Why does Earth hum? Because it doesn’t know the words.
WHAT’S THE BUZZ?
Bob and Leona Ehrfurth of Green Bay, Wisconsin, have a problem: Their house hums. Or sometimes it’s more of a rumble. “It’s like there’s a semitruck parked right outside with the engine running,” said Leona. “It doesn’t matter if the windows are open or closed, you still hear it,” added Bob. “We could move, but why should we have to? We didn’t cause it.”
The question is: What did?
• Local authorities haven’t been able to find the cause. But one possibility is that it’s a phenomenon simply called “the Hum”—the background noise that our planet makes. Instances of the Hum have been reported all over the world as a persistent low-frequency noise that sounds like an idling truck. Individual Hums are so localized they’re often given a specific geographical name—for instance, the “Bristol Hum” or the “Taos Hum.”
• Some speculate that those who report these Hums are simply suffering from a condition called tinnitus, where the patient hears sound in the ear, typically ringing, that has no outside source.
• A second possibility: spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, or noises that human ears generate all on their own. Most people never notice them, but a small segment of the population does.
• A third possibility is that people are hearing the effects of ocean waves colliding. When waves with similar frequencies traveling in opposite directions collide with each other, they create a pressure wave that carries all the way down to the seafloor. All of those pressure waves pounding the seabed generate a frequency of their own that may be audible on land.
But the true cause of the Hum—and the noise in the Ehrfurths’ house—remains a mystery.
How’s the fish? The Maldives Hilton recently opened the world’s first underwater restaurant.