"The Hum" a constant low-pitched rumbling noise like a nearby idling diesel truck.

[Snarkoleptic]

Have you heard "The Hum"?
When I first heard about it, I too thought it was a tinfoil hat theory.

That was until early 2007 when I began to hear the hum. I looked outside expecting to see an idling delivery truck, but saw nothing.
I shut down everything electrical in the house and still heard the hum. Finally, I tripped the main circuit breaker in my home and still the sound persisted.

I researched this phenomenon and found that many areas have their own localized reports of the sound.
There is the Taos Hum, Kokomo Hum, Bristol Hum, etc. (I live in suburban Chicago, maybe I should trademark "The Obama Hum")
The common thread is that a small percentage of locals report an annoyingly persistent hum that drives them to distraction and can even cause loss of sleep.

This phenomenon has been featured on the Unsolved Mysteries series (link below) and documented worldwide "hummers", scientists, and academics. Many have attributed it to use of ELF (extremely low frequency) communications used by the US Navy, the HAARP project in Alaska, as well as may other physiological and natural causes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPG1B3wmvnQ

I've also discovered a yahoo support group for 'hummers'.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/humforum/

There's a wikipedia page-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_hum

Anyone else experience this?
If so, where are you located and how distracting is it on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being worst).

[ddeclue]

1. 60 Hz power hum...

just because you killed your power in your house doesn't mean that your neighbors did or that your street light was turned out.

:tinfoilhat:

[Snarkoleptic]

7. My dad was an aircraft mechanic who mentioned that the med-high tone

heard on commercial aircraft is a 60-cycle hum.
This tone would be much, much lower.

[ddeclue]

9. Nope..,, aircraft power is 400 Hz not 60 Hz.

I'm a licensed pilot and degreed aerospace engineer.

A middle A is 440Hz, 60 Hz is a very low pitched tone. 20 Hz is the low end of human hearing perceptions or about 1 and a half octaves lower. Below that we perceive it as a physical vibration, not as sound.

Doug D.

[conscious evolution]

37. I learned this the hard way

Many years ago when I was in the fire suppression business my company got a contract to install upgrades to a fire suppression system in a aircraft aintainance facility.
One of the bays had electrical panels that were powered with 400 Hz. for use on the aircraft during overhauls.
The engineer who drew up the designs was not told that the panel was non standard and,as a matter of course,decided to use that particular panel to power the new FS system.

120 VAC 60 Hz circuit boards do not like 400 hz.At least these particular boards didn't.
I had never seen resistors and transistors catch fire till then.

[tanyev]

2. When we brought a second cat into the house, I was astonished to hear

our first cat, a sweet little thing (I thought), give off a growl that sounded like a diesel truck idling outside. But I guess that's not really what you are referring to. :)

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Oh, dear................

You wrote:

"I've also discovered a yahoo support group for 'hummers'."

Uh, well, uh, I don't really know, oh, dear, well, gee.

Does that group know about the teabaggers?

[Blue_In_AK]

4. I believe that the whole earth hums,

and maybe even the whole universe. It's been my experience that even in the remotest areas of Alaska, if you're very, very still, you still hear a low hum.

[Snarkoleptic]

21. If the local cause of the sound is HAARP, then it may be just North of

Gakona, Alaska and to the West of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

[Blue_In_AK]

22. I hadn't thought of that.

You could be right, but actually I always thought it was just all the sounds of the wind, birds, airplanes, whatever else, just kind of blending together into a white noise.

[csziggy]

25. That could be the hum in some areas

I know when we first bought our farm in 1978, it was extremely quiet out here. We could hear the railroad - fifteen miles away. We could hear the sound of the interstate - ten miles away. We could hear the few vehicles that came up our then dirt road when they turned onto the road, five miles away. We could hear the bull alligators 'thrum' their mating calls down in the swamp.

But now that we are surrounded by subdivisions, there is a constant background noise. The sound of hundreds of AC units running constantly, people using leaf blowers, lawnmowers, miscellaneous power tools, traffic, TVs, stereos, pool pumps, dogs, and on and on.

The sounds close up we can distinguish as individual noises but the noise farther away just blends together.

What I cannot that explaining is the hum heard at some remote locations in the Southwest that I have heard reports about for over 20 years. But I have not tried to research possibilities.

[corruptmewithpower]

5. You are under attack via acoustic weaponry!

Infrasound

http://www.lowertheboom.org/trice/infrasound.htm

[sallylou666]

6. Tinnunitis

It sounds like tinnitus. Very common. :shrug:

[Snarkoleptic]

10. I read extensively on tinnitus, and this seems outside the scope of the diagnosis.

The low, rumbling nature of the sound seems to indicate something altogether differect.
Here's more...
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4090

[DBoon]

19. maybe this condition fits it better

http://www.biologyinmotion.com/minilec/gas.html

[arcadian]

8. Maybe it has something to do with teabags.

Get it? Hum? Hummers? Ehhh, I don't know why I even bother.

[Webster Green]

11. Perhaps buried diesel generators for hydroponic pot operations?..

You can only bury and hide them so much because you need air intakes and exhaust. It's difficult to make them totally silent.

They're more common than you might imagine. If you don't want to run up your electric bill, you run a 20 KW (or whatever) diesel generator 24/7. :hippie:

[sakabatou]

12. I sometimes here a hum near power lines.

[Snarkoleptic]

17. I'm fortunate in that all nearby power line are buried.

There are some major high tensio lines about 3-miles away.

[Control-Z]

27. I often hear power lines

"buzzing", but I've never heard humming. That could be that each of us perceives sound differently, though.

[IDemo]

13. I just can't hear no dynamo hum

But I do hear a high frequency scream in both ears, 24/7/365. Tinnitus sucks.

[SoxFan]

14. My cat makes a low rumbling sound when she's looking for attention

[ddeclue]

15. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Hum? What hum?

:shrug:

:rofl:

[ddeclue]

16. I have a really wide spectral range when it comes to hearing...

I can actually hear tones like CRT monitor hum and ultrasonic alarms systems at the high end and down below 60 Hz power hums down to 20Hz.

[Snarkoleptic]

18. I can hear lower tones as well if their is a vacuum-load on my eardrum.

You may have experienced such a vacuum-load after air travel when normal sound are muted due to a tight eardrum.
When your eustachian tube are clogged and you travel up or down in elevation, the drum can be pulled tight by air pressure until equalized.

[renate]

20. I've heard that

I assumed it was just from the traffic in the valley to the north of us... but I've never paid attention to whether it gets louder during rush hour. (It's actually fairly loud and never goes away.)

So all this time I've actually been listening to a mysterious phenomenon and I didn't even know it. Cool.

[KittyWampus]

23. I and two other people I know hear a hum anytime we think to listen for it. We also see the world

as scintillating, pointillist dots, if we take the extra-second to see it.

Since Reality is not actually solid mass but energy, this makes sense.

[corruptmewithpower]

24. Low Frequency Club

YouTube - Low Frequency Club - Girlfriend Is Better


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Yb6SnJxMs

[havocmom]

26. Hearing it RIGHT NOW!!!

Wait, there is a big refrigerated truck parked across the street. When the temp gets to a certain point inside the cargo box, the thing kicks up a ruckus.

[niceypoo]

28. I think it is the martians...

charging up their death ray..

[Kitty Herder]

29. Is there a power plant nearby you?

Coal power plants often use blowers to clean out soot. They make a very loud sound that from a distance sounds like what you're describing.

[peekaloo]

36. I live within five miles of a coal plant.

Used to think that hum was coming from the transformer pole in the backyard yet when I walked outside the sound was emanating from another unseen/unknown source.

Thanks.

[Hekate]

30. Mother Earth is meditating and saying Om?

Interesting. I don't hear The Hum myself, but don't doubt there are those who do. I can hear fluorescent light bulbs in stores -- and apparently few others can.

Hekate

[Duer 157099]

31. Some people think it's from underground excavations

the building of all those underground "undisclosed locations" like where Cheney used to hang out.

Like Site R in Pennsylvania.

They have to build those sometime, and I bet the equipment would produce some sort of vibration.

No, I'm not kidding. There are probably corridors underground linking all the major cities

[Norrin Radd]

32. It's a "Hurm."

Rorschach is walking past people's windows.

[wuvuj]

33. The scientifically incurious...

...are a plague among us?

[BeFree]

34. I have

Two times while camped in the forested mountains a low pitched constant hum woke me. So I took a walk in the direction of the hum. And it seemed I could not get any closer to it than when I first heard it although it seemed to be coming from that direction.

Later, in daylight, with no hum present I looked for something that could have made the noise.... there was nothing but forest.

It had to have come from the earth itself.

[oldlib]

35. The low hum could be caused by a poor control on the house gas meter

This happened to me a few years past, when I isolated the low hum to my gas meter. I called the Gas Company and they found that the control on the meter was insufficient for changes in gas pressure. The installation of a new control solved the problem.

[all.of.me]

38. I live in Taos, and I don't hear it. But others do.

It's been an 'issue' for many years.

:shrug:

[Stinky The Clown]

39. Here's an interesting one .....

Deals with ELF

[dysfunctional press]

40. dinah-mo hum, dinah-mo hum...where's that hummin' comin' from..?

i'm in sub-urban chicago as well...and i've never noticed anything...how close are you to an expressway? my wife swears that she can hear the 'hum' of the traffic on the tollway, about 7-8 miles away, but i don't hear it. :shrug:

[Renew Deal]

41. I'll never forget the blackout in 2002.

I live on LI. What was most noticable besides the darkness was the quiet. I could hear the cars rumbling by a mile away. And that's about all I heard. There was no other noise.

I have also noticed it a few times when I traveled. I drove from Trinidad, CO to Santa Fe, NM a few years ago. We stopped on the side of the road along the way. There was nothing to be seen anywhere around us. I just stopped and listened to the silence. It was amazing.

[ReverendDeuce]

42. The best silence I ever heard...

Was on Highway 50 in the middle of Nevada.

We were driving across country and decided, after not seeing another car in nearly an hour, to stop in the middle of the road at around 2pm. It was completely still and completed void of any sound whatsoever. We stood there for about 15 minutes listening to nothing.

It was quite nice. :)