocean currents being compressed somehow and creating the sound. We found a lot of new species living at extreme depths, perhaps there is a new species of whale or giant octopus living down in the bottom of the trench which is capable of making strange sounds. Is fracking causing strange sounds? There seems to be an increase in strange noises since we started fracking. It turns out fracking is not only bad for the environment, but it creates strange sounds at least some of the time. Residents in Erie Colorado are complaining about the strange sounds being caused by a fracking set-up. There is a low-frequency sound coming from the fracking rig. It is sort of a vibration sound which comes from this fracking and it seems to increase in the nighttime hours. Since fracking is taking place all over the country I think we will hear more about this. A hydrophone was deployed in an area of the Pacific Ocean in 1997 along with other hydrophones, but this one picked up a strange sounds which none of the others heard. Some ocean sounds sound like blips, but when the playback speed is increased the sounds get very interesting. They sound somewhat similar to machinery running which is being muffled. Another sound from the ocean is so loud it can be heard in space. An area in the Caribbean Sea seems to act like a whistle according to scientists at the University of Liverpool. The sound was found in 1,063,000 square miles in the Caribbean Sea southeast of the Gulf of Mexico. The sound has been named the Rossby Whistle. This time the cause has been found, it happens when a large wave coming from the west interacts with the seafloor and the wave has been named the Rossby wave. Water sloshes in and out of the basin every 120 days creating an A-flat note. Noise is all around us. Most of it is easily recognizable, but there are some noises which defy detection. By that I mean we don’t know where they come from or why not all of us hear them. There are probably many other noises on our planet which none of us can hear due to the fact they are below the threshold of human hearing. Recently scientists have discovered the earth itself makes a sound, could this be the cause of what some people are hearing? |
