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Haunted Houses Explained: Infrasound
anagama writes "For anyone who cringes whenever accosted by topics such as psychics, haunted houses, or any sort of new age drivel; for anyone who thinks James Randi is cool or has an active subscription to the Skeptical Inquirer - you're gonna love this story about infrasound. Here's a quote: "British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations. ... Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost -- our findings support these ideas.""
Does infrasound include the "brown note", by chance? If so, then I think that they might be on to something. I'm always shitting myself...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I saw this on discovery channel, they even demonstrated it with a guy who was next to a fan (22hz) and saw a "ghost". ... like 3 years ago.
Yet, on slashdot, this is breaking news.
There have been news articles about infrasound and ELF sound experiments since the Cold War began. Both the US and Soviet scientists experimented extensivel y with infrasound as a weapon, and found that it was effective against troops, except for that one annoying minor problem - it affected both sides equally.
. htm
http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavreaus
Subscribe for free to my show!
The BBC story on the subject also attributes religious feelings in churches to the sound produced by the infrasound generated by the largest organ pipes in many churches and cathedrals.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Or......infrasound is how the ghosts are trying to communicate with us! All we have to do is record it and then speed up the tape! Maybe play it backwards too? You'd probably hear "Iiiii...am the ghost of Caldera.....bring me $699 or I shall not find eternal peeeaaaaace....."
...
Hey, can infrasound be reproduced in the lab. I would love to use this for my next annual Halloween party.
Bah, infrasound ? low bass rumble ? thats just the ghost farting......
...had this in 1964. See The Three Investigators #1: The Secret Of Terror Castle (by Robert Arthur 1964).
----- On the requirements it said: Windows 98 or better - so I installed Linux
I remember reading The Mystery of the Green Ghost (Robert Arthur, part of the Three Investigators Series) back in 4th grade (1980ish). It's originally published back in 1965, and one of the "techniques" used by the perpetrators to scare people off was using extremely low notes on a pipe organ, too low for them to hear as sound.
Putting the sig back into +1, Insightful since 1995!
"Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes."
So now we just have to explain how the elephants got into the haunted houses. Or how it is we don't see ghosts every time there's a thundershower.
Seriously, trying to come up with a physical explaination of ghost stories that doesn't include the mind of the person is dumb. The range of reported phenomina is so wide as to be clearly "made up".
(sigh) Oh Great - Just when I thought I had my Home Theater set up correctly, they invent Even Deeper Bass.
I guess I'll need to upgrade if I ever want to truly enjoy such movies as this Scary Movie
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Does anybody remember those "The Three Investigators" books? In one of those, the Investigators were investigating some "haunted house" or something and, in the story, they talked about how a pipe organ playing a very low frequency tone was causing the fearful sensations that everybody was getting.
/. I didn't RTFA... so, is this research claiming to have discovered something new and previously unknown, or are they saying they've simply confirmed something which has been suspected for some time?
Of course, being
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Scientists find 1 explanation for 1 spooky phenomena, and all paranormal happenings are written off as rubbish?
Whatever..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Without saying that these theories are wrong, the still leave questions unanswered.
One-- the article states that infrasound is produced by some natural phenomena. By nature of it's definition, isn't phenomena something that is unexplained?
Two-- this still doesn't explain how infrared cameras have recorded strange shapes (possibly ghosts). I don't have any specific links to provide, but Google should come up with plenty.
What the heck happened with the other study that was being conducted on the possible validity of ghosts existing? I wish that I had the link to the article right now. Does anyone else remember reading or hearing about this?
On the other hand, I'd love to be able to generate infrasound. Are there any apps that do this? Think of the possibilities! I could just imagine experimenting with it at work where things are already miserable:)
Or, of course it could be ghosts USING infrasound to make people feel fear, revulsion, etc.
Clever ghosts.
-Styopa
This is not unusual. There has once again been proof that there is no such thing as a ghost. I was just about to start a ghost removal service. This is not a surprise that they have found this to be true. Goddammit, my computer is haunted.
Probably could go a long way to explaining a lot of these phenomena - emotions are a powerful force that lead people to all sorts of irrational conclusions.
:) I am very skeptical of most of these things. I do remember reading once that reports of UFO sightings and haunted house occurances went in cycles throughout a year, and at the times when there was an increase of UFO sightings there would also be an increase in haunted house reports. Sounds like the same source to me (and I am *not* suggesting that aliens are causing it, or ghosts, but rather something less supernatural).
However, there are some reports I have heard that may not be encompassed in this, unless the feelings infrasound induces also result in visions. I have heard stories of objects moving, seeing ghosts and such, and other less intangible occurances.
Of course, I've never personally witnessed any of these, so I have little to go on
Oh, please. This was in a book from 1964! The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle! This "news" was known back in Alfred Hitchcock's days.
Isn't this known information?
I know it isn't common knowledge, but we've played with it.
I'm not sure how low of a sound frequency they're dealing with, but we "found" that the annoying guy at school didn't like us playing very low frequency sounds through our stero into his room.
You couldn't hear it, he didn't know about it, but he got very uncomfortable.
It was a most effective tool in keeping the invaders away from places where they were not welcome.
Phoenix
That said, I think it be contradictory to this study because it seems like to me that ghost sightings and the paranormal are not as common as they were in the 80's - to me things like this are only a fad - after movies/books like Poltergeist and Amityville Horror.
Also, strange sensations like Deja Vu or Premonition I don't think can be explained through this study.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
A man willing to test his own beliefs! My goodness, what more do we want?!!?!
...tizzyd
From the article:
"[...] It's wonderful to be able to examine the evidence," said Sarah Angliss, a composer and engineer who worked on the project.
Hmmm. Let me get this straight:
I think I am in love... Will you marry me, Sarah? I just hope my wife is not reading this...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
no surgery required! click here for details, etc...I mean since it seems to be the cause of every other damn thing on earth(ghosts, god, flatulence), why not? SCIENCE MARCHES ONWARD!!!
In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music.
The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music.
Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.
Of perhaps it was their unfortunate decision to place the infrasound in the Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails songs vs the Kylie Minogue and TATU songs (or is the the other way around?).
but why not test it out in a haunted house?
why not stay the night in one of the most haunted houses in the world and see what they find?
when that is done, then they might have something to report.
of course, they still would beed to explain the source of the infrasound, not just say it exists.
for all we know, Ghosts make those noises.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
In other contexts, phenomena can refer to an "unusual, significant, or unaccountable fact or occurrence". Scientists do not typically use this definition.
Is that why darth vader had such an impact ?
Today, Toms Hardware discovered that whenever Microsoft Windows renders text in a window corresponding to the GNU licence or LGNU public license, that the MS Windows Media Player 9 renders very low frequency notes during the screen display. Professor Henry Fingle Von HydroFin of UCLA found that people reading this license, using certain HI FI components, would suffer from extreme depression, nausia, hot flushes, general discomfort and rashes around the groin area. The Mozilla team have responded by coding subliminal flashing, taschitoscope style, in the main Firebird client the words "MICROSOFT SUCKS" when browsing any site that uses Active X tags.
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
... the real explanation for ghosts is that it was old Mr McCavity, the janitor. He knew about the abandoned gold mine under the house and used the ghost disguse to try to scare away the house's rightful owners. And he would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids.
Cyounut already confirmed that it's news for him. Are you saying that he isn't a nerd, or what is your point exactly?
Have you never read his line of books titles "The three ??? and..." ?
He mentioned the usage of very low frequencies to produce fear as well, and this *was* quite a long time ago...
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Surely the use of "subsonics" to induce feelings of dread and awe was standard sixties SF fare, and was actually applied to good use in the movie "Earthquake," for which movie theatres installed special bass-enhanced sound-reproduction gear called "Sensurround." By all accounts "Sensurround" was very effective in its original form in that particular movie.
I don't have it at hand, but IIRC in Heinlein's 1966 novel, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," the central computer, "Adam Selene," uses his control over HVAC systems to generate fear-incuding subsonics at a critical point in the story?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This sort of closed-mindedness led to 'experts' being sure it was safe to turn cows into cannibals by mixing dead cow-parts into their feed, because 'obviously' no disease could possibly spread via proteins (ha!). If those experts had respected the fuzzy-headed tree-huggers who protested that cannibalism was unnatural, how many lives would have been saved?
The same cynical BS is responsible for hundreds of thousands of birth defects as depleted uranium and other poisons are poured into the environment-- let the cynics devote their lives to caring for crippled children.
Robert Anton Wilson calls it 'fundamentalist materialism' (in his book "The New Inquisition": Amazon) because its advocates make exactly the same logical errors they claim to attack. [more ranting]
He used that in several novels, most notably "Fifth Column".
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
by infrasound?!
what's the explanation for that?
for anyone who thinks James Randi is cool or has an active subscription to the Skeptical Inquirer
I'm practically positive that James Randi has a subscription to the Skeptical Inquirer.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Rather than /. any individual site, a Google search on the "Taos Hum" heard around Taos, New Mexico is strangely similar to this.
So we should replace the New Age Drivel with Geek Drivel?
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
And what's the big deal here...instead of the ghosts scaring people, it's the ghosts producing infrared sound that scares people.
I'm still scared of my Infrasound producing ghost-overlords.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Well, there goes 12 years of therapy sessions down the drain. I need headphones!!!
"Make me some if you're making some"
"60db infrasound at around 6.9-7.1 Hz is capable of driving a human insane or even killing him within a few minutes."
I find this hard to believe... do you have a reference or link?
That must be why I see ghosts while listening to the mighty Motorhead.
Trolling is a art,
I lived in a college town where bass was pumping every hour of the day. When it wasn't loud it was suttle, very suttle, not loud enough to hear unless you concentrated very hard. My wife couldn't hear it but I could. It gave me problems just like the ones described in the article.
We ended up moving and losing 3 months rent at $975/month.
Did anyone else catch this? How could this ever slip by the Reuters editors:
Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.
Now I can understand telling someone a meter is about the length of a yard (or vice versa), but a.) not in a written science news article and b.) by the time you pile seven of these things on top of each other they are nowhere near equivalent sizes.
Poor research methodologies produce ambiguous results: Film at 11
First, the ambiguous results: 22% reported feeling odd when the infrasound was playing. Howabout when it wasn't playing? 78% also didn't notice ANYTHING. This doesn't really demonstrate anything. Can anyone reliably determine, in a double-blind study, when the infrasound is playing? That would be interesting.
Now, the poor research methodologies: This wasn't a double-blind study. Heck, they crammed all these people TOGETHER in a concert hall. Can you IMAGINE all the "Hey, do you feel funny? I feel funny!" discussion polluting the results? If this had been a one-at-a-time, double-blind study then I suppose the results might actually be meaningfull.
"Alfred Hitchcock Present...The Three Investigators". We loved those books as kids.
I bought a few for my son, and it turns out that Alfred Hitchcock has been exorcised from these books (a license expired for the name perhaps?). He's been replaced by a generic famous film producer.
Not that it matters: my kids have no idea who Alfred Hitchcock is anyway.
Ah well.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I lived in a house a few years ago where at night you'd be asleep in a bedroom upstairs and hear footsteps walking around and down/up the stairs when you're sure it's no other person, your unalarmed overnight guests unanimously report being creeped out by some incident during the night, you see curtains moving and when you go to close the windows you find them firmly shut, your cat that was snoozing at the other end of the room and glancing at you ever few minutes suddenly looks freaked out and watches the the blank between you from left to right as if he's watching someone walking across the room, a vase falls and a voodoo doll pops out, you find unexplained knots in random places that apparently serve no logical function... etc etc.
Infrasound doesn't sound like a logical explanation to me.
ho hum
Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe
nice of reuters to let any nasa engineers reading this know what a meter is equivalent to.
For all those with huge subwoofers and Win32, there's the Test Tone Generator (shareware):
http://www.esser.u-net.com/ttg.htmI tried it and looked at my Wharfedales' 6" cones move very visibly back and forth at 10 Hz with an amplitude of a couple of centimeters. Didn't hear or feel anything though, so I'd suggest a Big Ass (TM) subwoofer for the full experience.
Anyone who has ever witnessed a show by a heavy dub sound system (e.g. Jah Shaka) can tell you about the effects long and heavy bass signals can have on a person. Anything from dizzieness, nausea
and heavy headaches comes along. No wonder people see ghosts under the influence of ultrasound
fx! kicking and screaming
1 - set up low frequency speaker thingy in some random location (preferably near/in a rich person's home or business)
2 - due to demand, start up 'ghostbuster' business in same town
3 - wait for calls to come in
4 - when called, shut off device, move to next victim's location
5 - profit!
(we were able to skip the ??? part this time!)
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Who ya gonna call?
Infrasound BUSTERS!
Maybe this whole thing is an instinctive dinosaur early-detection system.
...
Like -1, Grammar Nazi? Or just an auto-spellcheck that penalizes for grammar and spelling mistakes off the bat.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
this guy is a man who does not take just any one's line of crap to be gospel
No, he really doesn't. James Randi is as much of a "true believer" as any religous nut. He just chooses science as his religion.
He listens, he thinks, he uses his brain
No, he really doesn't. He ignores, he escapes, he grasps at straws.
He's quite open to the possibility of paranormal activity, that is, if you can prove it.
Bullshit. He says he's "open" to the possibility, but in reality, he's not. He says "I'll believe you if you prove it", but then says "you will never be able to prove it, because it doesn't exist."
Saw a feature on water divining once, which featured an interview with Mr. Randi. The subject of the feature was a guy who works for a well drilling company in the UK. He (and the company he works for) claimed that he could predict - with 80% accuracy - where and how deep to drill, and how much water the well would produce. The company offered a money-back guarantee if he was wrong.
They interveiwed Mr. Randi, who examined the claims, and proclaimed "Well, this guy used to be a geophysicist - therefore he's not actually divining, he knows where the water is by using his knowledge as a geophysicist!"
At which time, I lost every ounce of respect I may have had for this idiot. I know a few geophysicists, and all of them tell me that such claims are complete hogwash.
James Randi is a "science believer" - he chooses to believe in "science", even if there is no scientific basis for the claims.
Scientists - 1,000,001
I can't prove something doesn't exist, but you should be able to prove something does exist.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Further research showed that the "infrasound" was actually a barely-audible Skinny Puppy CD playing in so-called haunted houses.
"Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes."
Notice that they say also. That is, the weather and Animals are not the only way to produce Infrasound. Infrasound can be produced mechanically (E.g. a fan may produce Infrasound at certain frequancies) or through other means (E.g. lorry passing on a road).
No doubt the state of mind of the person experiencing the Infrasound also contributes to what the person "feels" or "sees"; to suggest otherwise is just silly. The point of the research simply shows that the vast majority of "Ghosts" are simply the effects of Infrasound. Not everyone will see a "Ghost" if you expose them to Infrasound, different people may "see" different things and the same person may "see" different things at different times. What the researches are fairly certain of is that the vast majority of people will not "see" a "Ghost" if there is no Infrasound.
But remember, reports of ghosts go all the way back to prehistory, well before the invention of bass speakers and even before that of pipe organs.
So the question remains, how did they get the infrasound into the haunted houses?
A few years back there was a phenomenon called the "Taos hum". Yep, that sure sounds like infrasound. Only problem was, nobody that I have ever heard of could locate the source of the sound. That seems to go well beyond not being reproducible!
The story is about a supposedly haunted castle where nobody can spend the night without fleeing in terror. Guess what was responsible? (Hint: there was a huge pipe organ in the castle.)
For anyone unfamiliar with the "Three Investigators" series of books, it's about trio of teens, sponsored by Alfred Hitchcock, who investigate mysteries. Similar to the Hardy Boys, but I remember liking it better.
showing up in 1941 even had some occasional mentions of the use of subsonics to scare off invaders.
Since you want to get all technical and stuff the inspectors did find items and weapons prohibited by the UN.
Remember the Al-Samud and Al-Hussien missles? I beleive it was the Al-Hussien that violated that UN by being able to reach more then 200Km (or something of that nature.) The UN ordered them destroyed and the Iraq's started destroying them at the rate of like 1 per day (they had something like 109 of them.)
That was just one of the violations.
I for one as a U.S. Citizen think that our Intelligence did get fucked up, Hussien was a smart man and people aren't giving him enough credit. I'd bet $100 that half the intelligence we got was from fake defectors that he planted.
And if you ask me, it's better to be safe then sorry.
They didn't destroy them either, they just shipped em of to Syria. They didn't use them during the war because of the propaganda but out by the US. How many fuck fliers did we drop?
Remember all those blue, brown, beige boxes that used to float around the net? When I was a kid myself and a friend teamed up to build the pandora's box we found on the net. It was a hacker tool to annoy people. Not that we needed much help though.
IIRC it consisted of a variable capacitator, 555 timer, and a directional speaker. What you would do was tune the device until it was just the tiniest bit past the perceptible human sound range. Then you would walk around and point it at people and see how stressed you could make them. It worked pretty good. People would get irritated very easily without knowing precisely why. Those who were very susceptible would start to sweat. It clearly induced stress.
Seems like it might be useful for haunted houses too...
For years I have been haveing this discussion with a white orb every tuesday night at 3:00am, it keeps telling me that I am the spirit that dwells in his house. So what a relief, now I can turn up my stero bass and prove to my orb visitor that I do not exist.......there is something very funny about humor.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
I'm not trying to pass off either of the above sources as remotely scientific, for the record. :)
I think that would be "Sixth Column," but who's counting?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Certainly not. Grammatical and spelling errors should not be criticised or corrected in a forum like this. They disrupt the flow for no useful gain.
However, your post had perfect grammar and perfect spelling. The only slight thing wrong with it is that it meant something entirely different to what you intended. In this particular case, the meaning of "effect" makes so little sense that I could tell that you really meant "affect", but you cannot count on this always being the case if you do not learn the difference between the two words. In some contexts, the words are practically opposites.
So, (-1, Meaning error)
I know that using infrasound as a weapon was mentioned in Robert Heinlein's "The Sixth Column" which was first published in 1949. Any earlier examples out there?
Not only would it enhance your horror movies, but you could watch Earthquake as it was intended to be seen.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It's ultrasonics, not infrasonics, so I'm drifting offtopic here, but I really do want to mention "The Whispering Box Mystery" in the Rick Brant Electronic Adventures series.
This was a sort of Tom-Swift-like juvenile series popular in the fifties.
This adventure revolves around a wonderful contraption that generates high-intensity ultrasonics which, it is said, can be aimed at humans and produce instant, harmless paralysis. The book describes the device in some detail--it feeds high-pressure air from a cylinder through a block of metal with a tiny nozzle, IIRC.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Darn! "Sixth Column"!
Honestly, since when did the subjects of ghosts and haunted houses suddenly become "new age drivel?" I grew up in a small Southern town where every family has at least two dozen ghost stories to tell with some going back two hundred years. While I realize that many "psychics" jump on the ghost bandwagon, please don't confuse their profession with the subjects they cover. Ghost stories are as similar to a new age concept as napalm is a food for deer.
would be foolish enough to claim that this test explains uncontrolled tests in other conditions (i.e. claimed haunted houses).
The next step would be to visit such sites and perform tests to determine the presence and source of such LFA (low frequency acoustics), if it exists.
It would further be of interest to correlate more classical ghost activity evidence detection: EMF, infrared (heat) output, and LFA to see if these are caused by the same things, or not related at all.
You'll note the scientist in the article didn't leap to conclusions, the author did. They only said it could support the infrasound hypothesis for hauntings, validating that even unsophisticated setups can induce unexplained emotions. People who claimed infrasound could cause haunted houses were basing that on any specific evidence (I don't think), other than perhaps weapons research.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Is it the really, really seasoned wood that causes it?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
When I read this news story a couple days ago, I was trying to remember the book in which I had read this.
I thought it was an Encyclopedia Brown mystery (my fav series when I was wee)
You can never equivocate too much.
No thanks. While it may be that these ultra-low sounds cause a range of sensations in human emotion does that really prove that any and all paranormal activity can be simply explained away? Aside from the obvious technical problems are the practical issues involved. Do we really need to explain away all of our dreams and fantasies until they're no more than mundane neural processes and heretofore unexplained natural phenomena? Trick or treating on Halloween "Oh, don't worry kids. That house isn't really haunted. That's just an ultra-low frequency sound causing you to have a negative emotional response. Nothing at all to be frightened of..." Either that or Old Mr. McCavity has really bad gas... (SBDs, is that smell real or the result of ultra-low frequency toots?)
No this is for real these cop down in shelbyville kentuck believe that their station house is haunted. Check out the story at ABCnews.
ELF resonance.
Architects have to combat this all the time.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
a soundbug (http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/audio/5a15/) stuck on a VERY large window?
http://www.randi.org/jr/10-29-2000.html
A solar powered, portable infrasound generator.
Ideal for getting rid of annoying guests!
Extra-Low Frequency.
You know, wavelengths on the order of meters. Like a small fraction of the size of a joist, or A-frame.
If a standing wave that could be induced on something like that matches the resonance mode of a cavity of air (attic, exterior room), you could get powerful propogation effects.
Elves, on the other hand, are squishy.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
They should speak to Phil Lesh (pity John Entwhistle is gone) to find out how thunderbombs create Deadheads.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
22% reported unusual experiences when it was present. What percentage reported unusual experiences when it WASN'T present? How was this data collected? Multiple choice quiz? "This music makes me feel: a) BLOODY ODD, MATE b) eh c) good d) fabulous"
+++ATH0
...ever try to bring back Inframan.
So now, Britney Spears can control us and we won't even know? Or the US govt.
simply thru FM? Or how about some crazy virus writer who decides to put
this on every PC?
Paranoids and Conspiracy Theorists Unite!
In it, a silent film star's old house is rumored to be haunted, giving those who visit a trully bad scare and uneasy feeling that is gone once they leave.
Beleive it or not, I thought this was a dupe because I have answered this question before - in this Slashdot story (which does look like a dupe...hmm, better call the three investigators... ;)
I guess this means if we ever get orders to evacuate a colony on, say, Omicron Ceti III, which has been found to have been bomdarded by Berthold Rays, but the colonists don't want to leave because of the drug-like affects of the indigenous "spore plants" we can use a subsonic transmitter to bring everyone back to their senses so that thay are as unhappy as the rest of us...
"...science is a religion."
I am so sick of hearing this. I am tired of being lectured on statistics and the weaknesses of the scientific method by people who evince no familiarity with either.
Science is a process. It is a method of attaching degrees of certainty to explanations of observed phenomena, of understanding our universe without bias or wishful thinking. The process has no ethical component, though the scientists who practice it do.
Unlike religion, science has no asserted dogma. If I so desire, I can follow every step in the chain from 2+2=4 through general relativity, and see, carefully footnoted, the areas where we think there needs to be further work, or we are not sure of our answers.
Unlike religion, science produces tangible results, like the penicillin that saved my life as a baby, or the computer I'm using to write this reply.
Unlike religionists, the only time scientists get stuffy when someone questions their data is when that someone has made no effort to understand the process, and is speaking from a position of obvious fallacy.
Unlike some other posters have asserted, you can prove a negative by contradiction (did it in high school), but insofar as science is concerned with proof, it doesn't deal in proofs in the geometrical sense, but of the statisical one--assigning percentages of certainty based on the goodness of the data. Scientific tests can be shown to have generality; that is, apply to larger groups than the test sample, otherwise, statistics would be a useless discipline.
So is the study valid? Can't tell from a Reuters article. Their methodology seems somewhat suspect. But no general interest journalist is going to report on control groups, selection methodology, or statistical analysis, and I'm not even close to interested enough to look up the actual paper.
But I've hied afield from my initial point, which is simply this: Science requires no faith...only hard work and an open mind. Maybe that's why religion is so popular?
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Is this really new research?
In the early eighties I was reading a series of adventure stories for children, in german it is called "die drei Fragezeichen".
In one episode, the bad guys used an Organ creating infrasound to frighten people away from a house or castle where they operated, pretending the house was inhabited by ghosts.
From the first sentence:
Mysteriously snuffed out candles...may...be due...to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans.
How's that again? I can grudgingly accept the vague "weird sensations", but snuffed out candles?
And thus infrasound can explain pigeons commiting suicide against a closed window - 2 - one in one day, them in another. and furniture that moved during the night, as just in this one case I had a first account for
of Poltergeist.
Scientists, geeks and nerds alike must not adopt materialism as dogma, lest academic science will be no more than the 20th/21th centuries' inquisition.
"Common sense is what tells you the world is flat."
Principia Discordia
--
Hail Eris
There is a really well done french film, "Irreversible" by Gaspard Noe that includes infrasound during one of the more unsettling scenes. I commend Noe for using such a genious technique in this film, since it really expresses the gravity of such a significant scene.
::Bleaked::
If you are even in the mood for a quality film, I highly recommend this film.
I was going to post something about the Three Investigators, thanks for beating me to the punch. Those really are some good books to help fill young minds with inquisitiveness.
It's better to know the ugly truth than believe a beautiful lie. And false hopes deserve to be crushed, otherwise people cling to them and waste their lives instead of getting on with stuff.
..... but once there is a reproducible experiment, there will be nothing anyone can do about it.
Sooner or later, science will almost certainly prove either the outright non-existence of god, or that the existence of a god is neither provable nor relevant. {Relativity didn't actually disprove the existence of the Ether, just proved that it would never be detectable even if it did exist. Even phlogiston actually sort-of exists, if you think of it as being chemical potential energy. It doesn't have measurable mass in its own right, which is what confused the alchemists: depending on whether the oxide is a solid or a gas, burned matter may be heavier or lighter than the unburned form.} I can't see that Organised Religion is going to take kindly to this
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Pick any of:
AC/DC
Amorphis
Anthrax
Alice Cooper
Annihilator
Artch
Babylon A.D.
Bad Company
Bon Jovi
Bad English
Bathory
Borknagar
Beautiful Creatures
Black Sabbath
Blind Guardian...
etc....
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
... it means my AFDB is obsolete.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
During the late 1980s I worked in ZLB - a HF transmitting station in NZ.
Imagine a hall big enough to park up a 737 or 2, incluind the tail, made of concrete block and hard flat surfaces - with a sprung wooden floor, 8-10 feet above concrete.
Now put ~20 1940-60 era valve HF tramsmitters on that floor, each with a 5hp 3-phase blower keeping things cool.
Result: lots of low frequency beat from the motors all running at slightly different speeds (they never run true, even when syncronous), unbalance fan rotors and a drum effect from the floor. Cap it off with high level white noise from the blade tips.
It was a recipe for a sick building. People working there spent most of their off hours sleeping. It wasn't unusual for staff to come off a week long shift and sleep the entire weekend till the shift started again.
While we knew high level infrasonics was probably the cause, there's no legal limits or recognised testing regime, so people put up with it...
> I'm not really sure this is ethical science anymore.
So you are opposed to proof that shows that a potato is not a divine entity? I believe it is, and to say otherwise would crush my fragile ego.
Could these tones be duplicated with a modern sound card and a good set of PC speakers?
Imagine these sounds integrated with Doom III....
I am tired of being lectured on statistics and the weaknesses of the scientific method by people who evince no familiarity with either.
And I'm tired of being lectured on statistics and the scientific method, and how infallible it is, by people with no familiarity with either. (Note: this is not you, but other people.)
Science is a process. It is a method of attaching degrees of certainty to explanations of observed phenomena, of understanding our universe without bias or wishful thinking. The process has no ethical component
All true, but completely beside the point when dealing with people who don't understand that, and treat science as a mystical explanation of everything around us. Even when scientific method says "results cannot confirm or deny such phenomenon", they ignore the "deny" part, and harp on "confirm" - science cannot confirm it, so therefore it does not exist.
Unlike religion, science has no asserted dogma. If I so desire, I can follow every step in the chain from 2+2=4 through general relativity, and see, carefully footnoted, the areas where we think there needs to be further work, or we are not sure of our answers. (emphasis mine)
This is precisely my point - people who treat science as a religion believe that science provides all answers, all the time. There is no fallibility, and thus science itself becomes the asserted dogma.
Unlike religionists, the only time scientists get stuffy when someone questions their data is when that someone has made no effort to understand the process, and is speaking from a position of obvious fallacy.
This statement ignores people who don't question the data, and have made no effort to understand the process. These are the people to whom science is a religion - they are (as you say) speaking from a position of fallacy, but use reports of a scientific nature to assert their claims. People like this do exist (there are more of them than you know.)
So is the study valid? Can't tell from a Reuters article.
Yes, but there are people who will believe it - based solely on the article, and won't bother to check it, let alone understand it.
Science requires no faith...only hard work and an open mind.
Science doesn't need to require faith, but that doesn't exclude people from having faith in science.
Yeah right, it's not ghosts, it's only infrasounds..
But what generates the sounds? Ghosts of course!
Does anybody know how I can make these sounds myself?
...
I would like to perform these experiments in the comfort of my own room
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
In SOVIET RUSSIA, pr0n searches for you!
No matter where you live now, pr0n searches for you. Don't you have an email address? Maybe you've always had an intelligent server-side spam blocker so you don't understand...
Quick, get yourself an ultra low frequency detector and set up a ghostbusting franchise.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
> So the question remains, how did they get the infrasound into the haunted houses?
Plain old wind blowing at the right speed and through the right shaped house.
Darn it! I knew I should have subscribed to the Skeptical Inquirer a year ago! Look at what I missed.
This is a rather elegant explanation to the problem, but I think it's a lot simpler than that. Irrational fear. Is there a name for a phobia of unseen entities? Does this tread on the domain of major religions? I'm afraid of heights, even when there is absolutely no danger of falling. I've had this irrational fear as long as I can remember, (my earliest memory was from the age of four.)
I think we would be better served if SI did a detailed analysis of the junk equipment that the typical (if that can be said) ghost hunter bumbles about with. I remember one particular program on the Kindergarten Pop Science Network Ch-- Er, Discovery channel, where a fellow was carrying around a reel tape deck to record ghostie sounds, and analysing the near-infrasound range for "voices." I recognized the sounds. It's what's known as "rumble," introduced by vibrations from the motors, (also present in record players.) I've witnessed it myself in older equipment with heavy reels, (I had an Ampex 4-track from '68.) I laughed out loud, and took special note of the short sequence with the fellow from the Debunker's Domain. And that is how I stumbled upon the Skeptical Inquirer.
Why is the scientific community attempting to assist these junk-science crack pots? Let *them* prove their claims.
-Frd
22% reported more unusual experiences when it was present. Learn to read.
Ok, so if this really does work, I'd love to have one lying around my house for a cheap high. I think that would be the first evidence that it worked: recreational mood altering.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Ok, this article might have discovered some important properties about how humans respond to infrasound BUT. Oh geez, where do I start.
When you have lived in a house where "stuff" moves on its own, without you asking, like furniture, nails, etc, and your life has been rather unpleasant for a year, you may ask "does this article explain it all?"
When you "feel" that there is an old woman in the house who wants to make the life of all men miserable, and then find out that one of the previous owners of the MIGHT think that this article does not explain it all.
Electricity cutting off, radio stations changing on you (the dial turning), nails thrown at you out of a nailless wall, doors opening and closing, waste basket flying actoss the room, pinging noises, one sighting and an eerie chill in many rooms of the house.
In case you're interested, this happened to me while I was a sophomore in high school in '82. The house was on Wing Lake Road in Birmingham, Michigan. Second on the right I think. Gravel driveway. Have at it.
I believe in ghosts NOW. No foolin.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Agreed, in general principle. The people to whom you refer are not dealing with science, but with what they think science is. I don't see a way to correct that, but I still get annoyed when I see something modded up to "+5 Insightful" when it is patently "-1 Clearly Not Getting It." I still expect, despite all experience to the contrary, for the level of discourse on Slashdot to be higher than that. There's some faith for you. ;)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Amazing. Not even clownfish speak Whale.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Certainly not. Grammatical and spelling errors should not be criticised or corrected in a forum like this. They disrupt the flow for no useful gain.
However, your post had perfect grammar and perfect spelling. The only slight thing wrong with it is that it meant something entirely different to what you intended. In this particular case, the meaning of "effect" makes so little sense that I could tell that you really meant "affect", but you cannot count on this always being the case if you do not learn the difference between the two words. In some contexts, the words are practically opposites.
So, (-1, Meaning error)
Hey, thanks for all that. I was looking for a definition of "pompous." For free, I get "self-contradictory."
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
and it was bollocks.
they did a quick show of hands at the end, and equal numbers thought the infrasound occured in each of the tracks played: ie. you couldn't tell.
maybe it was too quiet to affect the brain; i was gutted because I was looking forward to feeling spooky and weird (instead of just looking it!)
I wish you were wrong.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Is anyone else bothered by pictures of William of Occam in which he clearly has a beard?
The problem with a criteria such as the "simplest solution" is that the solution space has changed. When spirits were the only possible solution, that was the simplest solution. When so many things have since been proven to not be caused by spirits, spirits lose their appeal.
I don't believe that skepticism is modern. It's just that in current times there seem to be more skeptics because fewer skeptics are killed for their beliefs. Although Ashcroft is working to correct that.
I'm a bass fanatic and infrasound has sort of been a hobby of mine for the past several years. Detecting infrasound (frequencies less than 20 Hz) is easy if you have the right equipment and it can be very fascinating, educational, and fun.
Capturing and monitoring infrasound is easy with a PC, low end sound card, and a cheap microphone. The key is having a low enough sample rate and a spectrum analysis program that is designed for monitoring long term events. I am the author of a Linux signal analysis program called baudline. It has many features that make it ideal for infrasound monitoring. For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing I would recommend checking out the image entitled -session basso on the Screenshots page, also many of Mystery Signals contain some interesting bass phenomena.
For baudline infrasound monitoring, some good starting command line parameters would be:
baudline -memory 50 -samplerate 8000 -decimateby 16 -overlap 50
This will capture about 5 hours of data at a 500 samples/second rate which is good for frequencies up to 250 Hz. Increasing the -memory buffers to 230 MB, the decimation ratio to 64, and the -overlap to 100% will have a Nyquist frequency of 62.5 Hz and capture almost a weeks worth of data!
There have been lots of reports of animals freaking out before earthquakes--maybe just their reaction to the same thing. "The earth is haunted!"
I too am worried that explaining mysterious phenomena away as simply "infrasound" is going to be over used. You can't hear infrasound which makes it an easy answer that is difficult to dismiss. But that doesn't mean it is worthless. You need to get scientific about it. If you have a spooky house or an unexplained natural phenomena you need to bring in the infrasound detector and measure it. It isn't that hard or expensive.
This page at noaa.gov mentions some of the environmental sources on infrasound: earthquakes, avalanches, meteors, large ocean waves, severe weather systems, and volcanos. Negative emotional responses to those sounds could well have been a survival trait in mankind.
This article (PDF, 8mB) provides a nice overview and discussion of atmospheric infrasound.
More likely it has something to do with electromagnetic fields, actually. They might also cause mass religious conversions, UFO sightings, etc. A very interesting article, it really changed my view of the world when I first read it several years ago.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
http://www.copi.com/articles/mk_fitb.rtf
w ol vesPDFs/WWReconstruct.pdf
u s. htm
3 /p roject332.html
l %2 0weapons.html
. ht m
http://www.btinternet.com/~gentry/WebMedia/Were
http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavrea
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/658
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/issues/Nonletha
http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/non_lethal_death
Do i really need to go on?
...have a look at my website:
http://www.btinternet.com/~dr_paul_lee/sns.htm
Best wishes to you all
Paul
My web domain.
Hey, pompous I'll take. I've been accused of being pompous by a Conservative MP, and I had to accept I was dealing with an expert.
I'm incurably curious as to what you thought was self-contradictory... s/They disrupt/Such corrections disrupt/ would remove an ambiguity in my first paragraph.
To summarise: if someone writes "there" when they mean "their", don't sweat it, it doesn't matter. If someone writes "up" when they mean "down", it's worth correcting them -- for one thing, they might point out they meant what they wrote, in which case you've cleared up a misunderstanding. Saying "effect" instead of "affect" is more like saying "up" instead of "down" than it is like mistyping a word or splitting an infinitive.
Example: "The planned redundancy program will not be affected by the new management team" == keep on sending those resumes out.
"The planned redundancy program will not be effected by the new management team" == It's all cancelled, your job's safe!
Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted
sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost -- our findings
support these ideas.
Yes, but the ghosts are MAKING the sounds.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
So..... ghosts have cool stereos with awesome bass?
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
ELF resonance??? You mean like Executable and Linkable Format? I didn't know old houses ran Linux! Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
Ranting about poor scientific method is often an easy way of getting modded up... I know; I've done it myself. But unless you've read up about this study elsewhere, the article is so bare in terms of details of exact methods, that I think you're being unfair here.
22% reported feeling odd when the infrasound was playing. ... 78% also didn't notice ANYTHING.
You're right that this by itself doesn't mean much, but that doesn't mean it cannot mean much... if the same test without the infrasound resulted in 1% of people feeling odd, then you probably have a statistically significant result. But the article doesn't elaborate.
This wasn't a double-blind study. ... Can you IMAGINE all the "Hey, do you feel funny? I feel funny!" discussion polluting the results?
Discussion among the listeners will have an effect on the outcome, but it could still have been a valid double-blind test. The subject was the group, not individuals. Obviously, the result has to be considered in that context. As long as they do what they say and say what they do, I think it's fair. Although I can't deny that an individually administered test would have been better (but more expensive).
If your rant is based on the fact that you can't draw any conclusions from this news report, then I'd be far more concerned about the scientific methods of the reporter.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Really..."Answers In Genesis?" I knew about that site in high school, and it's as funny now as it was then.
No one's telling you what you can or can't believe. If people laugh at you because what you believe contradicts logic, that's your problem, but it sure ain't persecution.
And what have you got against atheism and licentiousness? Tried either one lately? They're both a blast.
-Carolyn, licentious atheist
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
If you play a loud tone at precisely 19.35hz it makes women extremely horny.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I can hardly say this "explains" hauntings. Having LIVED in a haunted house for two years of a poltergiest level, I am one of the few who have had first hand experience. And it goes beyond simple 'creepy' feelings or odd visions.
Here is quick run down of events that often tookplace.
1. Objects flying off shelves.(once even threw me across the room!)
2. Faucets turning them selves on full blast.
3. Unexplained drain in electricity. (electric bill often exceeded $800, and after 3 checks by public service they could not explain the huge power drain)
4. One room always remained extremely cold, regardless of electric heaters put in place and being the closest room to the fireplace. (the fireplace was the only thing heating the house, there was no furnace)
5. Sliding closet and cuburt doors opening and slamming shut.
6. unexplained rearranging of furniture.
The list goes on, some of the other events that took place, could be explained by the infrasound theory, but I've tried to just list the ones that could not be explained by infrasound.
On a side note, this was a log cabin style home near a lake in the country. We found out later everyone who has ever lived there claimed it was haunted, and had a long history of unexplained events including many freak accidents and deaths.
Interestingly I never actually SAW any ghosts, although I guess my stepdad does claim he did once.
I forgot to mention this in the parent post but baudline can also be used to generate infrasound. It has a built in tone generator that is fairly flexible (pure sine waves, linear or exponential sweeps, brown noise, various modulations, ...). One of my favorites is setting a low and hi frequency span in the deep bass range and then modulating a sine wave with the brownian motion function (drunkards walk), it is like a warble tone.
Generating infrasound at high dB levels is difficult and potentially dangerous to you and your equipment so be careful.
The first thing to do is to test if your audio card can actually output infrasound frequencies. Many sound cards (and subwoofers) have filters that remove inaudible bass. This is easy to test with baudline and a loopback cable. Simply plug the line-in to the line-out on your soundcard and then have baudline's tone generator output a 14 Hz sine wave and see what (if anything) is recorded on the input side.
The next and far more difficult problem is actually moving enough air to create infrasound of any significance. Remember that output ~= Vd * Xmax * frequency^2 where Vd is radiating surface area and Xmax is excursion. Most subwoofers have minimal output below 20 Hz and some even have rumble filters that electronically remove inaudible bass. So this might be more of a project for DIY speaker builders. Also using a subwoofer with a ported alignment is a recipe for destruction unless the port is tuned to (or below) the infrasound frequency of interest. In anycase it is easy to over power most any woofer and make them bottom out at infrasonic frequencies. So be cautious, start with low volume levels. A good general rule is if it sounds bad then it likely is bad and it is causing damage so stop immediately.
DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any damage those actually foolish enough to follow my advice inflict on themselves, other people, audio equipment, or physical structures.
But James Randi is a MAN OF SCIENCE. (who has never published in a scientific journal or worked as a scientis and has no patents to his name) CSICOP says so!!! What does observed fact have to do with it? HAVE FAITH OR SUFFER ETERNAL DAMNATION!!!
Tech Public Policy stuff
In Praise of Close-Mindedness
A Manifesto for the Thoughtful Asshole
Imagine you are engaged in heated debate with a nitwit. Perhaps he insists that the tiny amount of electromagnetic radiation produced by small appliances is life-threatening. Maybe he claims that science - science! - proves that ancient, unprincipled medical practices are still relevant today. Possibly he asserts that telepathy and ESP are firmly grounded in modern physics. You've probably been taught to suffer such brainlessness, to be "open-minded" lest you endure the scorn of a society that ham-handedly stuffs tolerance down your throat. Maybe you've even managed to convince yourself that there is benefit in listening patiently to views that conflict violently with common sense. After all, how can you accurately judge a person's ideas unless you hear their entire line of reasoning? Didn't everyone call Einstein crazy? Don't you risk missing out on a superior and revolutionary way of thinking? It's best, it might seem, to simply hear them out before passing judgment.
My friends, do not fall into this trap. These people are not latter-day Einsteins. They are the slobbering, gibbering cretins you believe them to be. Do not be tricked into equating unbiased thinking with uncritical thinking. Do not be ashamed of dismissing them out of hand. No! Break free of the chains of open- mindedness! Throw down the shackles of undiscriminating tolerance! Refuse to endure another instant of sanity-eroding idiocy!
This all assumes, of course, that you are not a moron. If you are a moron, you should listen to your betters. You should also go far, far away - this very instant, mind you - and never trouble us again.
How, one might ask, did close-mindedness get such a bad rap? It's the tyranny of the majority, dear reader. You see, idiots vastly outnumber clear-thinking souls like ourselves. A moment's reflection will make this clear. Think, for example, of intelligent design theory, evolutionary psychology, and Star Wars missile defense. We are awash in a flood of filtered, purified drivel that erodes our ability to think critically and leaves us gasping for rational exposition. The loonies are everywhere, demanding our attention in a compulsive need to spread their viral stupidity. They don't want you questioning the rationality of their ravings. They don't want you pointing out obvious logical flaws. No! When we rightfully blow them off they decry our haughtiness and froth over our unreasoning hatred of different points of view. In this manner they have fought to make discretion unfashionable and dragoon otherwise reasonable individuals into hearing them out.
What can we do to combat this evil movement against closed-mindedness? The solution is to aggressively, assiduously ignore the slack-jawed hordes. This requires developing rules of thumb for identifying those who are likely to be wastes of time - psychiatrists, goateed self-described philosophers, Bush voters, and so on. Some people have a hard time accepting this. They point out that such generalizations may fail when applied to a specific individual, thereby revealing their need to bone up on the definition of "generalization". "How can you say that all sociologists are fatuous blowhards?" they say. "That's a sweeping generalization - surely there's some sociologist who conducts useful research". This is not the point. While it turns out that in this particular example the general rule is never violated - all sociologists truly are fatuous blowhards - the idea is that even if this were sometimes false, probabilistically speaking one would still come out ahead by tuning out whenever a sociologist opens his or her mouth.
"Good day, sir. I have recently completed research wherein I demonstrate that a complex set of human behaviors can be divided into an ad hoc set of complementary categories. The ingenious twist is that particular behaviors - in fact, all behaviors that anyone has ever specifically mentione
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
... either that or you are incompetent.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's just a mechanism. Nobody can explain where the infrasound might be coming from. (at least not in the article). The arrogance of the analytical mind is astounding. "If there's no explanation for it that fits my rules, it's not happening."
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
A voice of reason in the wilderness.
I would guess that most animals have this response and that most are "wise" enough to then flee. Humans, vastly disconected with their animal past, go to see a shrink or take medication.
The only dose you'll get from Denmark is a dose of the clap.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
When I was in third and fourth grade, I read a lot of stories from "The Three Investigators" Series.
One of the stories (I don't remember which) was about a haunted house. The secret behind this haunted house, was a huge pipe organ which had been tuned to subsonic frequencies, to apply this very effect (making people afraid, etc).
The first of these books was named "The Secret of Terror Castle". Perhaps that is the one I remember. It was published in 1964.
I heard somewhere that large passenger aeroplanes produce infrasound that may harm people on board. My brain immediately thinks "airsickness!"
I could be onto something...
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
"That's far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than what religion has to offer as a mechanism for getting the facts straight. People who equate science with religion are either ignorant or dishonest."
No, they are aware of the fact that dogma and faith are often quite dominant in science despite claims that it is "objective" and above all that. I'm not referring to faith being in science as exemplified in "Creation Science": I am referring to the non-religious dogma.
I do hear what may be described as "Bass" sounds when the house is quiet, but my wife doesn't. It's sort of a low, rythmic "boom ---- boom". I have a ghost in my house I noticed a few things unexplained. First, boxes of tools, parts, etc. kept on a garage shelf ended up spilled on the floor. Then, large boxes, model airplane kits from a different shelf also ended up on the floor. I found what looked like a wax deposit on the garage floor. It was as if a large candle had melted, and left a pool of wax. I don't have a candle or anything like that in the garage. The outside light quit. before I could get around to changing it, it came back on. The same thing happened in the cellar. The kitchen lights in the ceiling consists of 2 circular flourescent bulbs. They quit suddenly, then after about 20 minutes, came back on. This was repeated several times. The latest was the dissapearance of my US Flag on a staff mounted in front of the garage. One morning, it simply was not there. I had kept it flying, day and night. Three days later, it re-appeared. I spread the word to several investigators, and an appointment was made for last night. A team of 2 women and 2 men arrived at 9PM from Gloster Co. NJ, and set up their instruments. These are purely hobbyists, and no money changed hands. They drove over an hour to get here. I was impressed. They had a huge array of camera's, recorders, etc.. They blackened out the house while Marlene and I sat outside in the dark for about 2.5 hours. I smoked a big stogie. We could see lights from the flashes of the special cameras through the windows. After about an hour, the team joined us in the backyard for a smoke break. They had indeed found eveidence of something supernatural. They asked us if we knew a deceased John. Yes. They also asked if I knew of a deceased Bob, who was a practical joker. Well, I remember Bob Kelly, one of my students at Pensacola who was a real joker, but I'm not sure if he is dead or alive. Then they returned to finish the assignment. When it was all over, we came back in and were briefed. They showed photo's on their digital cameras of white globes appearing in various rooms. Most were in the bedroom, and in the basement around a chess table here. (I have a portrait of The last Supper right next to it.) It will take about 2 month's to put it all together. All the data must be annalysed, and put to gether in a typed report, and a CD ROM. It certainly was an interesting experience. I'll keep you posted.
. . . pretty sure that I saw an episode when I was 8, where the bad guy used really low sounds to make people feel creepy.
"I would have published in a peer-reviewed journal, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
Play some infrasound just before Steve Monkeyman Balmer gallops out on stage, just to see how long it takes for him to notice everyone is crying.
Definately explains country music
You are supposed to moderate items UP! Not wasted time modding stuff down - fools.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
RTFA, all you need is a 7 metre pipe.
Additionally consider the following specs:
1. All pipe is to be made of a long hole, surrounded by metal or plastic centered around the hole.
2. All pipe is to be hollow throughout the entire length - do not use holes of different length than the pipe.
3. The I.D. (inside diameter) of all pipe must not exceed the O.D. (outside diameter) - otherwise the hole will be on the outside.
4. All pipe is to be supplied with nothing in the hole so that water, steam or other stuff can be put inside at a later date.
5. All pipe should be supplied without rust - this can be more readily applied at the job site. N.B. Some Vendors are now able to supply pre-rusted pipe. If available in your area, this product is recommended as it will save a lot of time on the job site.
6. All pipe over 500ft (153m) in length should have the words "long pipe" clearly painted on each end, so the Contractor will know it is a long pipe.
7. Pipe over 2 miles (3.2km) in length must have the words "long pipe" painted in the middle, so the Contractor will not have to walk the entire length of the pipe to determine whether or not it is a long pipe.
8. All pipe over 6" (152mm) in diameter must have the words "large pipe" painted on it, so the Contractor will not mistake it for small pipe.
9. Flanges must be used on all pipe. Flanges must have holes for bolts quite separate from the big hole in the middle.
10. When ordering 90 degrees, 45 degrees or 30 degrees elbow, be sure to specify right hand or left hand; otherwise you will end up going the wrong way.
11. Be sure to specify to your vendor whether you want level, uphill or downhill pipe. If you use downhill pipe for going uphill, the water will flow the wrong way.
12. All couplings should have either right hand or left hand thread, but do not mix the threads - otherwise, as the coupling is being screwed on one pipe, it is unscrewed from the other.
You can get infrasonic building resonances, but it's usually a problem in tall steel-frame buildings not built with earthquake stiffening but subject to high winds. Wooden buildings have too much intrinsic damping for that sort of thing.
There are effective acoustic weapons, but they're more exotic than infrasound.
Infrasound story: I used to keep a horse at a stable about a quarter mile from Stanford's Center for Computer Music and Acoustics, when they were out in the country at the D.C. Power Lab. CCRMA occasionally had outdoor concerts, and once they played around with infrasound. The horses got quite upset. Horses sense footsteps well; when standing still, their leg joints lock up (so they can sleep standing up without effort) and they get a conductive acoustic path from the ground. Somebody pumping "thumpa thumpa thumpa" into the ground sounds like some giant animal approaching. Two people were bucked off when that started. I called up the head of CCRMA and got them to back off on the infrasound thing.
What is there to explain away, if there's nothing to explain?
And please feel free to disregard the following if you're not a mathematician. :)
This is pretty offtopic, but it reminded me of something I thought of the other day while thinking about Godel's theorem. I realized that where people generally consider statements to be either 'true' or 'false', I believe there must be a third category as well which I'll label 'invalid'. Further, statements which attest to their own validity (being true/false) either directly or indirectly must be labeled 'invalid'. This eliminates the "circular argument" type of proofs and the traditional paradoxical statements such as "this statement is false". Now the interesting thing you realize while looking at these three groups of statements is that the true statements can't contain any assertion that the group itself as a whole is 'true', otherwise it would be an invalid statement. Like the man who tells everyone how humble he is... By saying he is, he isn't. Obviously the group may contain arguments that other parts of the set are true, but they can't come full circle so you end up with the statements on the 'periphery' of the true-group attesting to statements at the 'core' of the true-group. The one property that the set of true statements seems to have over the other two is that the set of true statements will not contradict eachother. In other words self consistency. The truth will stand by itself needing no external statement(s) to verify it.
Now, maybe that's nothing earth shattering, but I thought it was interesting, and generally supports the way I (and hopefully others) determine what's true: (1) You hear something new. (2) If it seems to not contradict other things you believe to be true, you mentally label it as 'probably true'. On the other hand, if it contradicts your beliefs/views/ideas you mentally label it as 'probably false/invalid'. (3) As you hear/learn more things, they will either reinforce each other or contradict each other and things you have mental notes on will shift either way as this process continues. It's kind of like constructive and destructive interference, and the constructive (non contradictory) ideas should end up being the 'true' ones. Note that the best way to insure this is to learn as much as possible from as many sources as possible. Also seemed to make sense of somthing I had read that previously didn't seem to make much sense to me: "All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence." D&C 93:30
Sorry to go on and on. Just some thoughts of the sleep deprived. ;)
http://www.tcdsb.org/archbishopromero/inquisitor/G odhelmet1002.shtml
or simply lick here
Occam's Razor is probably the most widely mis-applied concept in the scientific world.