Les Jones

Word of the Day > Word of the Day: Infrasound

Ganked from Wikipedia, as you can tell from all the footnotes that I'm too lazy to delete. (Sue me. Lost is about to come on.)

Infrasound is sound with a frequency too low to be heard by the human ear. The study of such sound waves is sometimes referred to as infrasonics, covering sounds beneath the lowest limits of human hearing (20 hertz) down to 0.001 hertz. This frequency range is utilized by seismographs for monitoring earthquakes. Infrasound is characterized by an ability to cover long distances and get around obstacles with little dissipation.

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Infrasound has been known to cause feelings of awe or fear in humans.[9] Since it is not consciously perceived, it can make people feel vaguely that supernatural events are taking place. Some film soundtracks make use of infrasound to produce unease or disorientation in the audience. Irréversible is one such movie. In music, Brian "Lustmord" Williams is known to utilize infrasound to create these same feelings.

Infrasonic 17 Hz tone experiment

On May 31, 2003, a team of UK researchers held a mass experiment where they exposed some 700 people to music laced with soft 17 Hz sine waves played at a level described as "near the edge of hearing", produced by an extra-long stroke sub-woofer mounted two-thirds of the way from the end of a seven-meter-long plastic sewer pipe. The experimental concert (entitled Infrasonic) took place in the Purcell Room over the course of two performances each consisting of four musical pieces. Two of the pieces in each concert had 17 Hz tones played underneath. In the second concert, the pieces that were to carry a 17 Hz undertone were swapped so that test results wouldn't focus on any specific musical piece. The participants were not told which pieces included the low-level 17 Hz near-infrasonic tone.

The presence of the tone resulted in a significant number (22%) of respondents reporting anxiety, uneasiness, extreme sorrow, nervous feelings of revulsion or fear, chills down the spine and feelings of pressure on the chest.[10][11] In presenting the evidence to the BA, the scientist responsible said "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound. 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".

The Ghost in the Machine

Research by the late Vic Tandy, a lecturer at Coventry University, suggested that the frequency 19 hertz was responsible for many ghost sightings. He was working late one night alone in a supposedly haunted laboratory at Warwick, when he felt very anxious, and could detect a grey blob out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to face it, there was nothing.

The following day, he was working on his fencing foil, with the handle held in a vice. Although there was nothing touching it, it started to vibrate wildly. Further investigation led him to discover that the extraction fan was emitting a frequency of 18.98 Hz, very close to the resonant frequency of the eye (given as 18 Hz in NASA Technical Report 19770013810). This was why he saw a ghostly figure — it was an optical illusion caused by his eyeballs resonating. The room was exactly half a wavelength in length, and the desk was in the centre, thus causing a standing wave which was detected by the foil. [12]

Vic investigated this phenomenon further, and wrote a paper entitled The Ghost in the Machine. He carried out a number of investigations at various sites believed to be haunted, including the basement of the Tourist Information Bureau next to Coventry Cathedral [13] and Edinburgh Castle. [14][15]

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