WHAT IS THE HUM?

(We fear less what we understand)

Home page http://drchrisbarnes.co.uk find there all my publications on the Hum and lots of other Scientific topics as well.

The HUM is an unusual noise, heard usually, but not exclusively, nocturnally and amplified by buildings. It is reckoned only to be heard by between 2 and 11% of the World’s population in industrialised regions and is characterised by tones matched by hearers in the region 30-80 Hz yet not necessarily detectable by acoustic detectors or instruments at these frequencies. Superimposed upon the higher frequencies perceived are present pseudo random modulations in the region 0.25-5 Hz giving an effect sounding like a very large bee trapped in a bottle but often considerably lower pitched and sometimes more digital and impulsive sounding and barely discernible yet can be extremely annoying or distressing to some of those afflicted. The difference between the Hum and LFN is that the latter is usually locatable whereas the Hum may propagate for some considerable distance. The Hum may well possess a combination of infrasound, acoustically and electromagnetic components arriving at the hearer in a coherent or quasi-coherent manner.

The HUM was first heard in the UK in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and first heard in the USA in the early 1990’s. More recently it is heard in Scandinavia, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. It seems that as the World becomes more industrialised there are more cases of the HUM. This fact alone suggests the HUM must, somehow, be associated with infrastructure. The HUM recently seems to be associated with the use of renewable energy systems and is especially prevalent in countries which use PME (protective multiple earthling of power systems) indicating some kind of either human magneto -acoustic mechanism or and/ or ground currents causing minute ground vibrations. One thing is for sure the Hum is far more than just an ordinary noise and has correlates with both natural and anthropogenic factors even out to lithosphere, atmosphere and space weather levels!