Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

71–80 of 304 posts

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

#72
I don't buy it at all. The article takes a very strangely sympathetic tone toward the whole situation.

The noise has been narrowed down to one island that has "a few blasting operations". So stop the operations and see if the hum goes away. Then have each one restart one at a time. Or bo binary search, whatever. It doesn't matter.

The obvious takeaway here is that the city/state/province does not care. They are too deep in the pockets of those industries to make any waves at all.

Government has so little power to do anything. They are just the paid legitimizers of the corporations.

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

#73
Seismologists now have some tricks for locating hum sources. Standard earthquakes have an impulsive start. So with four or more seismograms you can triangulate for the unknowns x, y, z and t0. Hum noises dont have an definitive starting time. But a version of seismology called inferometry can find the origin. You basically cross correlate all pairs of seismograms with signals. The peak lags define a hyperbolic wavefront you can invert for the origin. This method has been used to find submarines. To look volcanic tremors which have now clear start. And Earth hum which often seems associated with large oceanic storms.

A seismologist would probably deploy seismomters in a wide distribution near the hum area. Then record continuously for about a week. And finally use inferometry to locate the source(s).

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

#74
post #59

Garbage, sensationalist title with mentions of "unknown origin". Even the article says the likely source is Zug island, but of course this wouldn't get as many clicks. According to the mentioned University of Windsor report ( http://www.international.gc.ca/department-ministere/windsor_... ) "A previous study confirmed the existence of the low frequency excitation and estimated the source to be in the vicinity of Zug…

From the bottom of the document that you cite:

> We note that the bearing from Array 1 to the most probable source of the Hum points well to the South of Zug Island. The bulk of our observations from both stations do not support the hypothesis that the source of the Hum emanates from Zug Island.

Even if it is from Zug Island, "unknown origin" is still appropriate until they know WHAT is causing it.

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

#75
post #72

I don't buy it at all. The article takes a very strangely sympathetic tone toward the whole situation. The noise has been narrowed down to one island that has "a few blasting operations". So stop the operations and see if the hum goes away. Then have each one restart one at a time. Or bo binary search, whatever. It doesn't matter. The obvious takeaway here is that the city/state/province does not care. They are too d…

> The obvious takeaway here is that the city/state/province does not care.

Another problem:

Zug Island is in Michigan (US).

Windsor is in Ontario (Canada).

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

#76

We had a "hum" sound in cambridge MA. Its one of those sounds when you walk through you don't think anything of it, but if you live near it.... (I was one of the lucky as I couldn't hear it from my bedroom). Incredibly hard to track down, it was determined to be Fans on top of a building. And it was fixed. The sound bounces around so much, just walking around I couldn't pinpoint it on a couple nights of trying. Its w…

To avoid the difficulties with reflections, maybe triangulation with drones up in the air could give at least an area where the sound originates from.

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

#77
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to deploy a shot spotter that cities use to quickly locate gunfire and dispatch police. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/06/28/shotspotte...

I'm always disappointed to see that people think the description on that system's tin is its actual purpose. It does that, yes. What else?

That's some scary stuff right there. Who controls what it's used for? How transparent are the data? Yikes!

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

#79

I'm listening to this right now [1] and (for those of you who don't have a chance to hear it right now) it definitely isn't what I would call a "hum"... that's way too gentle and not bass enough to describe this sound. I'd call it more like low-frequency rumbling (though that's probably not a perfect word for it either). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDILKQjJW8

It's actually a not unpleasant brown noise-like sound. At least that's how it comes out of my hifi. Over bluetooth and after YouTube compression so perhaps high fidelity isn't the right term.

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

#80
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.

My experience is that it’s pretty damn hard. SOMETHING is generating a low frequency hum that I can hear in my bedroom in Seattle; in fact I’m in there’s hearing it right now. It’s been going since somewhere last summer. I hear it every night and it’s still maddening.
Post reply on HN