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There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

nytimes.com

21–30 of 304 posts

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#21
post #12

It seems like a sensor array across the city of just a few sensors could help detect the source. Using microsecond differences in the arrival of the sound, you could at least tell what direction it is coming from.

Sometimes it's not that easy. Imagine a swimming pool right after a lot of people got out. Where are the waves coming from?

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#22
Install time-synchronized sound detectors/recorders in decent distance from each other and measure intensity and propagation of sound spike across time. Correlate data.

This should provide information about the direction of source. Further tests in the direction of source would eventually solve the mistery.

Of course "secretive" industrial facilities would likely be the culprit.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#25

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

I've heard the hum in a city in the UK quite frequently. I hear it more on monday bank holiday mornings, oddly. So a weekday but less people at work.

I actually think it's the sound of traffic.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#26
post #5
post #2

And trust me it's damn annoying, it's nothing ear plugs can't take care of but damn if it isn't enough to slowly drive you insane

Wonder if you can train yourself to ignore it. The same way some fucked up people train themselves to ignore smoke detector chirps. I've known a couple of these people in my life. They managed to live with a chirping detector for weeks on end and when you bring it up they think you're making mountains out of molehills.

... fascinating. There's no way that's easier than replacing the battery or even the detector itself. Why suffer through something so trivially fixable?

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#27

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

Replace "comment out" by "turn off the electricity for" and maybe we can binary search it.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#28

Three people so far have suggested in the comments here it should be "easy" to triangulate it. Note that according to Zug Island's Wikipedia page, "As of April 2013, a Canadian scientist is using sound-level meters and a portable "pentangular array" of cameras and microphones to try to precisely identify the source of the sound, in order to know whom exactly to ask to fix it" and that "the City Council had already sp…

> I think there's a bit of armchairing going on here, in that people are definitely trying the obvious already.

As one of these suggesters - I think it's the problem lies in that the article doesn't mention this obvious first step in determining the source.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#29

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

This actually sounds like a good idea.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#30
“It’s as if you had a fire hose moving back and forth and the people who have the water falling on them hear the noise, and if you’re outside that stream, you don’t hear the noise,”

This suggests overlapping interference patterns from multiple sources or multiple sound pathways. Is that a reasonable idea for infra-sound?

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