A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Knows What's Causing It

Re:A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Know... by tempestn on Thursday June 19, 2014 @04:57PM (#7918258)

It's not clear to me why it's not straightforward to test these hypotheses. There are apparently plenty of hum sufferers out there, and it sounds like many would be happy to help with any testing that might isolate the source. There are also plenty of anechoic chambers and Faraday cages available. Seems like it would be relatively easy to test the two prevalent theories. You may not be able to pinpoint the exact source, but you could at least tell whether the hum in a given region was acoustic or electromagnetic in origin.

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Re:A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Know... by dthunt on Thursday June 19, 2014 @05:18PM (#7918368)

I wonder if you could get subjects who travel a lot to record, before going to sleep each night, in a secret journal they do not share with each other, about whether or not they experience a hum in any given location. If those journals substantially agreed, you might be able to get a clearer picture of what, if anything, is going on.

If there is any sort of community built around a potentially hard to observe phenomenon, it's likely going to be a mess sorting out true stuff from false stuff.

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Re:A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Know... by boatzart on Thursday June 19, 2014 @06:27PM (#7918618)

Why not just make a web site for this? If this really affects 2%-10% of the population, then it should be pretty easy to determine if the source is internal or external with enough data.

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Re:A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Know... by tempestn on Thursday June 19, 2014 @06:48PM (#7918709)

Here's a start, just to see if that 2-10% figure looks reasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918694

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