Humming Sounds Are Earth Breathing Noises

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What causes the humming sounds heard around the world?

Could it result from the Earth breathing in and out?

the hum science, The Hum is the Earth breathing sound, hum sound earth breathing sound
The Hum is the Earth breathing sound. A: The first modes of Earth hum were discovered 10 years ago, and are spheroidal oscillations of Earth’s surface, representing a perturbation in the vertical plane (ocean waves). These oscillations have been explained as the effect of the broadly analogous movements of ocean waves. B: Kurrle and Widmer-Schnidrig’s discovery of toroidal oscillation modes. Picture via Nature

We all remember as the ground started breathing in a Canadian forest. It’s not only the ground but all our planet that seems to breathe. And now, scientists propose that the ocean is the likely source of the mysterious Hum heard worldwide.

The hum sound has been ascribed to the tickling effects of ocean waves — but a new-found twisting oscillation might reopen the search for the source.

What is the Hum For Seismologists?

Over the past decade, the word ‘hum’ has acquired a special meaning for seismologists, connoting for them a fundamental resonant oscillation of the Earth.

A sequence of these oscillation modes, with periods of between around 2 and 5 minutes, was first identified in 1998.

These were all ‘spheroidal’ modes, representing perturbations of the planet’s equilibrium surface, rather akin to the effect of waves on water.

This present article presents an entirely different mode — ‘toroidal’ hum – in which parts of Earth’s surface twist around in the horizontal plane.

What Is The Toroidal Hum?

The existence of this low-frequency Earth hum is not the surprising thing. Seismic noise is ubiquitous, generated by various natural processes such as falling water and even swaying trees, as well as all manner of human activities.

It is the magnitude of the hum that is disconcerting. Its summed amplitude is equivalent to a continuous earthquake of magnitude 6. An quake of this size occurs once every three days on average; clearly, seismic activity cannot sustain hum of such magnitude and continuity.

Since those first intriguing findings, the ocean has by general consensus been identified as the most likely source of Earth hum.

The origin of the excitations seems to lie in oceanic areas at mid-latitudes, between about 30° and 60° north and south.

In addition, the amplitude of the effect has a periodicity of six months, with a maximum occurring in each hemisphere during its winter: satellite data show that ocean waves are particularly large at mid-latitudes during the winter months.

The proposal, which borrows an idea of some 60 years ago, is that so-called infragravity waves, which are known to have the same sort of periods as the hum, transmit this oceanic motion to the solid Earth.

These waves are similar to tsunami waves (low-frequency, long-wavelength ocean waves that move the whole column of ocean waters, from surface to sea floor, as they propagate).

The collision of such waves could produce large pressure variations, and thus excite the hum.

A problem is that infragravity waves are mainly known to be a phenomenon of shallow water, although a mechanism for generating them in the deep ocean has recently been proposed.

Another cause for the Humming Noise?

Even so, a direct interaction between the atmosphere and the solid Earth has not been ruled out as a source of the hum.

Atmospheric and oceanic effects are difficult to separate: when we see large-amplitude ocean waves, the cause is likely to be an atmospheric effect, namely strong winds.

The observant frequent flyer from New York to Paris or Tokyo to San Francisco will note that, during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, flights are often diverted from the shortest geographical route, a great circle over the Arctic, to a more southerly route of near-constant mid-latitude.

The reason is the saving of one to two hours in flight-time thanks to strong westerly tail winds over the northern Pacific and Atlantic. On those occasions, the same watchful traveller might also, on looking out of the plane window, see rampant ocean waves far below.

Toroidal vs Spheroidal Modes

This new investigation by Kurrle and Widmer-Schnidrig of Earth hum, with their discovery of toroidal modes, brings a new angle to these considerations of oceanic and atmospheric effects.

All past work on hum has focused on spheroidal modes: measuring these modes is simpler, because one needs just a single instrument that measures seismic activity in the vertical plane.

Twisting toroidal modes, on the other hand, require the analysis of seismograms in the two horizontal dimensions of Earth’s surface.

The interpretation of these seismograms is further complicated by the coexistence of spheroidal and toroidal modes in them, as well as noise generated by the local tilt of geological strata just under Earth’s surface.

But the authors now show that there are peaks in the oscillation-frequency spectrum that correspond exactly to predicted frequencies of toroidal modes.

Whereas it is easy to see how the broadly analogous up-and-down action of ocean waves might produce spheroidal oscillation modes, it is less easy to see how oceanic infragravity waves might generate toroidal modes.

So What Are the Alternative Explanations For the Hum?

Atmospheric theories developed to explain hum excitation in the past 10 years have considered only the role of local variations in atmospheric pressure, which impinges ver- tically downwards at each point on Earth’s surface.

Again, this vertical force might help to explain the spheroidal modes, but it is irrelevant to the excitation of toroidal modes.

Fresh thinking is thus required, whether the source for the newly discovered modes lies in the atmosphere or in the oceans.

One might speculate on possible mechanisms: perhaps winds exert shearing forces on the solid Earth through topographic coupling — when an air mass hits a mountain range, for instance — or perhaps long-period ocean waves hitting.

Here a description of the Hum that drives people crazy around the world.

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