BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?

Subject: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 04:35 PM

Described here:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

I do. It's not fun.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 04:45 PM

*Blue clicky required

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Mysha
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 05:15 PM

Mudcat hob passing by
Wikipedia article

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 05:36 PM

It has always been there.

I always hear it.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle


Perhaps, when your watts have been exceeded you expire?

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 05:47 PM

Here ya go:   CLICKY!

One possible explanation for "The Hum" is that the earth is actually a ball of molten iron, and we are living on the crust of slag that floats around on top.

This is true!

The movement of chunks of slag on top of the molten core is called "continental drift," and it goes on constantly. It is responsible for volcanoes and earthquakes.

For example, a big plate in the Pacific Ocean is slowly sliding under the western edge of the state of Washington where I live, and the slippage of these plates is the main progenitor of earthquakes in this area, and for the Cascade Mountain range, many of which, e.g., Mount St. Helens, are volcanoes (leakage from the earth's core).

This is an oversimplification of what's going on, but it gives a general idea. Terra firma ain't so "firma!"

This constant grinding of tectonic plates deep below our feet is responsible for all kinds of subsonic sounds, some of which may reach up into the audible range.

Such as the mysterious, but ongoing low-pitched hums that can be heard various places around the earth.

Yellowstone National Park actually sits in the caldera of a huge volcano, which is still actively boiling away deep underground. This accounts for the geysers and the boiling mud-pits. Geologists have said that the last eruption of this volcano occurred some 600,000 years ago--and there are serious signs indicating that a monsterous eruption is due at any time now. In fact, it's many centuries overdue!

That'll be quite a party! A volcanic eruption that big would make the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, which was heard 3,000 miles away and changed the world's weather for several years due to dust clouds in the upper atmosphere, look like a minor hiccup!

That'll be quite a party!

Sweet dreams....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 05:49 PM

I am 'aware' of a background (hum)? of some sort.. when I think about it in very quiet situations.. but I do not consider it to actually be 'hearing'. It is more like being subliminally aware of my own blood flow..or something.
I have actually tried to relate it to a tone on a Korg, but nothing seems to match.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 06:33 PM

Must be incredibly annoying, I feel for those of you for whom it is audible/palpable (audaple?). I don't, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't if I were in one of those places, I guess.

I am thinking random interference waves of all the noise on the planet?

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 07:26 PM

Of course it's there. Most can't "hear" it because they were born into it. It's like sitting on a log in Kent County, NB.ca way back in the woods on a cold day on October... you can hear the earthquakes. You can feel them as if they were explosions from artillery FAR away.

Mother Earth is vibrant and alive. She hums. She thumps. She grinds. She is.

Anyone who has never experienced any of these phenomena is missing out on a grand and wondrous experience. You might not ever hear the rattle and hum if you live in a "city" because the physical noise and the electromagnetic noise are distorted and muted. Unless you tune in?

Let's get real stupid (serious?). If you live in a city and you can lay on a grass lawn on your back late at night and look straight up. Do it. Listen to Mother Earth. She IS alive.... all my relations.

"All my relations." Well, that's a bit more complicated. It requires a knowledge of First Nations teachings, not so different from The Celts, Druids, Wiccans... you know, those who worship Mother Earth instead of religions.

Go ahead, hum a few bars.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 07:34 PM

When I get migraines it seems as if I can hear really, really well for a period, but I have not detected any hums.

However, I have seen some amazing migraine colours-I guess some folks pay alot of money to see similar things.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 10:09 PM

Having tinnitus I hear noise 'most all the time.

As for Yellowstone, I live 2.5 hours driving time away. If it blows, well, so long and thanks for all the fiche (librarian joke). Oh, wait. Ya'll be coming along! Most, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 02:40 AM

I hear distant road traffic - several roads (and a few railway lines) combine to create a gentle hum, except after heavy snow. The effect also varies according to air humidity, as sound travels more clearly in damp air.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Musket
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 02:53 AM

That'll be the neighbour playing his ruddy Leonard Cohen albums again....

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:08 AM

If it is a nasal hum, it could be Bob Dylan CDs playing somewhere nearby, or a defective hot tub motor running overtime? That is, if you rule out the possibility of the whiny outbursts of an independant,and drunken, scottish piper under the landing.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 05:59 AM

I used to be very conscious of it thru my childhood & early youth. Now I don't hear it any more. Whether it was actual, and the cause no longer exists, or whether my perceptions have changed with aging, I have no way of knowing.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Stu
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 06:06 AM

"Mother Earth is vibrant and alive. She hums. She thumps. She grinds. She is. "

This is ace.


I have raging tinnitus so hums, buzzes and goad knows what else are constant companions. You do habituate though.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 06:54 AM

*Blue clicky required

FWIW, in browsers like firefox you can right click a link like that, without it being a proper blue hyperlink, and open it without a problem.


Not sure I hear 'the hum'. I live in a very quiet place without much in the way of human generated noises (the odd car,tractor or plane). When the power goes of I notice it immediately as the hum of the fridge and the computer goes. Other than that, I hear the noise of the ocean and the wind.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 08:08 AM

I have traced my local hum down to a factory about a mile away, best demonstrated by the fact that it disappears when it is shut!
Never managed to find the source when I was in Lancaster.
The sound is easier to hear indoors and seems to be conducted by the building walls. I also notice that the pitch is consistent with mains humane so probably to do with an electrically powered machine.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 02:27 PM

A bit of thread drift in order to insert a morsel of trivia:

Earlier in this thread I talk about the possibility of plate tectonics and continental drift being the source of "The Hum," and I mention the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and how it hurled so much matter into the upper atmosphere that it changed the earth's weather for a couple of years.

Shortly after the eruption of Krakatoa, a small party composed of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Shelley's girlfriend and later wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, and a couple of other poet and artist types decided to spend the summer in the mountains of Switzerland. But the weather was gawdawful. That was known as "the year without a summer." So rather than romping up and down the mountainsides, the small party was stuck indoors, bored out of their minds.

So to amuse themselves and each other, they decided to tell ghost stories. Mary Wollstonecraft (later, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was fascinated by what she had read about "galvanism" (electricity) and how you could make the legs of a dead frog jerk by applying electric current. She hatched up a humdinger of a horror story about a doctor who tried to take a collection of spare human parts, sew them together, then bring it to life with a wallop of electricity.

The doctor's name was Frankenstein, and his creation he named "Adam" (or "a second Adam").

Mary's friends were enthralled by her tale and encouraged her to write it up as a novel, which she did.

I've read the novel. And I've seen about eleventy-fourteen movie adaptations of it.

NONE of which approached the true essence of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel, which was not just a horror story, but a morality tale as well. Beautifully done! Adam's account of finding himself walking in the woods, seeing all the beauty around him, and wondering, not just who he was, but what he was was particularly touching. Marvelous piece of writing!

Highly recommended. The original novel, that is.

Jus' thought I'd toss that out there for what it's worth….

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 02:40 PM

By the way, there are those who maintain that Mary Wollstonecraft's Shelley's Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus is the first genuine science fiction novel.

It's based on scientific ideas and speculations at the time it was written, and it does not rely on magic or fantasy.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 02:51 PM

My hearing was tested recently as part of a medical work-up, I have an extraordinarily clear range for my age. And yes, I hear a hum when within range of a motorway or city, and no I don't when out in the mountains. It's the side-effect of mass humanity, that the power we consume is not wasted, but released in heat, light and noise.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:11 PM

OOPS!

I was off by a few years and a whole volcano!

The rainy summer in Switzerland that had the small group housebound was not after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1833, the "year without a summer" was caused by the eruption of Mount Tamora in Indonesia in 1815!

Sorry about that….

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:12 PM

To add an element of the arcane? the absurd? the dire?: Perhaps it is Earth itself expressing its pain/warning/reassurance? I proffer: Once when I was in deep meditation in the woods my "spirit" went lower and lower until, I swear, I became aware that Tree was speaking to me. It was low and slow and deeper than any sound I had ever heard.

I brought myself 'up' right quick (as they say in the south) with the feeling that my feet might root to the ground.

But I've never forgotten that it is possible to communicate with Tree. Perhaps also with Earth?

OK. Now back to Reality...

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: michaelr
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 03:20 PM

Some people claim to be hear the 60 Hz cycle of alternating current.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 05:09 PM

Glad you corrected that, Don. Frankenstein's year of original publication was actually 1817. By the 1880s the Shelleys & Byrons were all long dead. Mary Shelley was in her late teens when she wrote it: she was BTW the daughter of William Godwin the philosopher & his wife Mary Wollestonecraft, the C18 proto-feminist, author of A Vindication of The Rights of Women (1792). Some pedigree!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 09:01 PM

Yeah, =M=, my rememberator had a bit of a glitch in it, there. And the eruption of Krakatoa was in 1883, rather that 1833, as I goofed again while trying to correct some of my earlier information.

I really recommend to anyone who has seen any of the "Frankenstein" movies that you dig up a copy of Mary Shelley's novel and read IT. It's a lot deeper and more thoughty than one might suspect from the Gothic horror story that most people assume it is. It IS that, but it's so much more. The scenes in which "Adam" tells Dr. Frankenstein of his experiences of self-discovery after wandering out of Dr. F's laboratory, and his "education" while living in a woodshed and listening to the conversations of the family living in the house are a real tour de force for any writer, especially a girl barely out of her 'teens when it was published.

Boris Karloff did get some of the sensitivity and pathos of "Adam," especially in the final scenes of "The Bride of Frankenstein." I'm sure he must have read the book. "Adam" wasn't a "monster," he was a sensitive human being with great potential for good, even if he was patched together out of spare parts—and had he not been rejected by everyone, especially his creator.

=========

I've had a somewhat similar experience, Ebbie.

Some years ago, my wife and I were out in the Hoh rain forest on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. I was lumbering around on crutches, so while Barbara went down the path to look at the curtains of moss she'd heard about, I stayed pretty close to the parking lot—beside a huge tree—Douglas fir, I was told, but very old and almost as big as a redwood!

After I had stood there for a while, communing with Nature, I had the strangest feeling that that huge old tree was somehow aware! And it was aware of me standing there!

It was a most strange feeling. It occurred to me that, to that tree, my entire life was as transitory as a bird landing on one of its branches, sitting there for a few seconds, then flitting off again.

Eerie sensation. But not at all unpleasant.

Communing with Nature, indeed!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 14 - 10:30 PM

Cool, Don. I'm sure we are not alone.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:16 PM

That is 50 Hz in the Uk by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Mysha
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:46 PM

Hi,

Well, humans are capable of hearing down to 12 Hz under specific circumstances, so 50/60 Hz should be no problem; that's two octaves higher. But there's the matter of volume, of course: Plugging the mains into your microphone socket is probably more noticeable than a really softly humming cable somewhere across the room.

Bye
                                                                  Mysha

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Gurney
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 07:14 PM

A hum, yes. In one place, with no obvious explanations.
I could hear old TVs whining, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: gnu
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 08:45 PM

Hmmmmm?

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: bobad
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 09:00 PM

ૐ

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 09:29 AM

I have never heard the low hum, but I have tinnitus, and I hear a high-pitched ringing. Recently I learned that some researchers think tinnitus is produced by the brain itself. It is trying to reconstitute high-pitched frequencies lost by 'insults' to the cochlea.

If you asked me if I hear my tinnitus everywhere and all the time, I couldn't tell you. Usually life is too interesting for me to think about it.

Maybe those who hear the hum have lost low frequencies, and the brain is trying to replace them. And perhaps the reason they don't hear it everywhere has to do with distractions, blood pressure or allergies.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 12:18 PM

Insightful, leeneia.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 01:32 PM

I'll stick with the plate tectonics (continental drift) theory.

There are places in, for instance, Montana and Wyoming, where people often say they can hear a low frequency hum or "growl" constantly--in places where there are no factories or high tension wires around, just open country.

Not loud, but very low pitched and always there, except when masked by the sound of wind and such.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 02:13 PM

Actually, reverting to my thread of a couple of days ago about how I heard it in childhood -- Remembering back, it was not so much a hum as a sort of faint hiss, as it might have been the sound of a very distant wind blowing, or somebody sighing non-stop in the next room but one. And in fact I still hear that occasionally — like just now, which brought me back to this thread to emend my previous comment.

Anyone else conscious of what I am talking of here?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 02:14 PM

Don, I fear it's the sound of the sage brush devouring the gravelly soil below.

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 02:17 PM

I meant, of course, my POST of a couple of days ago

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Oct 14 - 12:19 AM

Interesting article on this in Slate today... well, I saw it today.

Blicky

Subject: RE: BS: Do You Hear 'The Hum'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Oct 14 - 02:53 AM

Hmmmmmm (no pun intended). Listening to the hum in that link reminds me of hearing one's own blood flow. Might that be?