universal sonic locus
One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers said on Tuesday.“The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech,” said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard piano keyboard.
This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.
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Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans.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.
“Normally you can’t hear it,” Dr Richard Lord, an acoustic scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in England who worked on the project, said Monday.
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.
Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.
“These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound,” said Wiseman, who presented his findings to the British Association science conference.
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.
There are those that listen when someone says they’re gonna add some bottom so that the dancers just won’t hide. Bootsy knows the power he wields. Who hasn’t been inflicted by the insidious effects of the bass dump. What low-end theories are next? All signs point to cutting the midrange and dropping the bass.
9 September 2003, 23:23 ::
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