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Comment by nom | Hacker News Reader

Mysterious, unlocateable sounds have always fascinated me. Right now I was just looking for that impossible to triangulate low frequency vibration that plagued that one town i can't remember, but then I typed "mysterious sound" into YT and found out about this world wide event [1] [2] that occurred this year Jan 9-14 and nobody was able to explain it

1: https://youtu.be/mTOQvDzihTU?t=223

2: http://strangesounds.org/2016/01/unexplained-booms-increase-...

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There's going to be a whole lot more of these mysterious sounds because of climate change. Nobody knows what it sounds like when the permafrost starts to thaw and methane starts to bubble out of it. Russia's already seeing some very strange geological effects: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-exploding-permafrost-...

This ping could be methane ice under the ocean melting, a sound akin to the cracking of ice cubes in water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

I sure as fuck hope not. Melting clathrates would be an unimaginable disaster for the climate.

Like it or not but we're already well into the "unimaginable disaster" phase for climate change.

The biggest group of climate change denialists are those scientists that insist we can cap things at 2°, which at this point is about the same as thinking that Santa is real.

Relevant to watch. Before the Flood - Full Movie | National Geographic [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90CkXVF-Q8M

I'm not a climate change denialist, but I am a climate change optimist. I think it would be possible to cap things off at two degrees, but we would have to start sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and doing something with it (like big tanks or put it underground as dry ice, etc). Anyone that thinks we can stop this by producing less CO2 is deluded. We're well beyond the "unmitigated disaster for our current environment" ppm level. If we can't fix this, at least life will evolve and move on after we and many other species go extinct due to human activity.

Maybe now that the oceans are set to die, scientists will dump CO2 eating algae into it?

I have suspicions that most world leaders are aware of the work done on the various geo-engineering mitigation strategies and are willing to risk it.

Such a terrible prospect to consider but that hasn't stopped scientists and engineers planning for the worst. An ill-conceived quick fix scares me, yet seems to be more likely than global agreement to reduce emissions in the fractured world of international politics.

At least US emissions are down 20% from the 90s, we would have beat our Kyoto obligations.

Actually, what is not appearing in those calculations, that the ability to react with technology might shrink due to the costs added by the migrations out of parts of the earth that become uninhabitable.

The problem with this is funding. If one country took it upon itself to save the planet they pay a huge price and everyone benefits, so there's no incentive to do it.

It's only when things get so bad there's no option but to do it, by which it's probably too late, when everyone might decide to fuck it and go solo instead of waiting for consensus.

True, but don't forget that large scale events also would occur without human intervention. It cant be denied that our actions are the cause for a lot of changes, but a volcano or an earthquake are just natural occurences. We live on a big ball of mud.

A significant element of the present era is that several distinct existential risks humans face are either self-imposed or self-inflicted.

Climate change, overpopulation, mass extinction, resource exhaustion, the threats of nuclear war and winter, self-imposed mass epidemic (particularly biowarfare), long-term chronic pollution (especially lead, mercury, and dioxins), ozone layer, mutagens, genetic drift.

Others aren't directly imposed but are self-inflicted: systemic global supply-chain collapse risk, global financial system collapse risk, creating potential breeding grounds and vectors for global pandemics, etc.

The risk of exogenous events -- supervolcanos, asteroid impacts, solar storms, nearby supernovae -- aren't affected by human activities. But in the case of endogenous events, we're directly affecting the probabilities.

Shit happens, but the shit that's happening right now is our own doing.

The craters in the Russian permafrost are a fascinating phenomenon but the explanation that they would be caused by methane is only a theory, nobody knows for sure yet where they are coming from.

The ones in the first vid are most likely fake. There's videos on YT how to create them as well. Not to mention that "it happens every morning at 6am, sometimes in the evening" sounds a very suspiciously like someone mistaking something they can't identify as something noone can identify.

yeah I don't know what to think of it. A search turns up a lot of news articles, all posted within that time range, and it doesn't look like a fake at second glance. But who knows.

I am definitely not opposed to the idea of things we don't understand going on out there, not at all. The thought of it excites me as much as the next guy.

It's really just this specific type of video I am very skeptical towards. Here's a German video about creating these, with timestamp to a demonstration of the result: https://youtu.be/PG-mMiKWbwE?t=2m26s

Considering how little effort the guy put into this (take trombone sound, add reverb, slow down and overlay with badly recorded video) I think it's safe to say that the majority of those videos are fake.

For the news reports, it wouldn't surprise me if they used these fake videos as their "sources". Especially when they're tagged as happening in a specific area I can imagine a local news station picking it up, then being further sourced by others.

As for the phenomenon itself, maybe there's some truth to it, which I would agree to be super exciting, much like the like the article in the OP.

Good point. The influence of social media really can't be understated, trolling is really easy today. Especially if you build upon other material or facts that support your claim (I guess that's what happened here)

Absolutely fascinating, and slightly terrifying! I've heard a sound like this in Portland, OR several times over the past couple years, on the second occurrence my neighbor managed to get a video of it [1].

It sounded like absolutely nothing I've heard in my life, like a giant didgeridoo but so powerful you could feel the vibration in your chest. Many others in my neighborhood heard it too, as referenced by this Reddit thread [2].

Have thought about it for a long time and no explanation makes sense, I still get shivers listening to the youtube video; Play it plugged into a sound system for full effect!

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJbH8jd8dz0 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/3gf6qf/what_was_t...

I am surprised nobody explicitely told you they are fake yet. The time this videos became popular many people cross referenced the sounds with movies. I dont remember which movie tho, but google deeper :)

Yeah it's definitely just a troll, looks like a whole scheme that works well because there really are many unexplained sounds and vibrations caused by e.g. heavy industry or geological events.

It's surprisingly hard to separate the fakes from the real stuff these days and the trolls exploit that to optimize the effect.

There's another referenced in the article, too.

Winsdor, Ontario is the town you are thinking of.

You mean the Taos hum?

Almost, I was thinking of the Windsor hum. Thanks!

More interesting sources in case anyone is interested:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyquake

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoseism

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